space opera's fortunes are turning around...

[Sindatur]

In the UK the term Space Opera and even Sci-Fi in general has in the past not been looked on in a good light. So a certain negative conatation can be inferred with the term space opera.

Oh, sure SciFi (and Fantasy) in general has always been frowned upon as a nerd thing, but, I got the impression Rama was saying the term Space Opera got an even more raw deal than SciFi in general and was used to insult to SciFi

 

[MacLeod]

Perhaps that's because the term Space Opera is similar to the term Soap Opera.

 

[Tribble Herder]

It is what the term is based on, so there's that.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

They're both based on the now-nearly-defunct term "Horse Opera" - which originally referred to Westerns during the silent movie era.

 

[RAMA]

People used to think the space opera didn't have to have realistic events or characters...well since some of those haven't happened yet, or seemed so far out (imagine what people thought about pre-moon landing space travel) it was easy to label all of it as non-realistic events.