Theme: Space Opera

Space opera concerns stories that place an emphasis on intergalactic adventure. Space opera features a series of adventures in a variety of often exotic interplanetary locales, involving space battles and a variety of alien lifeforms all living in differing levels of coexistence.

The space opera was largely invented in the late 1920s by writers such as Jack Williamson and in particular E.E. ‘Doc’ Smith, as well as Edgar Rice Burroughs who came up with the Planetary Adventure, a space opera adventure that is restricted to a single planetary locale.

The first screen space operas were in the serials with the various adventures of Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers and later with tv’s Star Trek (1966-9). The genre found enormous popularity with Star Wars (1977) and successive sequels, spinoffs and imitators.