Space Opera: What’s Out There?

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The phrase Space Opera, (a parody on Soap Opera, in case you younger readers couldn’t figure that out) was coined in response to the cycle of movies that started with Star Wars, conceived and produced by George Lucas, whose claim to popular fame remains this titanic series of six movies.

Many different creations in literature, movies and television could have influenced George Lucas, and one can certainly explore what he has written and said about his influences. I have to guess that perhaps Wagner’s Ring cycle and Tolkien’s Ring cycle both influenced Lucas, and one assumes that space movies and TV serials from the early post-war years such as Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon could not have failed to influence his imagination, one way or another. I would also guess that 2001, A Space Odyssey must have had a great influence of Lucas, as it did on an entire generation, as well as the entire Space Program.  Lucas confesses that WW2 flying ace movies also influenced him.

As many have remarked, the problem of good versus evil is a major focus of many of these large-scale literary works, certainly of the Wagnerian dramas, and of Tolkien’s work. Lucas, for the first time, distilled the idea of the hero who falls to the Dark Side as a central theme, though it is present in Wagner as well.  Tolkien steers clear of that idea; the seeds of evil in his villains are always present, except for the minor instance of Saruman, and even there, Tolkien portrays him as someone who needed to be watched all along.

In the Post Star-Wars world, the Harry Potter series addresses the problem of heroes who go over to the dark side, though at a much more superficial level, since the forces there are magical, and the magic takes on a greater responsibility for the action than The Force ever does in Star Wars. But in Harry Potter, just as in Tolkien, Jane Rowling presents a subtle account of the villain who is redeemed by his final actions, as well as the hero whose deep cover leads him to horrible deeds which are almost unforgivable, even given his circumstances.

Major Series in Science Fiction
There are story cycles in science fiction that have not yet made it to the big screen, or even DVD.

The first one that comes to mind is Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover series.  The premise is that a ship from Earth is launched in secrecy very early in the space era, containing a large proportion of colonists with extraordinary psychic powers, such as ability to teleport, or telekinesis, or mind-reading, and so on.  The ship crashes into a planet, though almost all on board manage to survive. Somehow, the conditions on the planet favor the development of the psi powers of the colonists, and over time, the colonists have among them powerful telepaths, while at the same time, the knowledge of their origins is lost.

The writing and plotting in the several dozen Darkover books is highly uneven, even though at their best the books are amazingly good. The psychic powers are disconcerting to some readers, and to others, the chief fascination of the series. One gets the impression that, for Marion Zimmer Bradley, the Darkover series was a money-spinner, far more than the chief focus of her creativity (but there could be information out there --that I’m not privy to-- that indicates otherwise).

The next story cycle --by no means less important-- is Anne McCaffrey’s Pern series.  Again, a colony ship from Earth lands on an Earth-like planet, which they name Pern (an acronym for a phrase that eludes me). The interesting feature of this planet is that there is a native life-form that is essentially a winged lizard.

Among the colonists is a geneticist, who eventually succeeds in genetically modifying the winged lizard species to be enormous in size, and to have an artificially enhanced intelligence with which it can communicate with humans telepathically. Naturally these beasts were called dragons in the series, and Anne McCaffrey was affectionately called the Dragon Lady, and pioneered the exploitation of the natural attraction of readers to everything that had to do with those mythical creatures in the fantasy genre.

The society, after centuries of isolation from the home planet, regresses into a level comparable with the early Renaissance on Earth. McCaffrey has the genius to make her depictions of the more influential protagonists in the stories interesting and 3-dimensional, and her descriptions of man-dragon interaction is fascinating. As with the Darkover stories, there is an important political dimension to the stories, and both series are persuasive in their different ways.

Anne McCaffrey has written an entirely independent series based on the idea of telekinesis; that in the distant future, space travel will be accomplished by telekinesis, rather than by rocket engines. This idea is worked out in the series beginning with The Rowan. She has written yet other series, but none as important or as interesting as the Pern series and the Rowan series.

The idea that psi powers are a major force is firmly established in science fiction. Piers Anthony, for instance, has written a series called the Cluster cycle, in which telepathic powers, assisted by mechanical devices, enables the mind-essence of humans and other intelligent species to travel enormous distances, and occupy the body of a host being, temporarily.

The main force that drives better science fiction is the use of a setting for battles of good and evil and fear and courage and responsibility and revenge and love and hate far from the restrictions of life on Earth. The stories may depend on the same themes, but divorced from the traditional settings of Earth life, they become less clichetic, and gain in abstract power.

[To be discontinued]

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