Space Opera

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—Wombat-socho

Last week we looked at classic military SF involving soldiers on the ground; this week, we’re going to do the same with space navies.
Any discussion of space opera HAS to start with E.E. “Doc” Smith, who single-handedly created the genre with two epic series. The Skylark of Space is the first of four novels in which Richard Seaton matches wits, engineering skill and diplomacy against his nemesis, “Blackie” DuQuesne, in an epic struggle prefiguring the battles between Reed Richards and Victor von Doom. To give you some idea of the scale Smith was operating on here, by the fourth novel Seaton and DuQuesne have been forced to join together in an epic intergalactic war against psionic chlorine-breathing aliens who seek to exterminate humanity and its allies, and the weapons are entire suns teleported from a third galaxy into the home systems of the chlorine-breathers so as to trigger novae. More familiar to most fans are the Lensman novels, which begin with Triplanetary and continue on for five more novels concluding with Children of the Lens. These chronicle the adventures of the Galactic Patrol, its leaders the incorruptible Lensmen, and especially Kimball Kinnison, the protagonist of most of the novels and the first Second Stage Lensman. Battles interplanetary, interstellar and finally intergalactic are found in plenty, with humanity and its allies not always having the technological edge. Pretty much everything that comes in later space operas is rooted in Doc Smith’s works, no matter how dated they seem now. Truly, he’s one of the giants on whose shoulders modern SF stands.

Space operas were very popular in the 1920s and 1930s, with John W. Campbell Jr., Jack Williamson (The Legion of Space), and Edmond Hamilton (Crashing Suns, Captain Future) all making their names in the subgenre; Isaac Asimov’s Foundation and Foundation and Empire both have plenty of space opera content, especially in the second novel where the Foundation finds itself fighting first the dying remains of the Galactic Empire and then the implacable armadas of the Mule. Campbell’s early works can be found in the collection The Works of John W. Campbell .

After that, space opera died out for a few decades as larger-than-life supermen and wars on a galactic scale got shoved into the background in favor of things like character development, dystopias, and other topics not so reminiscent of SF’s pulp ancestry. However, the 1970s brought us (along with the accursed “New Wave”) two new takes on the old space opera theme. Larry Niven’s Protector brought large-scale warfare into Known Space for the first time (there would be more later, as Niven opened up the Man-Kzin Wars to other authors: The Best of All Possible Wars being a selection of the best of those) and C.J. Cherryh made a major splash in the field with the Hugo-winning Downbelow Station , which began the Alliance-Union series of novels. Orson Scott Card’s novelette that would later become a full novel, Ender’s Game , also came out in the 1970s; all brought a fresh approach to the genre.

The Mote in God’s Eye by Niven and Jerry Pournelle, not so much. While dealing with the classic themes of alien contact and having its share of flashy spaceship combat, The Mote in God’s Eye got criticized for all manner of things ranging from the form of humanity’s government (an empire? how archaic!) to perceived defects in the asymmetrical aliens and their society. Still, it’s a great book, a cracking good read, and a thumb in the eye for folks who thought traditional space opera was dead.

The 1980s brought Ian Banks’ Culture novels, which featured plenty of space warfare, often involving self-aware warships with names such as No More Mr. Nice Guy, So Much For Subtlety, I Thought He Was With You, Just Another Victim of The Ambient Morality, Shoot Them Later, and Now We’ll Try It My Way. Probably the best place to start is with Consider Phlebas . David Brin’s Startide Rising pits a single starship crewed by men and (mostly) dolphins against a smorgasbord of hostile aliens, and Dan Simmons’ Hyperion is also worth your time.

Probably the biggest/longest of all these space operas is the one written as a far future analog to C. S. Forester’s tales of Horatio Hornblower. I am of course referring to David Weber’s Honor Harrington novels, which begin with On Basilisk Station and now include thirteen novels in the main sequence, which does not include another nine novels in three spinoff series or the six “Worlds Of Honor” shared-universe anthologies; things have gotten complicated enough that there’s now an Honorverse companion, House of Steel, with enough technical detail to please the most obsessed of gearheads.

