Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction (133 page)

Rayguns, space academies, evil empires, and countless familiar clichés and conventions of science fiction, all originate within the kind of scientific romance called “space opera.” Like the nineteenth century “grand opera” which the term vaguely evokes, the space opera is concerned with telling melodramatic tales of high emotion and high adventure. These heroic and romantic tales are often set in vast galactic societies with action unfolding over interstellar distances and at battle speeds faster-than-light.

When the term, “Space Opera,” first appeared, it was not applied as a classification, but as a critique of the quality of commercial science fiction being published in the 1920s and 1930s. The phrase seems to have been introduced by Wilson “Bob” Tucker, a full-time movie projectionist, a part-time writer and a widely respected figure among early science fiction fans. It was in his fanzine in 1941 that Tucker mimeographed.

In these hectic days of phrase-coining, we offer one. Westerns are called “horse operas,” the morning housewife tear-jerkers are called “soap operas.” For the hacky, grinding, stinking, outworn space-ship yarn, or world-saving for that matter, we offer “space opera” (as quoted in Hartwell and Cramer, 10).

Tucker was concerned with the way in which science fiction was coming to be defined by its overuse of the worn clichés of the pulp fiction western, war-story and sea tale. His comment bookmarks a moment of re-appraisal and redirection for science fiction as the familiar conventions associated with such cross media narratives as Buck Rodgers and Flash Gordon were becoming overdone, and the fans, especially, wanted something beyond melodramatic situations, purplish prose, and highly predictable storylines.

It was the
over obvious
use of formula and cliché that motivated Tucker’s critique. Tucker apparently wanted to encourage better qualities of writing or at least less overt dependence on specific conventions. Science fiction fans were beginning to promote literary legitimacy for the genre, and writers were harnessing the narrative effects and experimental approaches of mainstream modern literature that would evolve the genre from its pulp fiction roots.

What we might call classic “space opera” was written mostly from the period of early science fiction through the era of the mass market paperback. The focus in this type of writing was on creating a fast-paced atmosphere of high adventure; to this end, other elements of storytelling, such as depth of characterization or subtleties of expression were usually given short shrift. The editors were certainly most interested in buying a gripping yarn, and generally one that centered on a heroic hyper-masculine role model for the boys and young men considered their target demographic. In a sense, Tucker’s phrase has much to do with expressing a fan’s impatience with the editors who weren’t letting a genre grow up along with its audience.

Examples of the hyper-masculine prototype of the superhero that was central to this fiction (and which was to lead to the invention of the costumed superheroes of the comics) can be found in this volume in such works as Edgar Rice Burroughs’s, The Princess of Mars (1911) or Robert E. Howard’s Almuric (1939). Both of these works illustrate how many of the motifs and conventions of the Western made their way into science fiction. Burroughs, who based his characters in part on his own observation of Western types during his time in Idaho and Arizona in the 1890s, uses a classic western prototype, an ex-confederate soldier turned wrangler and prospector, as his protagonist, John Carter.

The story unwinds through a desert populated by various tribes of indigenous peoples, some of whom are referenced on real native-Americans known to Burroughs while others are represented as stereotypical pulp fiction savages. The plot is the basic framework of the old west melodrama, the hero rescuing a romantic interest from the clutches of an antagonist after a showdown. In the larger motif, the lone hero with hyper-masculine traits, having lost his attachment to his identity, seeks to reconcile the culture of civilization, in which he has roots, with the culture of anarchic freedom with which he has had experience. The reconciliation is built on essentialist ideas that can be seen in both cultures, such as honesty, frankness and fair dealing, duty, the protection of women, etc. The antagonist usually does not evidence any of these traits and seems only driven by the desire for power with which he/she gratifies her/his own desires instead of working for the benefit of all. In The Princess of Mars the specific formula at work is a captivity narrative.

From the 1940s through the 1970s this sort of story started being called Space Fantasy because it took many of the conventions of the fantasy genre—rescuing the princesses, sword play, dragons, etc.—and set the stories on other planets instead of the fabled past. Contemporary critics tend to call this kind of story a “planetary romance.”

In a planetary romance most of the action takes place on a planet other than Earth to which the protagonist has been transported sometimes by scientific but often simply mystical means, little or no explanation required. The emphasis is not on how we got there, but on what happens to us from the moment we arrive. As time went on, there became no need to transport the hero or the reader; as a convention, when the story begins, we are just there. Action is fast-paced and much of the pleasures of the text revolve around our encounter with different cultures as our hero adapts rapidly to a changing cultural landscape, usually winning an appropriate mate along the way. Planetary romances tend to be updated versions of the “lost worlds” or “lost race” motifs, often rife with colonialist attitudes embedded at the assumptive level that reinforce condescending or patronizing attitudes towards other, especially less technological cultures.

Classic space opera has most of these things as well, but it also has spaceships.

E.E. “Doc” Smith’s
Skylark in Space
(1928) is a prototype for early space opera. The plot is simplified, in this case a pursuit, and the writer does not concentrate on creating multiple layers of structure, meaning, symbols or any other complex literary effects. Instead, the writer focuses on creating as much forward movement as possible while expending the minimum time necessary on character development and motivation. Where Smith does put his attention is on developing an atmosphere of fast-paced scientific “can-do” engineering. Like Smith himself, a real Ph.D. and professionally a food chemist, his central cast of characters are scientific-minded, willing to re-examine their assumptions and modify their conduct on what seems “reasonable” as opposed to what might be conventional. Smith concentrates less on presenting believable science than on producing an atmosphere of scientific exploration and pioneering, transplanting the narrative of the western frontier onto a narrative of space exploration.

