What are you working on right now?

Unmentionable said:
Slogging through my first novel, which is a space opera/cosmic horror/fantasy/weird fiction epic. It's slow going since I insist on being as descriptive as possible.
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Ok, I have to ask. What is a space opera in a book? I know Jo has one and now you. When I think of, Space Opera, I imagine weird singing, but in space. :oops: And I know there's much more to it. The Oprea word just throws me off.
 
I'm always a little unsure of that as well, Wo7f. I usually replace it with epic and that seems to fit, it's the epic fantasy counterpart, right?

Oddly though I find the word Opera sounds a bit more... Well, epic.
 
I'm taking a brief break from my main story to begin crafting a language which is a descendant of R'lyehian, altering and simplifying the spellings and speech patterns to reflect the tongue of a different species. Ultimately, I want to craft an entire language.
 
Wo7f said:
Star Wars was a Space Opera? Hmmm... Ok, give me a space book to compare it to, that isn't a Space Opera. I might understand better then.
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Technically, Star Wars is science fantasy - ie sci fi with clear elements of fantasy in it.
Space opera are, essentially, stories that take place in a space setting without reference to obeying our current understanding of the laws of physics, Cap't.
They're usually epic in scope but not always.

Egs

Dune (we might get a few objections to that)
Vorkosigan (ha! Take that spellchecker!) - Bujold
Culture novels - Banks
Some Heinlein (actually lots)

Tv/film
Star trek
Blake's seven
Babylon 5 etc etc

In terms of space books that are n't opera - you're into the gamut of hard sf, Ian Sales and the ilk.
 
@Wo7f The wikipedia article on Space opera is pretty good.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_opera

And it also puts Star wars (correctly, in my and George Lucas's opinion :p:D) in as Space Opera, as until I met Jo I had never actually heard of Science Fantasy as a 'technical' term.

Also just to make it clear, as a child of the 70's, Space Opera to me is the 'redefined' stuff starting from that period, although I do understand it's earlier roots. (And also where Science Fantasy comes from and what it means - and I'm very happy to for it to be used*, so Jo we don't need to get into a big debate about it :))


* Though not for any of my work!
 
Jo Zebedee said:
Actually, I always called it space opera until I got mauled for it once (not here....)
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To be honest, thinking about it, it does seem a bit ridiculous arguing what 'genre bucket' we are going place stories - surely all we need to know that there's going to be big spaceships, blasters and an enticing wink from a sexy pilot and we know roughly where we are. Isn't it just all splitting hairs? Sure for commercial reasons it's good to know where to place a book, but a good story is a good story.

I can only hope that the person/s that mauled you is/are willing to maul the actual writer of Star Wars*. :D

---------------------------------

*Thinking about it, they probably would :rolleyes:
 
Venusian Broon said:
To be honest, thinking about it, it does seem a bit ridiculous arguing what 'genre bucket' we are going place stories - surely all we need to know that there's going to be big spaceships, blasters and an enticing wink from a sexy pilot and we know roughly where we are. Isn't it just all splitting hairs? Sure for commercial reasons it's good to know where to place a book, but a good story is a good story.

I can only hope that the person/s that mauled you is/are willing to maul the actual writer of Star Wars*. :D

---------------------------------

*Thinking about it, they probably would :rolleyes:
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Hey you had me with the pilot.

Of course.

I should have mentioned that any space opera without a sexy pilot misses the whole point, in my humble opinion. Any sex, creed or race counts. :D
 
But are there sexy pilots in IMB's Culture books? and Heinlein? Or am I using a particularly narrow version of "sexy"? (I insist on socks matching either shoes or trousers.)
 
HareBrain said:
But are there sexy pilots in IMB's Culture books? and Heinlein? Or am I using a particularly narrow version of "sexy"? (I insist on socks matching either shoes or trousers.)
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Sexy? In IMB's books, always. At least that's how I imagine quite a few of the characters.

Mind you he doesn't really do pilots, as the AI do all the flying usually.
 
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