First, over-the-top is one of her natural idioms. Why does it work in Space Opera? Three reasons, I think. So Valente is going full-tilt at a windmill that has bested many a lance in the forty-odd (some very odd) years since Hitchhiker’s was published. “It was so clearly, obviously, blindingly popular that it just obliterated everything else in the field.” It’s worse than that, in a way, because even Douglas Adams was really Douglas Adams only about half the time. John Scalzi has often said that Hitchhiker’s was an extinction-level event for humorous science fiction. I could no more write about Space Opera without picking up some of Adams’ style than I could say “Oolon Colluphid” without adding “trilogy of philosophical blockbusters.”

A couple of sentences later, Valente adds, “Good lord, without Hitchhiker’s Guide, I would disappear in a puff of logic.” As someone who still has basically all six hours of the original radio show lodged in his brain, I can relate. In her “Liner Notes” to Space Opera, Catherynne Valente thanks, “however obliquely … Douglas Adams, or at least his ghost, who looms somewhat benevolently over all science fiction comedy.” He did more than just hover over my review, he provided the framework of the lead paragraph and set the tone for much of the rest of the piece as well.

Cat valente space opera