‘It can’t stand not happening’: Space Opera, by Catherynne Valente

Space Opera is a book about the end of everything for a time when we are very preoccupied with the end of everything. It would not seem out of place in the science-fiction boom of the Cold War, if it weren’t for the hyper-contemporary referentiality. Valente clearly holds no nostalgia for Microsoft’s Clippy, for example, declaring it to be a ‘c*nt’ in a particularly memorable passage. It is a totally serious book in the clothing of an absolute farce, and therein lies its genius. It messes with gender, it ponders philosophy, it is deeply concerned with the nature of love, and it does it all in technicolour. There are elements of bureaucratic nightmare – ‘How are we going to put ‘gendersplat’ on a personnel intake form?’ – amidst laments to lost love. I was left with the kind of headache more akin to brain-freeze, like I’d just devoured a slush drink with great enthusiasm.

The concept is simple: humanity must sing for its continued existence in competition with other representative species across the universe, or risk total annihilation. If you follow Valente based on her previous works, I advise you to walk into the upcoming Space Opera, due out on 10th April, holding those works close to your chest, preparing to have all your expectations thoroughly quashed. If Deathless – imbibed with Russian folklore – was her zig, Space Opera is her zag. There does remain a fairytale-like quality to Space Opera, and the physical melodrama of Space Opera can be found in the girl riding a pestle and mortar across an expanse of snow, but this book is camp, pure camp, in its excess to its Eurovision references, with Conchita Wurst’s ‘Rise Like A Phoenix’ and Loreen’s ‘Euphoria’ both quoted with love.

Space Opera goes at a million light-years a minute. Every sentence is both a joke and a pop culture reference It is jam-packed with, well, everything. Sitting in a post-Hawking, post-Adams, post-Bowie world – on occasion there are what appear to be odes to Le Guin – Valente proves how close pop culture is to the centre of all our most agonising questions, all our existential blues. Much like the parties at which Decibel Jones, our protagonist, finds himself mingling with the universe’s boldest and slimiest, Valente shows nihilism brushing shoulders with Looney Tunes, the culture wars making small talk with glam rock, and sexual politics sharing finger food with slapstick comedy. It’s an exhilarating medley of flavours and sounds, as confusing as it is delectable.

Valente writes ‘The story of the galaxy is the story of a single person in it.’ but Space Opera is not an especially character-driven plot. At times, the protagonist feels like an afterthought, a vehicle for more interesting ruminations. The book is description heavy, and delves extensively into the history of various planets, but the prose remains amusing and endearing enough that this extended delving doesn’t put you off. Things move quickly, and genres are interwoven with great skill. One chapter involving a cocktail bar reads like a verbal slapstick Monty Python sketch; in another one character poignantly lights her cigarette on a votive candle of St. Jude, the patron saint of lost causes. This is not hard science fiction, it is a transgressive ode. There is, in criticism, a term called ‘Star Trek science’, The Original Series always left things just vague enough that it didn’t really matter that the science wouldn’t stand up to scrutiny, there was never enough hard science involved for the show to be properly scrutinised at all. Valente, on the other hand, does away with Star Trek science and revels in glorious nonsensical specificity. Lush, science nonsense, every sentence jam-packed with delicious combinations of words.

‘Life wants to happen. It can’t stand not happening,’ Space Opera insists. It is clear from Space Opera’s fast-paced, rollicking prose that neither can Valente.

I started listening to this as I was recovering from a pinched nerve. Wow, this book was the exact right kind of brain candy I needed. In a galactic version of Eurovision, Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeroes have to compose a song that proves humanity's sentience.

I really enjoyed how Valente played around with the idea that creativity and empathy are what makes things sentient. Though the alien set dressing is very thinly veiling things happening around the world, it was a whole lot of fun and glitter. The characters all felt well-rounded and their emotional arc was quite compelling. There were so many aliens too, of all kinds, no matter what your favorite flavor is. Valente took great care in both constructing and describing their cultures, in the ways they are similar and different. Much weight sits on our heroes' shoulders, but there are times for levity, like when an alien causes their cat to be able to speak.

This book is a whole lot of fun, covered in bright lights, amazing performances, and modern sensibilities plastered onto satire science fiction.

