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ASTRO_ARIA

                                                            March 12, 2016

                                    (This was *not* posted at the Charles
                                    Stross blog, though I thought about it.)

Charles Stross posted three pieces in a row about "space opera",
all of which sparked some extensive discussion.

  http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/03/towards-a-taxonomy-of-cliches-.html
  http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/03/defining-space-opera.html
  http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/03/fun-with-monomyths-in-space-op.html

He lead off with a list of cliches to avoid:

  http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/03/towards-a-taxonomy-of-cliches-.html

This list strikes me as largely
unnecessary, because they're all
derivable, given the understanding
that "space opera" is a form where       Why do this rather than, say,
the cultural and technological           write historical fiction?
background is essentially just           Two answers: (1) it's easier
faked-up to support traditional          than actually learning
romantic fictional scenarios.            history, (2) the parameters
                                         can be adjusted to simplify
   If you simply start with              the problem of writing
   the intention of writing a            romantic fiction beyond
   realistic/anti-romantic               what would be possible with a
   space opera, you'll                   historical setting.
   automatically dodge these
   cliches.                                       You can, for example, do
                                                  quasi-medieval scenarios
   Many of the complaints in the                  where many social problems
   discussion had to do with the                  are removed-- rather than
   needs of traditional romantic                  just ignored and/or shrugged
   fiction, e.g. human agency must                off as inevitable.
   matter ("trust the force, luke").


        But if you try to "fix" the problems
        with irrational romanticism in space
        opera, you'll end up with something
        that doesn't seem like space opera,
        and the fans won't know what to make
        of it (Sterling's "Schismatrix" is a
        good example...).


Instead of cliches, I might complain
about some broader "peeves":

One major peeve:

   The general lack of complexity,
   e.g. "a desert planet"?  A             Many of the aspects of space opera
   planet with a single biome?            people complained about in the    
                                          ensuing discussion came under the 
                                          heading of "lack of complexity".  
                                          e.g.  alien civilizations with a  
                                          single, uniform culture.          
                                       
Another peeve:

The various standard tropes of space
opera evolved over many years of pulpy
experimentation, and fans of this form
have seen these tropes re-used many
times: from this repetition they develop
a sense that there's an underlying logic
to them, they're somehow established and
reasonable.
    
I've long complained about the automatic
presumption of faster-than-light travel, but      FTL
further, consider artificial gravity
generators: nearly every story with FTL ships
also has them come equipped with a magic
internal gravity... but the only commonality
these two technologies have is that they
function as off-the-shelf solutions for lazy
writers.
    
This consensus reality of FTL and artificial
gravity has no internal integrity in its                       (Feb 10, 2018)
premises, but if you were to write a story
with one and not the other, it would strike      The use of artificial gravity
the fans as very strange. But we don't know      in the most recent Star Wars
how to do either (and we suspect you can't do    movie bothered me a lot.  Why
either) so why act as though there's some        doesn't anyone think about
underlying relationship between them?            shutting it off to conserve
                                                 energy?  Why does it exist
                                                 even in industrial areas where
                                                 human beings don't normally
                                                 hang around?




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