ZkinandBonez said:
So, all my ramblings aside (I’m probably starting to sound like a broken record at this point), most people will most likely continue to label anything with spaceships as sci-fi and anything with wizards as fantasy, so all we can really do is provide sub-genres for those of us who do care about the minutiae of fiction. But I find it especially fun to challenge the genre definitions of Star Wars in particular as the very first movie basically has a wizard in a spaceship.And then you have Star Wars with spaceships and wizards. For me the ESP-ness of the Force places this in Space Opera.
Sure, space opera is a very accurate niche-genre label to place SW in. Not sure why ESP specifically would put it in that genre, you could make the argument that ESP is more of a paranormal trope, but the pseudo-science nature of it coupled with the adventure, melodrama, ect. definitely qualifies. Though it’s funny to me how the Wikipedia page for space opera specifies that the “opera” refers to soap operas and not traditional opera, as I think the latter fits quite well too, maybe even better. Maybe it’s just me, but I would say that SW has a certain Wagnerian quality to it.
My only real issue with the Space Opera classification is that it’s by definition a very pulpy and trashy genre, or at least that’s what the person who coined the term put into it. Maybe that’s changed since, I’ve read a lot of old pulps but not too much space opera. SW definitely has a lot of pulpy elements to it, but I think it succeeded in transcending the pulps it was initially trying to emulate. An argument could be made to place SW in the Sword and Planet genre however, though ironically it might be a bit too tech-focused to fit that genre (even if the tech doesn’t actually make a lot of sense).
I dunno. Maybe trying to find a specific genre for something like SW is impossible. I’m probably seeing this from an author’s perspective and sometimes you can’t even properly categorize your own work. And Star Wars is in many ways the ultimate genre mashup. I do like the term space opera though, and even if I’m not a big fan of the original definition, it does sound right when talking about Star Wars.
PS. I’m not quite sure what you meant by your first sentence as you just re-phrased what I wrote in my previous post. Does space opera tend to have wizards and magic in it? Like I said, I’m not too well versed in the genre, but what I associate with it is stuff like Flash Gordon and the Lensman series.