The nitty-gritty: Big on atmosphere but lean on plot, Space Opera is a colorful, musical, over-the-top love song to music and musicians everywhere

Except that the Voorpret turned out to be really rather good at the whole civilization thing. Yes, yes, they obliterated the natural biodiversity of any region they touched, but wherever their infection took hold, they opened a lot of delightful bistros and shops and start-up tech companies with whimsically casual workplace environments and fusion food trucks and artisanal blacksmithing co-ops and performance-art spaces.

A few years ago I read and loved Valente's Radiance, and my experience reading Space Opera felt like a flash-back in many ways. I experienced some of the same frustrations with both books, which I can now recognize is an issue I will probably always have with the author's style. To say that this book is over-blown in more ways than one would not be an exaggeration. From Valente's wordy, adjective-filled writing style to her outlandish ideas about alien life forms, Space Opera assaults the senses and breathes into existence several universes full of space oddities (and yes, that is a pertinent David Bowie reference!) I was both in awe of and frustrated by this book, which leaves me feeling torn about my rating. There were so many elements that I loved about the story, but unfortunately it was missing one big thing that I just can't forgive: a cohesive plot that made me want to keep reading. In fact, the plot can easily be summed up in just a couple of sentences:

Former rock star Decibel "Dess" Jones (formerly of Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeros) is recruited by a race of aliens (visiting Earth for the first time) to participate in an intergalactic singing contest. Pitted against every known sentient species in the galaxy, the dead last loser of the competition faces the complete annihilation of their race.

What Valente does really well is atmospheric world-building. Her words are magical, and I suspect she might be part alien herself, because normal human beings just don't write like this. She sets out to create a particular mood in this story—boisterous, music-filled and nostalgic with an underlying tone of violence. The Metagalactic Grand Prix is based on her fervent love of Europe's Eurovision, something I had never heard of before I picked up this book (for North American readers, I believe it's similar to American Idol or The Voice, but probably on a larger scale), and that love really comes through in her descriptions of what music in other universes might sound like. The alien who first makes contact with humans—simultaneously with each one by way of mental projection—is a blue flamingo-like creature called an Esca that somehow reminds Dess of the Looney Tunes Road Runner, with complete disdain for the humans' chances of winning the contest:

You know how, when a baby's crying and wailing, you put it on your shoulder and pat its back—pat, pat-a-pat-pat? And it sicks up some milk and spit and tummy juices all over Mumsy's nice jumper and then looks just TERRIFICALLY pleased with itself? THAT'S what human music is like! Compared to the rest of the galaxy, of course; I'm sure it's just fine for you.

Valente goes into great detail describing the glam-rock look that Dess is known for, from his Alexander McQueen bodysuit to his glittery eye make-up. She lovingly describes the various aliens in her world, from their color, texture and size down to the particular way they create music. The story is awash in paragraph after paragraph of this sort of imagery, and while that goes a long way in creating her unique vision, it does get old after a while. And it pains me to say that, because I really do love Valente's writing. But I spent a lot of time skimming Space Opera, something I never do, and even then I don't feel as if I really missed anything. Beautiful writing aside, there just wasn't enough plot for me to rate this book any higher.

But let's talk about what did work for me. There's a fair bit of social commentary going on, but it's timely and important and I didn't mind the strong message at all, which is that we humans, in general, are fucking up the planet in a big way. We're destroying our natural resources, we're killing each other, and really, is there any reason to keep us around at all? That's the big question put forth by the Esca, and the reason Decibel Jones finds himself, along with ex-bandmate Oort St. Ultraviolet, literally singing for his life—and the lives of all his fellow humans.

Valente also focuses her laser spotlight on the human condition, since we're talking about the value of our species. And her observations are extremely poignant at times. At one point, Decibel is criticized for his lack of natural armor, as if he were a shark or porcupine or even a cactus. Decibel's reply? "We wear our thorns on the inside." (Cue goosebumps.)