Also worth mentioning are the relatively recent Lost Fleet series by Jack Campbell (beginning with Dauntless), and Charles Stross’ Singularity Sky, which provides an interesting counter-argument to Arthur C. Clarke’s classic cautionary tale “Superiority”.

Two series that don’t fall neatly into last week’s post or this one are Chris Bunch and Allan Cole’s Sten Adventures, which start logically enough with Sten. Sten’s adventures as grunt, spy, pilot and commander for the Eternal Emperor make the series very hard to categorize, but it has something for pretty much everyone. Also not neatly shoved into a particular box is Michael Flynn’s Spiral Arm series, which starts simply enough with The January Dancer, gets completely out of hand in the two subsequent novels, and ends in On the Razor’s Edge with a pilgrimage to Holy Terra of the Taj, The Wall, and the Mount of Many Faces; a civil war among the Shadows of the Central Confederal Worlds; and a family reunion. Tasty adventure simmered in a rich stew of Indian, Chinese, Russian, American and Gaelic cultures before being served up hot and bloody. I cannot recommend these – or the Sten novels – highly enough.

I’m sure I’ve missed somebody’s favorites. Post your recommendations and complaints in the comments.

165 comments

  1. Sherwood Smith and Dave Trowbridge’s Exordium series of five novels. Mostly politics and diplomacy, but a fair amount of space combat. Ships use a drive called a “fiveskip” which shifts out and back into relativistic space. Fleet combat devolves into individual single ship actions, each captain trying to outguess the other and achieve a favorable position in space-time to put his ordnance on the spot his (or her) opponent will be occupying.

    The side that has the better sensor spread and tactical data sharing usually manages to prevail. Battles may take days spread across a system. Nearly as important as the combat ships are the vessels that deploy and manage the strings of sensors, the longer a sensor baseline you can deploy the more accurate your tactical data.

  3. Well then that bit must have come along after the three books I read. There was very little of that in any of them. I looked for it with each turn of the page and felt like the tiny hints I saw were not much to give rise to something like the Green Lantern.

  4. I’m guessing that’s why Ender was whisked away, took on a new occupation, and sent into the future, the long way ’round. It helped Card avoid the problem of his main character getting too powerful to write for.

    Which, now it comes to mind, is exactly why the “Dark Knight” version of Batman breathed so much into the series, and why they keep going back to Bruce Wayne’s origin story instead of just following him into old age, like the Watchmen storyline and old heroes.

  5. Agree on Star Wars. Not so much on Bab-5.

    Bab-5 was more like Star Trek: far too many episodes were ship-in-a-bottle stuff. However it was also like good SF in the long story arcs that Straczynski managed to tie up very well (until the last season). So I saw that much less as space opera, and more like SF, with interspecies conflict and war.

    …Mainly because I’d also kick Space Opera into “camp” territory. I mean, the term “space opera” is frequently derogatory (carrying overtones of cheapness and/or poorly developed worlds, or a very healthy dose of theater–a la Farscape). It isn’t wholly derogatory, though, because we do love our brain candy.

    A series of books written along the lines of great naval engagements–only in space–isn’t space opera to me.

  11. I agree on Hyperion. It takes a good three readings to just take it all in. Simmons writes very direct prose that somehow never seems to be more than mere impressionism. (If you’re up too close, you get to see enormous detail, but it’s hard to tell what’s going on at that level.)

    The image of the Shrike’s “tree” stays with you.

    But I confess did get tired of Martin Silenus. You want to like the guy for being such an acerbic curmudgeon. But as with true curmudgeons (unlike most of the curmudgeons here), you don’t really apply “like” to that relationship.

    Same sort of appeal happens with Simmons’ Ilium/Olympos books. Which did have both war and space (“We get both kinds”). But I’ve only read it through once, so I really don’t think I grok it yet. I’ll happily read it again.

