Space Oddity by Catherynne M. Valente

Eurovision 2025 is coming up in not quite three weeks, and I’ll be watching it, though I hadn’t given it much (if any) thought until I looked up the date just now. I watched in 2024 and amused myself on social media, cackling along with fellow commenters, but the truth is that I was still salty about how Finland had been point-blank robbed by jury voters the year before. See, 2024 was the 50th anniversary of ABBA’s winning the contest, which is probably the biggest thing that has ever happened to Eurovision, certainly the biggest career ever to get a boost from a win. The fix was in for Sweden to win in 2023 so that they could host for the big anniversary the following year. The national juries, who provide half the votes of the contest, duly obliged, giving a forgettable if competent song an insurmountable lead. The other half of the votes come from the viewing public, and they clearly favored the delightful, infectious and more than a little nutty song from Finland, “Cha Cha Cha.” They favored it so much that when the jury points were being awarded, the audience in the performance hall often drowned out the presenters with chants of “Cha Cha-Cha Cha-Cha Cha Cha” to the point that the television moderators were scolding them. The enthusiasm for the fun from Finland was not to be dampened. For the official contest, though, the machinations mattered more than the public preference. As in Space Opera, this volume’s predecessor.

I’ve wandered a bit from the main topic because Space Oddity does, too. Space Opera was easy to explain: Eurovision in space. Well, Eurovision in spaaaaaaaace, because a book about such an over-the-top event has something to live up to. Why is there something like Eurovision in space? The universe is full of life and teeming with intelligences, many of which developed the means to travel between the stars and then duly set out trying to make vast swathes their exclusive property. If that conflicted with the plans of other species, too bad, so sad. Relentless war had a lot of drawbacks, and eventually the remaining species decided to settle their differences with song. When a sentient species is deemed advanced enough to potentially join the interstellar community, said community announces itself and invites the newcomers to participate in the Metagalactic Grand Prix. The catch, though, is that if the new species places last in the competition, the rest of the galaxy will wipe it out and invite that planet’s evolutionary processes to try again in however many orbital periods. Earth’s turn comes in Space Opera, and humanity is represented by a has-been British glam band called Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeroes. They are past their prime not least because one of the three members is dead and the other two have not been on speaking terms for years. The galactic community does not care in the slightest. Sing or get squashed.

To make a book-length story short, Dess Jones and Oort St. Ultraviolet sort themselves out, deal with the absence of Mira Wonderful Star, and perform well enough that the galactic community does not end human history most abruptly. On page 7 of Space Oddity, Valente neatly sums up their, and her, dilemma:

Yes, yes, of course Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeroes saved the world.
But what have they done for us lately?

This is a book about what someone does after they have done the unquestionably biggest thing that they will ever do with their life. Space Oddity follows Dess Jones because he and Oort could get it together and tolerate each other’s presence for long enough to save the earth, but no longer. Mira turned up, much to my surprise, having been “freshly scooped from the timestream by an interdimensional red panda named Öö.” (p. 30) Oort turned down the “Contractually Obligated Publicity & Interstellar Diplomacy Tour” (p. 29) by saying, “No, I don’t think so, with such plainspoken finality that the [Galactic Broadcast Union] handlers simply wandered off, deeply confused about what they’d been doing with their lives to date and how to fix it now.” (p. 31)

Space Oddity is a picaresque of an interstellar press tour, full of oddities. The other species find humans almost unspeakably odd because making contact with a weird universe does not lead to a collective breakdown, unlike pretty much every other species subjected to introduction by Grand Prix. On the other hand, out usual behavior is not too far from what the galactic community considers a breakdown, so maybe it’s a bit of a wash.

Spending time with Mira, even under the circumstances of not-quite-death allows her and Dess to conversationally wander up and down the timelines of their lives, reflecting on what was, what went wrong, what might have been, and what the hell happens next. I missed Oort a bit in these parts, but he had a great exit line, and Valente knows enough not to mess with one of those. Dess has few regrets and a more mature perspective; Mira has something of a transcendental perspective, but she would also prefer continuing to exist, thank you very much.

Then things get even stranger when the ships of the press tour find another new sentient species where no such thing should exist, and far sooner than anyone had expected. Another Grand Prix is required, and this species looks even less prepared than homo sapiens had been. All those backstage machinations have also meant that the Galactic Broadcast Union has enemies, and some of them are looking to well and truly muck things up during this next and unexpected Grand Prix. The book is all over the place, that’s part of being such an oddity, it’s what happens to bands that have astounded the world with their first album and suddenly have to put out a second, it’s what often happens to people who have achieved the nearly impossible and somehow have to continue with their lives afterward. It comes right in the end, though, just like Dess. Peace peace love love.

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My notes on Space Opera are here and here. Doreen’s are here.