Space Opera (udgave 2018)

This is a comedic sci-fi book inspired by Douglas Adams's "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy." Its protagonist is "a leggy psychelic ambidextrous omnisexual gendersplat glitterpunch financially punch-drunk ethnically ambitious glamrock messiah by the name of Danesh Jalo." He and his former bandmate are forced to represent the human race in an intergalactic singing competition. And if they place last, humanity will be exterminated for not being sentient enough.

This book describes alien races with zany, imaginative humor. My favorite is the Voorpret, a zombie plague that is given full rights as a sentient species because their shambling corpses actually have a gentrifying effect on nearby planets.

The singing competition has the glamorous atmosphere of American Idol and Eurovision Song Contest. (Each chapter is named after a Eurovision song.) I enjoyed reading about how the competition came to be and how previous years' competitions (before humanity's entrance) went. But in one phase of the competition, the "semi-finals," it's legal for competitors to incapacitate or even murder each other. That just seems wrong and I wasn't a fan of it.

Some parts of the book read like a rock travelogue and others feature interesting discussions on what makes a species sentient. But, like the Hitchhiker sequels, this book has a tendency to add layer upon layer of wackiness at the expense of stronger characters and themes.

The audiobook narrator sounds like Eric Idle and enunciates with great clarity. He lends much personality to the diverse characters and even sings the occasional verse. But the prose is still hard to follow because of its long chains of adjectives and analogies. ( )

Nachdem ich die Inhaltsangabe zu Space Opera gelesen hatte, wollte ich (als großer ESC-Fan) das Buch unbedingt lesen. Obwohl die Geschichte genial und die Charaktere schrill sind, hat mich die Umsetzung ermüdet.

Catherynne M. Valente (ist das ein Künstlername? Ich sage nur Caterina Valente...) schreibt witzig, aber leider viel zu abschweifend. Die eigentliche Geschichte ist streng genommen nur wenige Seite lang, der Rest erzählt diverse andere Dinge - und leider wäre ich viel lieber bei der ESC-im-All-Story geblieben. Dazu kommen unfassbar lange Sätze, die teilweise über die Hälfte der Buchseite gehen. Ein-/zweimal ist das ja ok, aber ständig ist nervig. Dadurch habe ich auch schon recht schnell die Lust am Buch verloren. Lediglich die Tatsache, dass ich den ESC auch sehr mag, hat mich am Ball bleiben und das Buch beenden lassen. Das ist wirklich bedauerlich, da ich die schrägen Figuren und Ideen großartig fand. Aber die langen, abschweifenden Sätze haben mich einfach immer wieder den Faden verlieren lassen.

Fazit: Zu ausschweifend, zu viele zu lange Sätze - aber die Idee ist klasse! Für die große ESC-Liebe der Autorin gibt es einen Extra-Punkt und somit 3/5 Punkten. ( )

I liked the characters and the plot was interesting when it cared to show up, but this was a 100-120 page novella expanded to nearly 300 pages through unnecessary exposition. Every other chapter in the first 2/3 of the book was dedicated to the history of some alien or another and didn't further, or have anything to do with, the plot at all. Once I realized after slogging through a few of these chapters (some are 10 pages long!) that they in no way related to the current story, I ended up skipping them. Thankfully, the last 1/3 of the novel didn't have any of these extraneous chapters and just got on with the plot. I quite enjoyed it then. ( )

Well. I liked it, it's super imaginative, and the general idea of it is delightful: the human race will be destroyed unless it does well in an intergalactic Eurovision, and the lead singer is David Bowie crossed with Freddie Mercury as brought to life by Douglas Adams. Catchy. But, and I have to say, what has thrown me off is that there are sentences in this book that go on for a half page, and are then immediately followed by another such sentence. This happens a lot. It's exhausting. In short, I can see why it was nominated for the Hugo, and I can also see why it didn't win. YMMV. ( )

This was nominated for the Hugo Award in 2019. Its genesis is simple, and explained by the author in an afterword. A US genre author discovered the Eurovision Song Contest and was much taken with it. A fellow author persuaded them to use it in a science fiction novel. There are many reasons why this is a bad idea. The US does not compete in Eurovision. People in the US have no idea what Eurovision means… and it means different things to different countries. In the UK, it is considered somewhat risible, with a side-order of resentment. In Sweden, there is a month-long televised Melodifest merely to pick the song to represent the country. Valente decided to appropriate Eurovision for a US audience and base it all on The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. She failed. Not only are the references a weird mishmash of UK and US that make no sense, embedding UK cultural elements in US cultural movements, but the whole thing is a litany of megaviolence and genocide from start to finish… While Eurovision was indeed created to help rebuild links between the war-torn nations of Europe after WWII, it does not celebrate the death and destruction which occurred between 1939 and 1945. Nor does it boast of the weaponry, tactics or bodycounts of the various competing nations. Valente also chose to model her prose on The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I am not, I admit, a great fan of Adams’s novels, although I’ve read them and, when I was young, enjoyed them. But Adam’s books at least contained ideas and riffed off them. Valente’s does not. Adams’s jokes were carefully set up, and then left quickly behind, to crop up again when least expected. Valente belabours her jokes, sometimes with almost Fanthorpe levels of repetition. You end up skipping pages, trying to find the narrative. To be fair, I tried reading a Valente novel once before, Palimpsest, and ended up throwing it against the wall because it was so overwritten. And I admire Lawrence Durrell’s prose! I managed to finish Space Opera, but it was a slog. I can only recommend people avoid it. Especially if they’re fans of Eurovision. ( )