Wow, there's some hardcore thread necro.
I think Sci-Fi and Spec Fic fans in general are more adaptable than some authors like. Sure, space opera is kind of the bastard son of the various threads of science fiction that proud sci-fi authors like to bang on about, but let's face it, every generation of future sci-fi author starts with whatever pulp magazine, comic book, movie or TV show introduced them to sci-fi, regardless of its pedigree.
Remember, most sci-fi fans of 50s sci-fi only had Lost In Space and Plan 9 From Outer Space, and fans of 60s sci-fi had Star Trek and Doctor Who. The 70s was actually lagging behind pretty badly by the time Star Wars came along, and though it did very little to advance 'real' science fiction in popular culture, it sure brought the genre up to date as far as how it looked and how engaging it could be for non-science geeks.
I think George is quite over-rated, but he still performed a very important service to science fiction (and science in general) with his work. that his work is muddled and irrelevant hardly matters. It got young geeks like us thinking about living somewhere other than here and now, and brought in a whole raft of science fiction stories that got us all wondering again.
And as far as I'm concerned, the greatest space opera was Farscape. At least that show did what science fiction traditionally did, which was introduce strange science fiction ideas and told character-driven stories to illustrate them, unlike ST:NG and B5 (really just ST:NG with a Blade Runner sensibility), which mostly just dressed up traditional soap opera plots with some overused sci-fi concepts ripped off from the original series or from Doctor Who.
Okay, I'll go fetch the shovel to rebury this thread.
