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The subgenre has evolved and thrived for a century with its key elements mostly intact: galactic encyclopedias of knowledge, interstellar politics, heroic journeys, and extraterrestrial encounters. We’ve had a golden age and “the new space opera,” metaphysical allegories and postcolonial critiques. Typically seen as (and often being) the least literary form of SF, space opera hasn’t gone out of style since Buck Rogers began battling galactic evils in the 1920s and ’30s, and the appellation entered usage in the 1940s.

Why, then, has a new generation of authors like Nnedi Okorafor, Yoon Ha Lee, Ann Leckie, Hao Jingfang, Charlie Jane Anders, and Maurice Broaddus turned to stories of other worlds, when the fate of ours hangs in the balance? Many vanguard SF and literary authors alike, having finally acknowledged that it’s no longer possible to ignore the climate emergency, are writing influential, near-future works of climate fiction. This revitalization of space opera - stories traditionally set in distant futures when humanity has spread to worlds beyond the solar system - comes at an odd time.

While studios hungry for prestige intellectual property are mining a much older space opera paradigm with adaptations like Foundation and Dune, books by a diverse group of writers from around the world are beginning to rework the tropes of speculative fiction’s oldest and pulpiest tradition. But it’s not streaming on Amazon or any other platform owned by someone trying to escape to Mars.