Unlike earlier stories of space adventure, which either related the invasion of Earth by extraterrestrials, or concentrated on the invention of a space vehicle by a genius inventor, pure space opera simply took space travel for granted (usually by setting the story in the far future), skipped the preliminaries, and launched straight into tales of derring-do among the stars.
A diferencia das historias anteriores de aventuras espaciais, que relacionaban la invasión da Terra por extraterrestres ou se centraban na invención dun vehículo espacial por parte dun xenio inventor, a space opera pura simplemente daba por sentado as viaxes espaciais (xeneralmente establecendo a historia nun futuro afastado), saltou directamente ós contos de fazañas estelares.