Despite the lack of story, the author does give us a bit of history about the "good old days," when Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeroes were popular. They also had a third member, the beautiful and sweet Mira Wonderful Star, who is dead when the Space Opera begins. Her absence is keenly felt throughout the story (I won't go into details, but it's tragic), and Decibel's memories of Mira flit in and out, so it was almost as if she were right there with him. He also has a soft spot for his grandmother and those memories kept resurfacing in the most poignant ways. Valente also touches on Oort's despair at having to leave his wife and children in order to perform, and even though his domestic life isn't perfect, you can tell all he wants to do is go home. All these emotional moments added a wonderful layer to the story which didn't surprise me, since Valente has a way of infusing her stories with emotion.

And my favorite character has to be Oort's Maine Coon Capo, who somehow manages to be transported to the host planet for the Grand Pix and emerges from the portal being able to talk. I'm sincerely grateful to Ms. Valente for including a talking animal in this story, even though Capo's role is very small. The author broke my heart in her notes at the end of the book when she talked about the cat that inspired him.

Fans of Valente will most likely love this book, at least parts of it. And surprise! Space Opera has been optioned for film by Universal, and it's going to be a musical (for any fans of La La Land out there, this is great news)! I'm totally on board with this and I'm so curious to see what the Hollywood folks will do with such fertile story material. And who knows, this might be one case where the movie is better than the book:-D

Big thanks to the publisher and Wunderkind PR for supplying a review copy.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.  This review is spoiler-free.


I rarely review books that I DNF (did not finish), however I really wanted to talk about this one.  Why?  Because I'm so upset that it didn't deliver.  Space Opera sounded like the absolute perfect book for me -- it's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy meets Eurovision.  I wanted to love this book so badly, but it just didn't work for me.



IN SPACE EVERYONE CAN HEAR YOU SING

A century ago, the Sentience Wars tore the galaxy apart and nearly ended the entire concept of intelligent space-faring life. In the aftermath, a curious tradition was invented-something to cheer up everyone who was left and bring the shattered worlds together in the spirit of peace, unity, and understanding.

Once every cycle, the civilizations gather for the Metagalactic Grand Prix - part gladiatorial contest, part beauty pageant, part concert extravaganza, and part continuation of the wars of the past. Instead of competing in orbital combat, the powerful species that survived face off in a competition of song, dance, or whatever can be physically performed in an intergalactic talent show. The stakes are high for this new game, and everyone is forced to compete.

This year, though, humankind has discovered the enormous universe. And while they expected to discover a grand drama of diplomacy, gunships, wormholes, and stoic councils of aliens, they have instead found glitter, lipstick and electric guitars. Mankind will not get to fight for its destiny - they must sing.

A one-hit-wonder band of human musicians, dancers and roadies from London - Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeroes - have been chosen to represent Earth on the greatest stage in the galaxy. And the fate of their species lies in their ability to rock.



My reason for not finishing this book comes down to one major factor: the author's style.  First things first, the writing just didn't do it for me.  This was my first book by Valente so I'm not sure if this is a style she always uses or not, but it felt almost like she was using big words for the sake of using big words (if that makes any sense at all).  You know those guys on Reddit who are like, 14 years old and trying to make themselves sound smarter by using words they found in their SAT prep book but end up looking foolish instead?  That's what this is, but in book form.  I just do not mesh with that style of writing at all -- it feels very try-hard and got very irritating very quickly.

Due in part to the writing style, the humor didn't quite hit the mark for me either. Remember that 14-year-old Redditor?  He's now trying to be Douglas Adams and, well, not succeeding.  No one can really be Douglas Adams -- it's a miracle that Douglas Adams managed to be Douglas Adams.  Where Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was on the right side of that 'ridiculously funny or not at all' line, Space Opera was not.  Most of the jokes fell so flat -- there were a couple of moments in which I actually physically cringed.  There were a few lines I liked, but overall I just didn't buy into the humor at all.

The last thing that didn't work for me makes me the most angry.  This was the plot versus exposition balance.  Essentially, what plot?  I got 32% into this book, that's about 100 pages.  By that point the plot should be well underway.  Instead we had maybe a couple pages of plot and background story for our main characters and pages upon pages of nonsense about alien species.  This book committed one of the worst crimes in science fiction and fantasy: the dreaded info dump.  Mostly in that the entire book was a massive, unnecessary info dump.  The world building is ambitious, and I give her a lot of credit for that, but she seemed to be much more interested in creating zany alien species and showing off how smart she was than giving us the glorious Eurovision-in-space book that we were promised.

