Space Opera (Space Opera, #1)

by Catherynne M. Valente

The question has never been: Can you build cities? Ants do that. The question has never been: Are you capable of considering your own existence and getting kind of depressed about it? Any animal in captivity does that. The question has never been: Can you use tools? Crows do that. Otters do that. Apes do that. Good Lord, everybody does that. The question has never been: Can you perform complex problem solving? Dogs do that. The question has never been: Can you experience love? Nobody doesn’t. The question has never been: Can you use language? Parrots and dolphins and cuttlefish do that. The question has never even been: Do you understand object permanence, can you recognize yourself in the mirror, do you bury your dead, do you bond emotionally with your young? Elephants do all those things, and some humans definitely don’t. The only question is this: Do you have enough empathy and yearning and desperation to connect to others outside yourself and scream into the void in four-part harmony? Enough brainpower and fine motor control and aesthetic ideation to look at feathers and stones and stuff that comes out of a worm’s more unpleasant holes and see gowns, veils, platform heels? Enough sheer style and excess energy to do something that provides no direct, material benefit to your personal survival, that might even mark you out from the pack as shiny, glittery prey, to do it for no other reason than that it rocks?