Re: TOS was high-science - considering
Aside from the fact that the possibility of some sort of warp drive has not been comprehensively ruled out, an SF novel will say 'what if FTL travel is possible?', define the limitations of FTL travel in that story's universe, and then live with them. Niven and Pournelle did a fantastic job of this in 'The Mote in God's Eye' and sequels, plus Pournelles tales in the same future universe. The type of FTL and its limitations had profound effects on the kind of interstellar society that formed, and how space combat took place. Now take a look at Poul Anderson's Technic series of novels that often star Dominic Flandy. That also has FTL travel - and is excellent Space Opera. Some of them might count as science fiction as well (although I can think of at least one that was a bit too far-fetched for that), but the point is that the presence or absence of FTL or any other technology does not automatically place a tale in one genre or another.
The defining characteristic of SF is that it plays 'what if?' with a limited chunk of science and sticks to known science with the rest - and then, if the author's any good, wraps a cracking good tale around it. It is NOT 'anything goes' fiction (that's fantasy). Whereas good SO is basically good drama in a futuristic setting, and scientific plausability very much takes a back seat. Some tales manage to be both SF and SO, some are one or the other. I'd agree that the odd individual episode of ST may make it as SF, but clearly a lot of them don't. Which doesn't detract one iota from how enjoyable or worthy it is.
The saddest thing, to me, is that in the lat 2-3 decades there's been a tendency for some folk, generally those who for some reason desp[erately want ST and Star Wars to be SF, to claim that SF is actually 'hard' SF and a subset of SF that includes all the SO stuff that they misname as SF - as if I and others (including the bulk of teh authors that wrote great SO and SF in the Golden Age of both genres) are being 'elitist' about SF in some way. Far from it, I thoroughly enjoy all good fiction, but calling a strawberry an apple doesn't make it an apple, it's just an error in nomeclature. From where i'm sat it's as if a generation of folks for some reason don't like to admit, for some reason, that they enjoy SO and so keep insisting that the SO they like is SF - which looks like a weird kind of elitism to me. Neither is inherently superior to the other as entertainment , they're simply different. I am seriously and genuinely puzzled by this trend. Why the distaste for Space Opera amongst so many that they seem to want to wish it out of existence?!
Put another way - if ST and Star Wars aren't Space Opera, what the heck IS?!
Biting the hand that feeds IT
