Space Opera

by Michael Kandel

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For Terry Bisson, champion of science fiction The curtain opens to a workshop in Vuffon, a spaceport in the Dalminian Empire, sun Alpha Cygni, planet Creeth. Bobby "Rocket" DeVries and his fellow grease apes are hammering out the dents in the hull of an old cruiser. They sing as they work, "Let's return this old bucket to the stars," to the syncopation of their hammer blows, which are rendered by the trombones and tympani in humorous five-against-six time reminiscent of the shawm concerti of Friedrich Windburn. There is in fact a musical as well as philosophical polemic with Windburn throughout this opera. The composer had studied with Windburn when the composer was a raw youth in Frankfurt am Main, before the old master went mad and joined the notorious ashram in Madripore, where Sebastian Karlinsky, incidentally, also ended his days. Biographer Hiram Buck's account of this period in Harold Davidson's life is interesting but quite unreliable. We must not forget that Buck has an ax to grind, since Davidson had "stolen," he always believed, both Buck's second wife and the much coveted position of executive conductor at the Greenwich Conservatory (for which Buck had never really been a contender). Fred runs in with the news that Darg Bhar, Governor of the United Asteroids, is coming to Vuffon. The grease apes cheer, for this will mean work: Bhar has a great fleet of ships, and everyone knows that vessels that ply the old spaceways among the asteroid belts of Koe are constantly receiving dents from collisions with stray bits of rock, ice, and discarded electronic components. Petro, Bobby's friend, jokes: now Petro will have enough money to marry Miranda. Everyone laughs, knowing that Petro has already been rejected more than a dozen times by Miranda, the proud daughter of Corporal Biggs. Petro sings an air: "You are ugly and you are poor, she told him. Where do you get the nerve to ask me for my hand?" The grease apes decide to celebrate at Harry's, the homey ale-and-pot establishment in Vuffon. Bobby, strangely silent, does not join his cohorts as they go off singing. He tells them he has a headache from the noise of the hammers. When his cohorts leave and as the stage darkens, he sings the haunting, plaintive aria, "Oh Bea, what will become of you?" We learn that Bobby's younger sister, Bea, is in danger of falling into the clutches of Darg Bhar. "She's a young thing," Bobby sings, "and has not even been implanted yet." The evil and lascivious Bhar wants to get at Bea's DNA and make her his slave forever. Bhar conceived a dark lust for Bobby's kid sister ever since he beheld her at the annual Saint Camilla song competition, when she was all in tulle and lilies. Bea is lovely, slender, and has an exquisite voice. Bobby fears for her. In a bold dreaming-while-awake sequence, a device that Davidson first employed in The Butcher's Paramour, and very much in the face of the New York critics, Bea appears to Bobby and sings, "I'll manage on my own. Stop crowding me." Darg Bhar appears too, and he is accompanied by Leila Ziff-Calder, who has been recently cast off by Bhar and thirsts for revenge. It is instructive to see how Davidson cuts the Gordian knot of narrative, as it were, presenting so much of the plot to us with such direct economy by means of this dreaming-while-awake device, for in the alternating duet that follows — Bobby and Bea, Bhar and Leila — we are given the basic structure of the conflict to come. "I'm only thirty," Leila sings. "I'm not that old. I have pleasure yet to give and to take." Bhar, ignoring her, sings, "I'm wicked, but I don't care. Why should I? There's no afterlife." Bobby sings: "He's no good, Sis, he's no damn good. Trust me on this." Bea sings: "Get out of my face, Bobby. It's my life." All four voices join, and the DNA leitmotif (foreshadowing the genetic-engineering horror in Act 5) is introduced in descending minor thirds and taken up by the strings and then the solitary oboe, in a lovely, contemplative note — almost as if Davidson, with the cold cynicism of a New England deconstructionist, is distancing us not only intellectually but also emotionally from the Sturm und Drang of violent passions and runaway technology — as the curtain falls. [next]