Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente

Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente

Rating: 4/5, good

When this was published last year (2018), it took the Twitter world by storm. It seemed like everybody was posting about it, but I didn’t buy it when it first came out because the premise didn’t appeal to me. It’s a scifi novel about some Earthlings who get abducted by aliens and are forced to compete in a singing contest. I’d seen this plot before in the Jimmy Neutron movie, so I wasn’t sure if it would be too cartoony for a novel. It is in fact very cartoony, but it’s also got a lot of good queer representation, interesting scifi ideas, alien races, and glam rock craziness.

Our protagonist, Danesh Jalo (aka Decibel Jones), is a down-on-his luck former rock star. His band, Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeros, has dissolved and Dess has dissipated into alcoholism and nostalgia. This all changes when an alien that resembles the Road Runner from Dess’s childhood cartoons appears in his living room, reads his memories, and tells him he (well, his old band) has been chosen to represent Earth in a song contest. If they win, they prove that humans are sentient enough to earn a seat at the intergalactic table. If they lose… well, let’s just say there will be an EARTH-SHATTERING KABOOM!

The inspiration for this novel comes from the Eurovision song contest, so if you’ve never seen it it’s worth watching a couple Eurovision songs on Youtube to get the gist before reading this. I had never heard of Eurovision before and only looked it up after reading, but basically it seems to be a lot of pageantry and weirdness, where making waves and gaining attention is the goal.

Danesh Jalo is a mix of elements from Prince, Freddy Mercury, and David Bowie. He’s genderqueer and pansexual and born in the UK to a Pakistani-Nigerian dad and a Welsh-Swedish mom. He was raised by his grandma, and there’s a funny segment of her lecturing him about why Looney Tunes is better than the Alien franchise:

“Jee han, but they are the same! One hunts, one runs; one chews the carrot, one chews the Sir John Hurt. One makes eggs that go BANG! One makes Acme traps that go BANG! See? Sameful. Only Mr. Looney of the Tunes is more actual, on account of how aliens live in your big Danesh-head and bunny rabbits live in Coventry. Also, mine is bright and happy and makes a colorful noise, so I put it on top of yours that is droopy and leaky and makes a noise like the dishwasher. Double also, if aliens were real like bunny rabbits and talkbacking grandsons, they would never be so ugly, because God would not allow such a one to get to the stars when beautiful people are being stuck on Blackpool. I am right, I win, point to Nani.”

The other bandmates, Mira Wonderful Star and Oort St. Ultraviolet, are also POC and genderqueer, so it’s a pretty diverse cast of characters. Mira is Jewish-Japanese and Oort is a Turkish refugee. There’s a lot of social commentary from a left/liberal perspective in this book and honestly it can get a little repetitive and strident at times, but at others it’s poignant and insightful.

The beginning and the end are really entertaining, but this book sags hard in the middle as Dess and Oort are traveling to Litost to compete and Valente is describing all the alien races, their planets, and their histories. The information is really interesting, but the plot just stops for a pretty long time.

Somewhat predictably (if you know me), my favorite alien species is the Elakhon. They’re small, dense, black, big-eyed, big-headed people who live on the planet Sagrada, which is a pitch-black desert planet. Valente writes, “Sagrada is a study in darkness, an adoringly monogamous commitment to the gothic aesthetic.” Because Sagrada is such a visual black hole, other alien races dump important secrets there, and the Elakhon have become the accidental archivists of the universe and use the dirt they have on other aliens to keep them in line.

There are a lot of ideas in this book that I like but I’m not crazy about the writing style. It’s like Douglas Adams, but it feels more hyper and fluffy. It’s alright and it’s funny sometimes, but it’s tiring to read a whole book’s worth of run-on sentences of extended descriptions and clever metaphors.

In sum, I liked it, but I don’t think I’d recommend it to that many people, but those would include: superfans of Douglas Adams, admirers of glam rock, people who want to see more queer/POC representation, and those with a high tolerance for liberal soapboxing.