Mary Catelli's Erraticly Updated and Exceedingly Ill-Organized Journal

Space opera, as every reader doubtless knows, is a pejorative term often applied to a story that has an element of adventure. Over the decades, brilliant and talented new writers appear, receiving great acclaim, and each and every one of them can be expected to write at least one article stating flatly that the day of space opera is over and done, thank goodness, and that henceforth these crude tales of interplanetary nonsense will be replaced by whatever type of story that writer happens to favor — closet dramas, psychological dramas, sex dramas, etc., but by God important dramas, containing nothing but Big Thinks. Ten years late, the writer in question may or may not still be around, but the space opera can be found right where it always was, sturdily driving its dark trade in heroes.

Leigh Brackett

Romulus Buckle & the Engines of War by Richard Ellis Preston Jr

Action!  Adventure!  Discoveries and alliance before the outbreak of war!  In a post-apocalyptic steampunk California!!

While I think the story stands on its own, it does have a lot of plot spoilers for The City of the Founders.

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Was thinking about this in Andre Norton's stories -- though it can be seen in others.  Like Conan the Barbarian.

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Not fight, mind you, just wrestle.  I have already worked out the backstory of the relevant law that my heroine will get someone to look up on her behalf.  And the law is in place.  Another Mad Scientist madly did this experiment before -- it backfired badly -- and the king involved that time not only made laws for his own kingdom, he persuaded other kingdoms to follow his lead.
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Swordsmen of the Screen:  From Douglas Fairbanks to Michael York by Jeffrey Richards

A survey of the Hollywood swashbuckler -- and its sources.

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One thing throwing lots and lots of danger at your character does is push the question of motives into the background.

This is not always a good thing.

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The January Dancer by Michael Flynn,  the first book of his Spiral Arm series.

A space opera tale of intrigue, mystery, adventure, and romance, all revolving about the Dancer, or the Twisting Rock, a prehuman artifact of strange abilities, and spanning wondrously detailed star systems, with a detailed back story.

It opens with a harper coming into a bar -- the only bar on the planet Jehovah -- and seeking out the scarred man there for the story, so that she can make songs of it.  Or so she says.

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The Monster Men by Edgar Rice Burroughs

This is one of his stand-alones.  It takes place in southeast Asia, with savage tribes and monstrous orangutans in his usual style on Earth (as contrasted to under Earth as well as on Mars) -- except that a major factor in it is that a character is a Mad Scientist, out to Create Life, which shifts it into science fiction as least as much as H. G. Wells's The Island of Dr. Moreau.

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This Rough Magic by Mary Stewart
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I was pondering sword and sorcery and definitions. (Blame jonathanmoeller) and. . . .

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