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subplotkudzu 's review for:
Space Opera
by Catherynne M. Valente
The most common thing you will see said about this book is the elevator pitch - it's Douglas Adams does Eurovision. And that's true, as far as it goes. But the book is so much more than that.
In Adams' classic Hitchiker's series, Earth is destroyed and humanity's remnants bounce around an incomprehensible galaxy where technology and cool have outstripped common sense. The humor comes from watching staid, ordinary, Englishblokeman Arthur Dent discover that nothing the staid, ordinary English Bloke valued and took for granted mattered in the galaxy, and that the from-his-perspective vacuous confusion of late 1970's/early 1980's California was the galactic norm. When Arthur eventually learns the heartening truth that humanity was not completely insignificant it is undercut again and again by realizations of what humanity actually was. There is a deep cynicism behind the humor.
Valente's _Space Opera_ is superficially similar in that while humanity makes contact with the vast incomprehensible galactic society it's destruction isn't in the past tense, but a possible outcome. It is built around hope. Humanity has a chance. And while the reader's first contact with the method by which humanity has a chance marks it as completely absurd, Valente carefully builds out a world in which having to compete in an intergalactic music competition to prove we are sentient starts to make more and more sense under its own terms. Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeroes aren't wandering around in perpetual shock and bemoaning the inability to get a good cup of tea, they are engaging and striving. They have hope.
It is superficially similar in that _Space Opera_ keeps forcing the reader to see where humanity has failed and is failing, just as Adams displayed our absurdity and the galaxy's indifference to us repeatedly, but it does so not with coolly distanced irony but with heartfelt compassion. Valente shows us where we are monsters, and with passion begs us to be better than that. This is not a book with an emotional distance. It is not something you can love ironically. You have to love it wholeheartedly, as it quietly sets up and then delivers secrets and truths that leave the reader sobbing between the laughter and the cheering.
It is superficially similar in the use of Adams (and Pratchett) style throwaway observations on galactic history, technology, sex, culture and anything else that might get a laugh or a bemused sense of wonder. But be careful, because more than one of those throwaway bits will come back to surprise you later. The text is so light and breezy that it seems to be encouraging you to skim, but that's just to get your guard down before striking hard at your sense of humor and your heart as you realize that there is no other way the ending could have played out.
So yes, while everyone can (and, to lure in readers, should) make the comparisons to _Hitchhiker's_, that is a book that lurks by the bar, nursing a pint and making wry observations to its mates about the people on the dance floor. _Space Opera_ is the person on the dance floor, dressed to the nines in their own iconoclastic style, singing and dancing their damn fool heart out to the mix of Bowie and Queen cover songs.
This is not the age for ironic detachment. Let _Space Opera_ drag you onto the dance floor, and scream and laugh and weep your damn fool heart out.
In Adams' classic Hitchiker's series, Earth is destroyed and humanity's remnants bounce around an incomprehensible galaxy where technology and cool have outstripped common sense. The humor comes from watching staid, ordinary, Englishblokeman Arthur Dent discover that nothing the staid, ordinary English Bloke valued and took for granted mattered in the galaxy, and that the from-his-perspective vacuous confusion of late 1970's/early 1980's California was the galactic norm. When Arthur eventually learns the heartening truth that humanity was not completely insignificant it is undercut again and again by realizations of what humanity actually was. There is a deep cynicism behind the humor.
Valente's _Space Opera_ is superficially similar in that while humanity makes contact with the vast incomprehensible galactic society it's destruction isn't in the past tense, but a possible outcome. It is built around hope. Humanity has a chance. And while the reader's first contact with the method by which humanity has a chance marks it as completely absurd, Valente carefully builds out a world in which having to compete in an intergalactic music competition to prove we are sentient starts to make more and more sense under its own terms. Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeroes aren't wandering around in perpetual shock and bemoaning the inability to get a good cup of tea, they are engaging and striving. They have hope.
It is superficially similar in that _Space Opera_ keeps forcing the reader to see where humanity has failed and is failing, just as Adams displayed our absurdity and the galaxy's indifference to us repeatedly, but it does so not with coolly distanced irony but with heartfelt compassion. Valente shows us where we are monsters, and with passion begs us to be better than that. This is not a book with an emotional distance. It is not something you can love ironically. You have to love it wholeheartedly, as it quietly sets up and then delivers secrets and truths that leave the reader sobbing between the laughter and the cheering.
It is superficially similar in the use of Adams (and Pratchett) style throwaway observations on galactic history, technology, sex, culture and anything else that might get a laugh or a bemused sense of wonder. But be careful, because more than one of those throwaway bits will come back to surprise you later. The text is so light and breezy that it seems to be encouraging you to skim, but that's just to get your guard down before striking hard at your sense of humor and your heart as you realize that there is no other way the ending could have played out.
So yes, while everyone can (and, to lure in readers, should) make the comparisons to _Hitchhiker's_, that is a book that lurks by the bar, nursing a pint and making wry observations to its mates about the people on the dance floor. _Space Opera_ is the person on the dance floor, dressed to the nines in their own iconoclastic style, singing and dancing their damn fool heart out to the mix of Bowie and Queen cover songs.
This is not the age for ironic detachment. Let _Space Opera_ drag you onto the dance floor, and scream and laugh and weep your damn fool heart out.