Together with his co-writer, Lee Hawkins Garby, the wife of a college friend, who handled the romantic passages and domestic dialogue, Smith created a work remarkable not so much for its prose as for the size of its canvas. Instead of the villain carrying off the hero’s love interest on a runaway train, the vehicle is a runaway spaceship that carries them far across the galaxy where all members of the party must form common cause in order to return to earth. Smith draws both protagonist and antagonist in heroic terms. They are not only fine physical specimens but they also have fine scientific minds which they put to practical use. They each have their own codes of honor and really differ fundamentally in only one respect; the antagonist, “Blackie” Duquesne, is ruthless in his own self-interest.

Ten years after
Skylark
was published, Smith’s
Lensman
series of novels debuted, featuring an intergalactic secret organization that worked in opposition to a Borg-like anti-culture in a conflict spawned by a collision of galaxies. Together with works like Edmund Hamilton’s
Interstellar Patrol
, and Jack Williamson’s
Legion of Space,
Smith’s novels exerted a profound influence on future writers in the field. They established the epic structure of science fiction, which places the high adventure of their protagonist’s journey within labyrinthine conspiracies that decide the fates of thousands, even millions of star systems. Narrative devices like star federations, empires, interstellar trade guilds and galactic police forces fanned out through early space opera.

In a work like Edmund Hamilton’s
Sargasso of Space
, the connections between space opera and the sea tale are made quite explicit. It fits among the many stories of piracy, ship wrecking and kidnaping that were adapted to an environment of vacuum and inconceivable distance. Outer space became the perfect setting in which to reinvent storytelling modes that pitted not just human against human but humans against an unforgiving environment. Threats to earth came not just from malign alien species, but from the hazards of space itself, such as comets or meteors. Hamilton was sometimes nicknamed “world saver” for his frequent formula in which a planet was rescued from complete destruction at just the last possible moment.

Leigh Brackett, already an established writer of pulp fiction as well as a Hollywood scriptwriter, married Hamilton in 1946. She is thought of today as the queen of space opera because of the vividness and colorful quality of her prose, but she moved rather effortlessly across genres, writing hardboiled detective stories, westerns, space fantasy and sword and sorcery tales. In many ways her career in science fiction is a history of space opera in microcosm. Her early science fiction is space fantasy in the vein of Burroughs and it is really this type of story with which she is most often associated. Some would see her not as the queen of space opera but the empress of planetary romance, which may say less about her work than about how these terms have kept changing and the imprecise and sometimes completely contradictory way in which the terms are applied.

For several years she wrote side-by-side with her protégé, Ray Bradbury and the two actually collaborated on the story
Loralei of the Red Mists
, with Bradbury completing the second half so that Brackett could work on the screenplay for
The Big Sleep
. While Bradbury starts out imitating Brackett, Brackett was to end up writing more like Bradbury. For example, in her story “All the Colors of the Rainbow” (1957), an “invasion” of civilized aliens is repelled by the racist violence that the aliens encounter in the rural South. Her stories in this period begin exhibiting less interest in the creation of high adventure and more interest in creating social allegory. During the 1950s and 1960s much of her writing was for the movies and television. It was during this time that the term “space opera” was becoming increasingly pejorative.

Through the fifties and into the sixties when stories and novels were called “space operas” it was not a nice thing. The term started to be applied to all works that were primarily adventure oriented science fiction. This was in contrast to the science fiction produced by writers who were interested in exploring the psychological, sociological and anthropological aspects of space travel, interaction with alien species, and the effects on society of future technology. Writers and critics of science fiction were engaged in the project of legitimizing the genre as an area of fiction that was producing thought-provoking and emotionally complex narratives.

Proponents of the genre were trying to acquire more respect for science fiction from the general reading public and critical cases were advanced for the literary quality of certain writers. Some writers, like Kurt Vonnegut, started publishing within the genre but crossed over into the mainstream of literary writing. Other writers, like Ray Bradbury or Ursula K. Le Guin, who gained the respect of literary critics and academics, remained largely associated with the genre even though they published novels of more mainstream interest. Some literary writers like Stanislaw Lem, Italo Calvino, Margaret Atwood, Marge Piercy and Doris Lessing were to use motifs and genre markers from science fiction while their audience remained primarily readers of mainstream literature. Their work was less about using the genre codes of science fiction than about the inherent story possibilities of speculation.

The movement to more literary quality in science fiction resulted in a new standard of expectations among readers that insisted on a refinement of fictional technique, greater depth of characterization and more sophisticated dialogue. Although fiction that retained action and high adventure remained appreciated, for example the work of Robert Heinlein, the audience for science fiction (and its reviewers and critics) wanted their fiction to also have a certain complexity or social relevance, which Heinlein, among others, also provided. Work that didn’t provide larger social or literary context was often dubbed “merely space opera.”

This seeking after legitimacy was echoed across media as space westerns like
Flash Gordon
and
Buck Rodgers
gave way to evocations of Shakespeare (
Forbidden Planet
) or classic novels (
Robinson Crusoe on Mars
, or
Space Family Robinson
). By the time
Star Trek
reestablished science fiction on television, expectations were that science fiction would not only offer starships, aliens and transporters, but stories that used future speculation as a narrative device to explore contemporary social issues such as racism or the social fears surrounding automation.