EPBOT Readers discussion

Hi everyone, here's the section for discussing the first five chapters of Space Opera. Please do not post any spoilers here, there will be another post for overall thoughts for the whole book.

Bear with me here, there's not really any discussion guides for it, so I'm having to wing it!

The start of Space Opera sets up that the galaxy is actually teeming with life, we just haven't seen any of it because they were busy killing themselves in a giant galactic sentience war until the last 100 years or so. How do you feel about the author's thoughts on sentience? Especially when compared how humanity treats those even within their own species who happen to not look exactly like themselves?

How do you think that would relate to us interacting with alien species? Most science fiction tends to assume we'd either be the conquerors of other planets, or the conquered by a superior force. How does it make you feel that aliens might not consider that we are actually sentient?

Do you agree with Mira's statement that if aliens come, they'll be better than the best of us, because they'll have art and poetry and music? How important do you think that is to life?

With the arrival of aliens, they come not as a conquering force, but to tell us we must compete in a contest of culture to prove our worth. Does that feel as fair, or unfair? More or less fair than a conquering force we'd have to fight off?

Does the reaction of humanity feel accurate?


What's your opinion of Decible Jones and the Absolute Zeroes? Do they seem like likely saviors? Do you agree with the aliens as to why they were chosen?


Any other thoughts about this section?

I'm past chapter 5, but not finished with the book yet, so I'll try to avoid addressing anything too specific. The chapters kind of blur together a bit for me.

The question of sentience is fascinating to me. I have so many highlights from the beginning of this book. I feel like Valente has a lot of interesting things to say about human (alien?) nature. It's an unfortunate part of human history that we tend to label even other humans we don't like as 'other' or 'inferior' without making an effort to fully understand. It makes sense that other species would be the same way. And aliens are often portrayed in popular media as either humanoid and obviously intelligent (i.e. Star Wars), or presented as no better than primal, animal killing machines (i.e. Alien). There's not usually much middle ground.

I actually like the sentiment from Mira that aliens would have art and music, and how it ties in to the artistic contest that the aliens use to judge sentience. It makes sense to me, because art and creative expression, I think, is one of the more unique things about humans as opposed to other animals. I do think the reaction of humanity sounds pretty accurate. Because everyone would totally argue about what to do, and which country should represent the whole of humanity.

As far as Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeros, I think they're probably the most unlikeliest of saviors, honestly. But it also makes a certain sense that alien tastes would be so different from human because of their vastly different experiences of the universe. Although, I got a chuckle out of the eclectic list of other musical artists that were mentioned as being to galactic taste.

I think the one complaint I have about the book so far I have is that occasionally, it feels like Valente is trying too hard to be clever, and I start to lose sight of the characters who should be the core of the story until she's like, oh, hey, we're back to talking about Dess.

As an aside, I came across this blog post by Valente about writing the novel that I thought you guys might be interested to read:
http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2018/... (CW: language)

Wow, the writing in this book certainly is, uh... frenetic?

I keep coming back to the idea that it is hard for humans to conceive of, and harder to tell stories about, something entirely alien to us. We imagine aliens who are basically just people, but green, and who have the same ambitions and tendencies as us. Then we realize we're doing that and we come up with silicon-based life forms or sentient clouds of gas, but they have to talk or care for their young or build spaceships or try to take over the galaxy so there's some reason for us to interact, some interesting conflict to explore. I could propose a sentient diffuse neutrino network that could pass directly through the Earth without interacting with any matter, but then there'd be no first contact, no story. This is true for the genre as a whole, but I think it's foregrounded in this book because the author is positing that life arises in all these totally alien forms, but they all build ships and write music. Would they, though? Or is that just what we know?

Sentience is a very slippery concept that we continue to explore in reality and in art, so I don't think it's surprising that aliens might not consider us sentient. I Googled it and got "able to perceive or feel things", which is a pretty low bar; it arguably applies to broccoli. In the context of this book, and most sci-fi, it's really more a measure of worth, of who deserves personhood. Aliens as a metaphor for racism is pretty standard; aliens as a metaphor for animal cruelty seems to logically follow. I did find it pretty disingenuous of the alien to say, "After all, you always win against the monsters," because there's plenty of human media in which we don't, and we have definitely considered the are-we-the-monsters angle.

I don't know that other sentient life would necessarily have art, at least in a form we'd be able to recognize. Again, it's hard for us to imagine that they wouldn't, but is that just us projecting?

I think the contest is somewhat unfair because it gives us time to consider our possible demise. The aliens have already fully explored our media. They could make a decision based on that, without telling us in advance. "Hey, we're probably gonna annihilate you, but first, a bunch of dramatic rigmarole!" seems unnecessarily cruel. It's like the Hunger Games.

I'm just going to assume the author selectively reported the interesting bits of the human reaction, and that plenty of people just, you know, screamed and tried to punch the alien. I'm not sold on the comforting waitress voice; I'm pretty sure I've never felt reassured by waitstaff.

I don't think Decibel Jones is really any more unlikely than any other human musician as a hero, especially if the author gets to declare a bunch of other musicians dead. (One of the founders of Kraftwerk just died a couple weeks ago, so it was a bit jarring to read that one.) The book has explicitly told us that he is actually good. The most surprising part may be that one of the band members is dead; possibly the aliens don't know that. I thought it was funny that they didn't mention Queen; I don't know if the aliens know Freddie Mercury died, or if the author didn't want to remind us of where she seems to've gotten the Danesh-Jalo-to-Decibel-Jones thing. (She did allow Bowie to exist in this universe, though.)

I agree with Jennifer that the author may be pushing too hard for clever. Fairly near the beginning of the book I decided it felt like Hitchhiker's Guide trying to be cool. Hitchhiker's Guide relies on bewildered average-Joe-ness and not taking itself too seriously; this one seems to be leaning hard on name-dropping and big words. The reference to Fermi did make me realize I should probably read a biography or maybe a history of the Manhattan Project. History-of-science is my favorite history.

the library is open and my copy has finally arrived! My thoughts so far...

This is a prime example of what I really love about science fiction: throughout it's history, it has always served as a lens through which the big questions of society get asked though metaphor and simile. Sentience is a great example of this, and I really haven't seen the "prove your culture" particular take on it before.

So the thing nagging at me, that usually does when Earth culture is distilled and looked at from outside. All of the examples of "great Earth culture" music are all American and European, and from the 1960 and 70s. Really? There is no other "good music" from other countries, cultures, or other eras? There is some obvious satire built into this instance (the obsession with Yoko Ono???), but it's a trend I've seen too many times not to call out.

I do agree with everyone else that the author is trying too hard to be clever, resulting in overly descriptive prose that is the very definition of "purple." I also wonder if there is cross-pollination with the book Year Zero, as these two books are based on VERY similar concepts.