One stayed. The Klavaret named it Darling.
And a man named Arthur Archibald Gormley walked out of the doors of the Hope & Ruin pub—out of the deafening noise of policemen and teachers and electricians and computer programmers and homemakers and children and accountants; out of the cacophony of their cheering and crying, hugging and swearing and singing old football songs because they sounded like happiness—like being alive and drunk and possibly, just for a little while, quite all right—out of the crowd and outside in the middle of the night, laid down on the sparse Brighton grass, and kissed it for everything he was worth.
Life is beautiful and life is stupid. As long as you keep that in mind, and never give more weight to one than the other, the history of the galaxy, the history of a planet, the history of a person is a simple tune with lyrics flashed on-screen and a helpful, friendly bouncing disco ball of glittering, occasionally peaceful light to help you follow along.
Cue the music. Cue the dancers.
Cue tomorrow.
Liner Notes
With a book like Space Opera, it is hard to know where to begin thanking the cast of thousands that made possible this weird little rocketship to moons unknown. But launch windows wait for no one, not even earnest writers pretending to be covered in glitter while, in point of fact, being mostly covered in cat hair.
Allow me first to thank Marcel Bezençon, who, in 1956, conceived the whole notion of the Eurovision Song Contest, which was the inspiration for this book, and is thereby, in the opinion of this feline hair–bestrewn subalto novelist, eligible for sainthood, having long since affected the necessary two miracles and change. I believe, without irony (for irony was last generation’s hotness), that Eurovision is one of the greatest achievements of mankind, in all its absurdity and flash and pomp. To unite a continent after the most horrifying war in the history of this planet with song, dance, and sequins is so ridiculous and hopeless as to be sublime. It is precisely in seeming without weight or consequence or high artistic authority that Eurovision’s genius lies—if it were all serious business, no one would watch. No one would feel. No one would sing along for sixty-plus years. Thank you for the disco ball, Marcel—long may it reign. And thank you to everyone who has ever sung a single note in any round of the Eurovision Song Contest, even if that semi-semi-semi-final round was in your living room when you were ten.
The lyrics that precede each section of the book are from some of my favorite Eurovision songs—some winners, some close runners-up, all amazing. They are the songs I often play for people to sell them on the whole concept, and the ones who speak to me of the heights and feelings the maddest of mad shows can reach. I owe a great debt of inspiration to Lordi, Conchita Wurst, the Babushki, Loreen, and Måns Zelmerlöw.
The next number on my dance card must go to Molly and Matthew Hawn, who, in 2012, offered to let me stay at their lovely London home with the warning that they would be holding a Eurovision party, and that, somewhat apologetically, my attendance would be required, in payment for room and board. “What’s Eurovision?” said I. And thus, I took my first step into a larger (and better) world. And thank you to everyone, from best friends to conventiongoers to random dudes on airplanes, who, after 2012, put up with my constant evangelizing, squawking like a door-to-door missionary: Have you heard the good news? Eurovision exists!
But perhaps the biggest hand-drawn sign to be hoisted into the air must say: THANK YOU, CHARLES TAN. For without his idle joke during my annual live-tweet of the only sporting event I care about, without his dashing off the immortal wish—Ha-ha, you should write a science fiction Eurovision novel—none of us would be here, there would be no blue space flamingos, and Decibel Jones would never have gotten himself knocked up. A large silver balloon attached to that sign must read: THANK YOU, NAVAH WOLFE, my editor, for immediately messaging me and offering to buy this idiotic idea, sight unseen—plotless, titleless—in what my agent still refers to as the fastest deal he ever made. She also deserves much consideration for her patience while I wrote something so far outside my comfort zone as to be more teenage runaway than novel. Much thanks also to Joe Monti and Liz Gorinsky, for letting Navah and me sneak off during the big show and do something weird in the shadows.
Thank you, now and always, to my incredible agent, Howard Morhaim, who looks after me and my books with superpaternal conviction.
Thank you also to Max Gladstone and Arthur Chu, whose conversation on the topic of glam and political angst late one night gave this book a much needed focus. Thank you to Kris McDermott, for telling me that it didn’t suck in the beginning, and Rebecca Frankel for telling me it didn’t suck in the end.
I also cannot thank Christopher Priest enough for giving me the confidence when I had run out and teaching me more about how to live my life as a writer and a comedian in one weekend than I’ve learned in the last ten years.
Thank you a thousand times over to my Patreon supporters, without whom I would be living much like Decibel, but in a less advantageously located garret; in particular, Nicholas Tschida, Shawna Jacques, and Wesley Allbrook. Thank you to my assistant, Niki Taylor, and my Web maven, Deborah Brannon.
And thank you, however obliquely, to Douglas Adams, or at least his ghost, who looms somewhat benevolently over all science fiction comedy, like Jesus making dirty jokes at the Last Supper. Without Hitchhiker’s Guide, this book would simply disappear in a puff of logic. Good lord, without Hitchhiker’s Guide, I would disappear in a puff of logic. And while I am thanking ghosts and declaring patron saints of my own novel like it’s a little baby heading off into a cold and unfeeling world, which obviously it is, the glam-elephant in the punk-rock room will always be David Bowie, our most beloved space oddity, who passed away a few months before Space Opera began its life as a hardcover tribute band—not gone and not forgotten; simply waiting for us on another planet, as he always was. Whenever two or more of us are gathered to devote ourselves more ardently to our weirdest personal aesthetic than anything else in the world, he is there.
And of course and forever, thank you to my partner, Heath Miller, whose support of this novel ranged from being a literally infinite, nigh Google-level font of pop music trivia, somewhat chagrined Eurovision facts, comedy consultation, and London geography, to assuring me repeatedly that I am not the worst writer of all time, to building an office for me out of nothing at all, to gamely engaging in multiple hours-long conversations on which is the funniest fruit and whether “wang” or “willy” is the more amusing euphemism. He is my galactic glamrock muse, and he’s got the pipes to prove it.
Lastly, I would like to come back to the cat hair for a moment. Because there can be no truly good pop music without sorrow, I wrote this novel while my gorgeous alien Maine Coon cat, October, was, unbeknownst to me, dying of lymphoma. The last eight days of her life were spent closeted with me in our library while Decibel Jones sang his heart out on the page, watching old Star Trek episodes with suspicion while I hand-fed her through a syringe, and listening to me filk every Eurovision song I knew until they were all about her getting better and us snuggling for all time. Alas, even Eurovision can’t save us all. The day I finished Space Opera, she achieved escape velocity and left our poor, humble orbit. Good-bye, Toby. I love you. You were one of the most sentient Earthlings I’ve ever known.