Catherynne Valente’s Space Opera combines a love of popular music, Eurovision and a space science fiction sensibility in the grand tradition set by novels like The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeroes were once THE punk band in music. But a death, a breakup, a failed career as a soloist, and Decibel Jones’ post Absolute Zero career is in the toilet. Pity that now that the aliens have arrived, Decibel Jones is the last hope for humanity. The aliens have a test, you see, to determine if a species is worthy of joining the galactic family, or should be blasted into oblivion—whether they can perform decently at the Metagalactic Grand Prix, a song and performance contest that the galactic civilizations put on every year as a way to channel energies that once caused the galaxy to erupt in interstellar war.
Earth doesn’t have to win the contest, only escape last place. But given Decibel Jones and Oort St. Ultraviolet haven’t spoken in years, and the competition out there doesn’t particularly *want* humanity to survive, it will take a miracle of music for Earth to survive the Grand Prix.
This is the world of Catherynne Valente’s Space Opera.
This is a book that on the surface was probably not for me, but I enjoyed it anyway. This is a strange lede for sure, but let me explain. I am relatively ignorant of popular music. There are a few bands I like, but they are awfully scattershot in time and space. I mean, I like the Beatles, some prog rock, Electric Light Orchestra, and a few others. I unironically like “We Built this City” and a couple of Coldplay songs, but a lot of musical references go right over my head. In fact, nearly all of them do.
This is where I was weakest when it comes to Space Opera. I could see and sense the jokes and references to a wide swath of music. There were allusions, puns and references aplenty that washed by, providing extra levity and humor and context to the book. And I could sense that they were clearly meant to be that, too. The problem is, I couldn’t fathom them to save my life, since I had no solid base knowledge from which to draw on. The chapter titles for example, seem to be in this category and given that the main character is a musician and the music-themed focus of the book, there’s plenty more where that came from.
A second major strain in the book is the annual Eurovision song contest, which forms the central conceit of the book: “Aliens hold Eurovision every year and Earth is invited to participate for the first time.” I know what Eurovision is from youtube clips and very enthusiastic fans tweeting about it. I know the basics and that’s about it. I only recently discovered a probably very well known fun fact that the ABBA song “Waterloo” started life as a Swedish Eurovision entry. There is probably a lot of the inside baseball Eurovision stuff that gets referenced and transmogrified that lots of people who know a little more about Eurovision knows, but I do not.
So I missed a lot of the inherent humor of the book. However, there is a strand of the book, the third in the tripod of things that Valente has brought together to create her Space Opera universe, and that is something I do know a little about and that is the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I consumed the tv show back in the ’80s and was swept away by it, and let all and sundry know. A fellow high school student who also liked it memorably signed my yearbook with “I am partying with Vogons tonight!” I’ve consumed the show, the videogame, the novel, the radio play and the movie, finding joy and happiness in the absurdist sort of world that Adams created. Does it have a strict sense of good worldbuilding that makes sense? No, of course not. But it strikes to the truth of daily life, transported from the mundane to the galactic that translates and feels like “Yeah, this is the way life really is, this is how it would go.”
There is an element of this in Patrick Tomlinson’s recent first-contact novel Gate Crashers, where the absurdist form of how the first contact goes parallels and tracks with larger than life characters and a colorful if not dead-on scientifically plausible set of worlds and how things work. Space Opera is much more influenced by Adams than Tomlinson in the construction of her universe, and makes no bones about it. The opening words of the novel sound like they should be narrated by Doug Jones doing the voice of the titular HHGTG book:
“Once upon a time on a small, watery, excitable planet called Earth, in a small watery excitable country called Italy, a soft-spoken, rather nice-looking gentleman by the name of Enrico Fermi was born into a family so overprotective that he felt compelled to invent the atomic bomb.”
The novel, when it isn’t diving deep into music, or Eurovision, is steeped in this kind of humor and writing. Reading novels is all about timing, and when you read a novel, and what media you have consumed, can have an enormous impact on your experience that has an enormous impact on a book, independent of its base quality.
So it was with Space Opera. The lack of knowledge of popular music and my relative ignorance of Eurovision made me feel rather stupid and unqualified in some senses to enjoy this book to its fullest. I would have had a perhaps unfairly negative reaction to this book except for the fact that I AM immersed enough in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. I could see the style notes and the feel that Valente took from that universe, and was able to ride on it. The galactic society, the aliens, and the ethos of the novel all derive from a universe very much in tune with that book. I was able to ride that into delving into the plot and characters of the novel.
That said, with HHGTG as my keystone, I found Space Opera to be a fun, wild entertaining ride that never takes itself too seriously, and consistently goes forward to entertain. It is not a world changing book in the sense of being a serious book to extend the “genre conversation” but rather a light and entertaining book that tells the story of Earth’s first contact with aliens through the lens of a galactic Eurovision contest, replete with references to popular music and Eurovision, with the HHGTG sensibility. I consumed the book as an audiobook, and was thus transported and entertained by Valente’s writing, characters and sense of fun and entertainment. This is definitely a “road trip” sort of audiobook to eat up the miles entertainingly.
If you have any interest in SF and Eurovision and popular music, this book was made for you. If you do not, but have any interest in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy style space adventure, and are willing to enjoy popular music and Eurovision, this book, like for me, can take center stage and entertain you.