    I also like Simmons’ notion that The Fatline gets closed down by some unknown agency, claiming it is not for the use to which humanity had been putting it.

  17. It’s almost like “Ender’s Game” – it isn’t until most of the way through that he realizes it’s not a practice run, it’s the real thing.

  21. I would say ‘all’ of the EU that doesn’t have Zahn or Stackpole as authors is earned avoidance.

  22. I left out a lot of stuff I hadn’t read. Darkship Thieves is a fine adventure, but no space opera.

  24. You don’t get the full impact until Galactic Patrol, after the Lensman project has had a few centuries to operate and they have Lensmen from every alien society in the galaxy, and enough of them are trained at once that they have the Lensman equivalent of West Point.

  29. I’ve been around here, now and then for a long time.

    And she’s more libertarian than I am. Also, her ancestors are Portugese. Mine are Vikings.

    Also, more seriously, Wombat, I’m enjoying this new series of yours very much.

  32. Not sure if it’s already mentioned in the comments but Glenn Cook’s The Dragon Never Sleeps is a must read in the space opera genre.

  34. My lifetime goal has been to be a likeable curmudgeon. Even the kids I chase off my lawn will be saying “What a swell guy! I want a shotgun like that, too!”

  36. “Any discussion of space opera HAS to start with E.E. “Doc” Smith, who single-handedly created the genre with two epic series”

    Duh. And you would not believe that number of people who have tried to argue this point with me.

  37. Proving once again you’re as old as I am. Remember when that damned pyramid at Giza blocked the sun on our garden? You can’t tell me that wasn’t a zoning violation…

  38. The funniest part of Skylark

    SPOILER ALERT

    was when Blackie DuQuesne and Mrs. Seaton, whose kidnapping by Blackie started the whole series off in the first place, wind up being the ones who finally defeat the evil Chlorans, not Crane and Seaton.

    “Well…this is…awkward….”

  39. He inflicted every other indignity on her that life inflicted on Lord Nelson, but the fans would NOT let him kill her.

  40. Gardner Fox admitted he swiped the idea of the Guardians of OA and the Lanterns from Smith’s Arisians and Lensmen.

  42. And don’t forget Leigh Brackett, the pulp novelist whose work on Star Wars fooled the world into thinking George Lucas could write a movie…

  43. Lost an eye? Check.
    Lost an arm? Check.
    Boinking the spouse of a respected public figure? Check.
    Captured by the enemy? Oh wait, that was Hornblower, not Nelson…

  44. Did you watch the same Babylon Five series I did? Because there were very few self-contained episodes; especially from the middle of season 2 onward, almost everything moved the story arc forward.

    And if you’re going to mention the Niven & Pournelle book “Mote in God’s Eye”, why not talk about the even-better “Footfall”, which is the ULTIMATE “Alien Invasion of Earth” novel. Or “Lucifer’s Hammer”, the ULTIMATE disaster from space novel?

  45. Kris Longknife’s saga, by Mike Shepherd occupies that same middle ground between military sci-fi and space opera as the Honorverse. Some barely ever get into space… others spend almost all their time there.

    David Weber’s In Fury Born and John Ringo’s March To The Stars both have qualify as space opera, with a lot of work for the groundpounders as well, albeit without INTERGALACTIC warfare. Space fleets and intergalactic warfare, sure.

  47. “ship-in-a-bottle” episodes are ones where they never leave the “ship” and not much of the story happens external to the ship. There were several of those sorts of episodes in B5. And I already pointed out the story arc, so what’s the concern?

    Your other questions are answered by the genre.

  48. I always told people since about age sixteen that my goal in life was to be that old guy in the rocking chair on the porch with a shotgun goin’, “State yore business.”

  50. Like I said, it’s only a little derogatory. Still is in SF circles. But yeah, I guess since Lucasfilms the skiffy folks have taken a shine to it.

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