Douglas Adams Dons Sequins: A Space Opera Review

I don't recall purchasing this book. I don't even recall picking it up and starting it. This is likely because I bought it within about ten seconds of reading the summary, and started reading it about five seconds after that. Before I'd realised what was happening to me I was already several pages in.

Because what a summary it was.

Space Opera [Catherynne M. Valente] is the story of Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeros, a trio who were basically Queen meets the The Mighty Boosh for about five minutes - before one of them literally crashed-and-burned in their car and the other two stumbled into their 'has-been' era. When aliens make contact, Earth discovers that the galaxy has been nearly destroyed by a war and that an interplanetary song contest is the way all new species are invited to prove their own sentience. Or else.

With humanity destined to be wiped out if they get the dreaded nil points, the contact team helpfully provides a list of artists who might meet the standards of the galaxy music scene. Unfortunately Yoko Ono is dead, and Bjork has lost their voice, so it's up to Decibel (real name Danesh) and his remaining band-member Oort to re-unite and save earth.

With a British band representing Earth, there's genuine tension for anyone familiar with Britain's usual Eurovision performance. Getting above nil isn't a guarantee, even on a good year. Getting above nil when you have to represent all sentience on earth and only have one mouth to sing with is trickier still.

It's Eurovision in Space. It doesn't hide that for a moment, with the book split into parts for no reason other than to have a title page solemnly quoting Lordi and Conchita Wurst lyrics. Chapter titles are familiar to any fan, referencing both recognisable and deep-cut Eurovision hits - Boom Bang-a-Bang, Everyway That I Can, Party for Everybody, Euphoria, etc.

It's also a love letter to Douglas Adams.

Now, I don't dislike Douglas Adams' books, but they never embedded in my mind as they did for so many other fans. Adams' stories always felt like a forced route-march from joke-to-joke with little to fall back on if you didn't find that brand of comedy hilarious. It's like Monty Python; sure, it changed the landscape forever and is undoubtedly genius, but some of it boils down to 'you had to be there'. I read them, I laughed, I moved on.

Space Opera wants to be Douglas Adams bad. It's feverish with it from page one. Remind you of anything? Remind you of anyone? Tell me I'm like Douglas Adams! Please! Tell your friends! It's there in the Red Panda timelord, the talking cat, the spaceship powered by paradox (specifically a bonking couple - a time-traveller busy becoming his own grandfather). It's so oppressive at times that it actually detracted from my enjoyment as I sought to extract the real author's voice from the loving imitation.

It's a shame, because in it's fervid desire to be Douglas Adams material, the book spends far too much time inventing bonkers alien histories and sci-fi concepts and not enough time with its main characters. I'm not going to remember twenty different aliens when my accumulated knowledge about the main characters covers less than a page. The stories are funny and the aliens are properly, properly alien, but it often feels like the awkward video clips that play before each Eurovision song instead of the main performance.

If you like Douglas Adams, you'll have a good time. I did. I just wanted it to take the occasional break from Douglas Adams. This didn't stop me highlighting page after page of funny, clever and insightful lines, or screenshotting whole sections in a desire to spread the brilliance of it to every corner of the internet. 

I was also nervous that, like Eurovision itself, it was staying a little too neutral. Decibel's sexuality is seemingly treated as a whimsical artistic identity - like Bowie or Noel Fielding in The Mighty Boosh - rather than using terms or acknowledging it. It feels like the book is saying that we should be all above worrying about who wants what and what squishy parts fit where... which is always an easy way for heteronormative people to be cool with the queers without having to deal with anything even slightly gay. Even when Decibel has an alien threesome it's comedically unsexual.

On this subject, the book eventually won me over, delivering a gut-punch ending to a story-thread I had more-or-less dismissed. The death of former bandmate Mira is a constant theme, with her proposal to Decibel and his shocked, selfish laughter spurring her into a drugged drive that cost her her life. The reveal that the sudden rise of a far-right party led to her panicked suggestion to protect themselves with a heterosexual marriage was an unexpectedly brutal twist. Especially when Decibel's laughter was the panicked confusion of someone dealing with an unexpected proposal whilst trying to get hold of their grandma - who is literally in a 'relocation camp'.

The jingoistic tension is present early on, but hidden behind light parody. When various agencies try to bring the band-members in after the news breaks, it leads to MI5 and MI6 squabbling in the car park with the United Nations ('piss off and we'll give you a call if aliens come looking for Taylor Swift').

Bandmate Oort's determination to pass as an ordinary English Blokeman seems - at first - like a normal path for someone with a wild reputation they want to put behind them and a family they need to provide for. But it's specifically mentioned that 'English Blokeman never gets stopped by authorities'. The 'Britishness' of the band is a constant theme, with Brits both pleased that their nation had the chosen band, and miffed that the British band chosen to represent Earth aren't actually British-born (or rather, not totally white).

For those threads to come together into something dark, almost dystopian, in less than one page was a brilliant trick. 

We're also roasted a second time over for our specific Eurovision crimes, as the clear inspiration for the species continually voted down for being absolute shits. Their fortunate natural resources made them early colonisers and their smug insistence of their own cultural and musical superiority just asks for all the other species to put them in the place. As a Brit I say roast away. We deserve it.

The book's thesis is that lots of species can talk, and use tools, and solve puzzles, and be self aware. They can even dance. But it takes true sentience to put on a show for your former allies/neighbours/enemies and allow yourself to be judged - especially after years of questioning each other's humanity via the application of bombs and troops. 

For all that it's a love letter to Adams, this book's true passion is Eurovision's mission - a post WW2 attempt at peace-making via a more human method than treaties. It's a yearly reminder that our neighbours aren't just places on a map, but huge masses of ordinary people who, in their many languages, like turning to their partner and saying 'ooh... she totally stuffed up that key change.' 

For a few hours every year we all stop being foreigners to each other, united in our bewildered reaction at whatever feathery, neon chaos is happening on stage and our squabbles over what does-or-does-not constitute a bop. 

There are worse ways to run a galaxy.