ABSTRACT
After its coining (quickly, according to Stableford (2006), slowly, according to David Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer (2006)), the term became less condemnatory, more a set of shared assumptions which dened stories with particular settings, effects, and literary goals. Patricia Monk (1992), Gary Westfahl (1994, 2003), David Pringle (2000), Hartwell (2006a, 2006b, 2006c), and Locus’s 2003 “New Space Opera” symposium have focused attention on the fact that space opera has never gone away. The term now describes a kind of story, or its effect, rather than judging it.
