On the HahaFiction shelf
Space Opera
The Space Opera · Book 1 · 2018
Audiobook available
Humanity's first meeting with the wider galaxy comes with an audition. To count as sentient and avoid extermination, Earth must send musicians to a galactic song contest and finish anywhere above last place. The job falls to Decibel Jones and Oort St. Ultraviolet, surviving members of a glam-rock band whose brief fame is long behind them.
From the publisher’s blurb
“Mankind will not get to fight for its destiny—they must sing.”Read the full description at Saga Press publisher description
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What makes it funny?
The aliens' shortlist of suitable musicians is mostly dead, leaving humanity with a reunion act. The narrator is just as extravagant as the contest: the opening's discussion of life in the universe finds room for telekinetic mushroom people and a civilization of sentient gases all called Ursula. Book-group readers report smiling from the first line and recommend it for funny fiction outside romance.
The comedy at work
Valente treats a song contest as a test of a species' right to exist. Under the glitter is a quarrel about who gets recognized as a person. The narrator makes that grand dispute petty and familiar, describing galactic war like a household argument.
Try this if…
Glam rock, Eurovision-like excess and fanciful aliens give this its appeal. Readers who enjoy a talkative narrator with room for strange side trips have more to follow than the band's progress toward its performance.
Good to know
The prose takes frequent detours; Publishers Weekly found those tangents could make the reading chaotic, while Kirkus considered the plot slight. Extinction threats and grief over a dead bandmate sit alongside the spectacle. This begins The Space Opera series.
A few distinguishing details
- A song contest with extinction for last place
- Washed-up glam rockers representing Earth
More funny first contact & aliens
Sources & further reading
- Space Opera — Simon & Schuster
Publisher
- Space Opera — San Francisco Public Library
Library catalog
- Kirkus review
Review
- Publishers Weekly review
Review
- Publisher and excerpt
Publisher
- Reader discussion
Reader discussion
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