Guys, I wanted to love Space Opera so badly and it's pretty obvious that I was let down.  What had the potential to be a ridiculously fun rock and roll romp through space was a massive flop.  Of course, my issues with the book stem from the fact that I just didn't mesh well with her style at all.  Most reviewers seem to be raving about this book, so I encourage you to pick it up if you're curious.  I think this book with either click with you or wont -- there doesn't seem to be much middle ground here.

I am… not entirely sure what I just read, but I enjoyed it wholeheartedly. When I read the blurb and saw ‘Eurovision meets Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ I was hooked, and I’m pretty much the target audience for this book. I mean, come on. Eurovision in space. How could I not?

And that’s exactly what I got - a crazy, dream-like rollercoaster of a book that whipped me around the dips and hills of a washed up glam-rocker and his one remaining band member as they try to create something that will help them save all of humanity. With glitter.

So let me back up a bit, and give you a bit of context.

One day in the near future, as everyone across the world is minding their own business, an alien appears. Just one alien, but it appears to everyone simultaneously, in person or in dreams, and says that they are close enough to the greater galactic stage than ever before, both literally and figuratively. After studying humans, the various species in the galaxy have decided it’s their turn to sing at the Metagalactic Grand Prix, “part gladiatorial contest, part beauty pageant, part concert extravaganza, and part continuation of wars of the past”, and sing for their lives. Ages of war and destruction have led to this, when several different species basically opined - well, this fighting thing isn’t working, so let’s have it be a dance battle instead.

The alien (a “seven-foot-tall ultramarine half-flamingo, half-anglerfish thing” who pulls its voice out of your happiest memories) explains that in order for humans to be allowed to continue as a species, they will need to participate and not come in last. They even provide a list of recommended participants to represent the human race! Unfortunately, almost everyone on the list is dead. The only one left is Decibel Jones (formerly Danesh of London), inventor of the “electro-funk glamgrind genre.” And no, I don’t really know what that is either, but I’m imagining David Bowie during his Ziggy Stardust era mixed with Slayer or Metallica and a side order of Jem and the Holograms.

So the world is left with the washed-up Decibel Jones to represent them to the rest of the galaxy, with the only caveat that they don’t come in last in the competition. Coming in anything other than last keeps humanity going, and coming in last will see the human race euthanized mostly painlessly, and, with the Earth clean for the remainder of the creatures living there, room will be made for another possible sentient species at some unknown future date. After viewing some of the past performances, though, Decibel and his bandmate, Oort St. Ultraviolet (more commonly known as Omar Caliskan), are basically hopeless. After all, previous participants have literally set themselves on fire in an exultation of emotion and ecstasy. Not a very good option for a human. We’re pretty fragile.

The story follows Decibel and Omar as they try to come up with something, meet their competitors, and fight with song and glitter to try to save humanity. Oh, and Omar’s cat that now speaks English. The alien thought it was doing something nice!

I will say the writing is not for everyone. Here, let me share some examples:

The story of the galaxy is the story of a single person in it. A cover version, overproduced, remastered, with the volume cranked up way past eleven and into the infinite.

***

Compared to [cats], humans are joyful rose bushes bouncing through the stars. If you ever stopped napping long enough to escape the Earth, you would sweep across this galaxy like nothing before, an endless wave of carnage. You would hunt our worlds one by one and ruin everything we’ve built. Only your laziness protects us.

***

Where there’s a wang, there’s a way. (As Decibel is...exploring options with a couple aliens)

***

You can’t stop people being assholes. They do love it so. The best you can hope for is that some people, sometimes, will turn out to be somewhat less than the absolute worst.

And the entire book is written like this, a jumble of images and metaphors and pop culture references to unravel. I loved it, but at times it’s like trying to read while on medication without my glasses from across the room. It’s definitely a trip, just not one everyone will enjoy.

But it’s just all so much fun! Even when there is no hope for the future of humanity, the glitter-filled ride is so simultaneously upbeat and yet somehow still realistically fatalistic that I was completely hooked. There’s no sign of this becoming a series, but now I need to go and read the author’s other books, starting with The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making. See you once I catch up with the rest of her work.

Buy it at: Amazon/Barnes & Noble/iBooks/Kobo

This was crazypants weird--and that's why it worked. I've always loved whatever I pick up from Ms. Valente, and this book is no exception.

