Tag: Space Opera

Producing Various and Sundry Writing

Star Trek’s Mission Log: 58 Years & Counting

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

The beginning of the end of Star Trek: Discovery‘s five-year mission streams this Thursday, April 4th. Originally, this fifth season of Discovery was apparently not intended to be the final one, which has caused all kinds of rampant speculation online. However, Trek overall, is not only not going anywhere, the powers that be want to maintain what isn’t just a franchise, but a veritable Intellectual Property (IP) empire. In a longform cover story for Variety,…

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Various and Sundry

Farscape at 25

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

I’ve mentioned before how much I like the now firmly cult show Farscape and I see no reason to stop now, especially as its vision of a galaxy full of wonders and nightmares is a clear influence on the upcoming seasons of my own space opera. At 25, its best episodes still pack a punch and aren’t shy about embracing the weird. So if it’s checking out this retrospective by Ryan Britt for Inverse, backing…

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Various and Sundry

See You Soon, Space Cowboy

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

It’s probably obvious that I’m a science fiction fan and, if you look at my own series, Rogue Tyger, a fan of the “crew on a ship and mayhem ensues” sci-fi sub-genre. And while it’s a very different show from what I’m trying to do, the landmark anime series Cowboy Bebop was and is a huge influence — and not just in terms of the title. So, of course I’m going to check out the…

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Various and Sundry

The Worst Derelict Spaceships to Board

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

I’ve mentioned science fiction tropes here before, back in 2016 and also this year. Heck, I’ve even written a Jabberwocky Audio special that parodies the many tales of crews boarding derelict ships. This is quite established, as the crew over at Generation Films knows well: Warning, this will have spoilers for The film Ad Astra The TV series The Expanse The video game Dead Space The film Sunshine The film Alien The film Predators The film Event Horizon The film Pandorum

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Writing

Space Opera Tropes

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

Speculative fiction writer Charles Stross has written a blog post about space opera clichés which has been brought to my attention by one of the denizens of MOSF. I haven’t read too much of Charles Stross, though I like his imaginative and subtly disturbing short story, “Rogue Farm.” It sounds like he enjoys being a bit harder with his sci-fi and space opera than some, which comes through in this list. For that reason, I…

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