To Infinity, and Beyond! The Space Opera

As the daughter of both a Trekkie and a Star Wars geek, I'm certainly no stranger to the Space Opera. It's funny how it's almost hereditary---I have just as much of an affinity for the wide, galaxy-traveling epics filled with different alien races and planets as my father. Filled with high adventure, brave heroes, and dramatic moments set in a futuristic societies, space opera is the great epic of the science fiction world. But what aspects of Space Opera make it so appealing? What makes the subgenre of space opera appeal to so many people, young and old alike?

I see space opera as something of a hybrid of multiple genres. It's like a big fantasy epic filled with different creatures and new sights, sounds, and technologies. Much like the Lord of the Rings trilogy, there's a strong feeling of high adventure, crossing into just the Action Adventure genre like any Indiana Jones film. Yet to expand on this even further, with gunfights and a frontier attitude, the some Space Operas could even be considered an epic western, with the occasional standoff between characters. After all, the notion of Manifest Destiny that led Americans to sweep through the West isn't far off from the race to acquire planets for precious resources (case and point, the film Dune). Even further, movies like Star Wars are more about war politics, akin to even some historical pieces about historical rebellions involving monarchies or dictatorships. Regardless of what genre floats your boat, there honestly seems to be something for everyone in the Space Opera subgenre.

Conceptually, the setting is a method of appeal as well. Space becomes a forum for the most creative of storytellers to the most scientific or theoretical. For people uninterested in fictional stories without concrete relevance or commentary, space in and of itself is a huge mystery. We wonder about life on other planets, travel to those planets, and just how large the universe truly is. As "the final frontier," so much of it remains unexplored that Science Fiction and Space Operas can run wild, yet their roots are still found in scientific speculation. The theoretical "What if's" become jumping off points to imagine new worlds, stories, and political systems. After exploring every nook and cranny of planet earth, space truly is our last greatest adventure----easily capturing the imaginations of people worldwide.