4.5 Stars

"Compared to you, humans are joyful rosebushes bouncing through the stars. If you ever stop napping long enough to escape the Earth, you would sweep across this galaxy like nothing before, an endless wave of carnage." (Elakhi to Capo, Oort's rather thankfully lazy cat.)

I love Cat Valente. I love her love of words, her writing, her narration, her Twitter, her Patreon, her recipes (YUM!), and her ethos. Thus, it should come as no surprise that I love this book.

Space Opera is being touted as a mashup of Eurovision and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and that does capture the general feeling. Decibel Jones and former bandmate Oort St. Ultraviolet (he of the Absolute Zeros) are just sleeping off a hangover and a failed marriage when an alien presence that I'll just call Roadrunner arrives to explain the fate of earth hangs in the balance and well, they better get on with it and do something about it. Well, actually the whole planet gets the message but it appears that Decibel Jones and the remaining Absolute Zero are going to be the ones to safeguard Earth's standing and help us avoid binning and a planetary reboot. The way to save the earth is rather simple- just don't lose in the intergalactic competition that's the equivalent of Eurovision. Perform well enough to convince everyone that you're really sentient. Don't come in dead last or... you'll be dead.

At the heart of this book, we can question just how sentient the human race is. And how (or not) enlightened they are. And who else is sentient here on our wooly blue planet? Have we been wiping out some of our fellow sentients? And I'm not talking about the rhinos and elephants and lions. What about Aborigines and indigenous people and what the hell with ethnic cleansing?

But all that serious business is couched in a book that is a fun read moving along, if not at the speed of light, fast enough to keep the reader engaged and rooting for Dess and Oort. I know that readers new to Cat Valente's style are sometimes overwhelmed by her dense style of writing, which presses her love of words firmly toward the reader. The exuberance of the style is well suited to this subject matter, however. BECAUSE THERE'S A PLANET TO SAVE, assuming of course that it's worthy of saving. It's a book ripe for reading aloud or listening to Heath Miller's narration on audiobook. Just like the craziness of Hitchhiker's Guide, I loved it. Life may be beautiful, stupid and complicated (no 42 here, sorry) but singing and dancing can certainly only help make things better.

Space Opera is the kind of book you’d get if you threw Eurovision, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and a book of adjectives in a blender and pulsed it around a bit.

Let me preface this review. I have never read anything by Cat Valente before, other than a short story here and there when included in an anthology.

That being said, I felt like the writing got in the way of the story. Valente constructs sentences that are 90% adjective and 10% content. A full half of this book is adjectives. Space Opera is an absolute avalanche of adjectives. It was fairly overwhelming and I often found myself having to reread sentences, skipping the endless stream of adjectives, in order to find The Point of the sentence. A friend told me this is how Valente writes. She just loves words. That may be true, but the nonstop barrage of descriptors was overwhelming and distracting and took away from the overall story. The lists of adjectives did add a frantic energy to the story, but after a few pages of this, it was Too Much. Too many descriptions, too much fluff, and not enough actual content. Very often I found myself frustrated because Would She Just Get To The Point Of This Sentence Already.

Additionally, parts of the book were told in a parallel story structure where Valente would start a chapter with a description of something on another planet at another time that had little actual relevance to the plot. The book felt super episodic, but not in a good way.

Those frustrations aside (and if you like that kind of thing) Space Opera was a fun ride. All the glitter and pomp of a Galactic Eurovision and all of the ridiculousness of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy birthed a book as silly, sparkly, absurd and sweet as you’d expect from that kind of combination. Decibel and Oort are lovely, heartfelt characters that are just the kind of introspective you’d expect from former British rockstars. They’re charming, even when they’re not trying to be and I found myself rooting for them, even without the extra pressure of them being responsible for the survival of all of humanity. I loved that the alien species were varied and inventive and were all distinct from one another and from humanity.

I also enjoyed the exploration of what it means to be sentient. It’s something that we as a species wrestle with more and more frequently as we discover just how intelligent dolphins, elephants and other species truly are. At what point is something sentient? Where is the line between intelligence and actual, true sentience?

You should definitely check Space Opera out if you’re looking for something fun to read.