Re:Isaac Asimov: The Last Question
by BeetleB on Friday April 17, 2026 @11:38AM
(#47807102)
As a Trekkie, fair point. I think Star Trek does fall into the "speculative fiction" category, but Star Wars doesn't. It's just "space opera".
[ Parent
| on HN ]
Space opera is still a subset of speculative fiction and science fiction, saying "just" dismisses its influence on the genre as a whole.
A lot of classic science fiction is basically "x with spaceships" where x is the Napoleonic Wars, or feudal Europe or the Wild West or what have you, and the "science" is little more than set dressing.
> saying "just" dismisses its influence on the genre as a whole.
Well, it was meant to be parsed as:
Star Trek is speculative fiction and space opera.
Star Wars is just space opera.
Some space opera is also speculative fiction, but I wouldn't say it is a subset. I wouldn't call some space opera stories speculative fiction at all.
They're all classified as science fiction.
(Yes, yes - there is no consensus on these terms...typically science fiction is considered a subset of speculative fiction, and here I inverted a lot of things).