A Space Opera Memoir
Space Opera was written over a period between 1984 and 1985.
The bulk of the sequence was written between April 4 and April 25, 1985. This comprised four of the seven prose poems, in the following order (1) ‘This Report Follows’ (4 April, 1985), (2) ‘The Neon Fly-By’ (5 April, 1985), (3) ‘Discovered This Other Report’ (14 April, 1985) and (4) the title poem, ‘Space Opera’ (25 April, 1985). These four sections comprised the ‘core’ of the Space Opera story. They had been preceded by ‘The First Report From Neogaea’ (Space Opera 1) written in isolation the previous month (26 March, 1985). This ‘First Report’ provided the immediate stimulus for the cycle, which was then crystallised in April. The final poem in the sequence ‘Anathema (We Are All Survivors)’ was written in May 1985. The introductory ‘prelude’ called ‘Gaze of the Medusa’ was written in 1986 for the Serendipity Caper publication of the complete sequence.
However, the ‘First Report’ referred back to an earlier poem with the title ‘Neogaea’ written in 1984 and included in a loose, evolving series of other poems, sketches and drafts with the overall title Ethos Mythos. The semi-Lovecraftian title Ethos Mythos was at that stage a provisional ‘working title’ finally carried over as a catch all label for a group of poems written (or finished) between 1984/5 and 1986. This group of poems was eventually included in the Stride collection Colour of Dust (1999), and has no direct relation to Space Opera. The 1984 poem ‘Neogaea’ with its disintegrating typography provided the initial inspiration for the eventual saga of the planet Neogaea and its weird satellite moon Neon. It was, initially, an exercise in visual typography, inspired by numerous Cubo-Futurist and/or Dada-Surrealist examples and also by the typographic style of e.e. cummings. An early draft of the poem in conventional blank verse quasi-stanza form was given the title ‘A Report From Neogaea (Necrophoresis)’. The term catagenesis in the final stanza refers to both regressive evolution and a process of cracking and organic breakdown in geology. It was probably this imagery that triggered the idea of the visual typographic ‘breakdown’ depicted in subsequent drafts.
Publication
The Stride Publications illustrated booklet Space Opera (1997) was preceded by publication in editions of Stride Magazine. ‘The First Report From Neogaea’ appeared in Stride 21 (Summer 1985). It was printed on green paper and accompanied by some related illustrations. These comprised the drawings ‘Life on Neogaea’ (1985) and ‘Social Symbioses on Neogaea’ also known as ‘Styx Insect III’ (1985), and two sections from the simultaneous collage-poem sequence Contact Zero (1985-1985).
Three edited sections from Space Opera appeared in a double issue of the US magazine Fantasy Commentator Vol. III, Nos. 3 & 4, issues 47 & 48, Fall 1995, edited by A Langley Searles, with an interview by Steve Sneyd. A version of this interview subsequently appeared in the Space Opera booklet under the title ‘Visions By Association’. The three sections from the sequence in Fantasy Commentator were ‘Gaze of the Medusa’, ‘The Neon Fly-By’ and ‘Discovered This Other Report’.
The complete Space Opera sequence was published in a special edition of Stride Magazine called The Serendipity Caper (Stride 24/25) in Summer (July) 1986. The sequence had a special title page using the drawing ‘The Neo Nova’ (also used as illustration without the title in the booklet) and was preceded by the complete version of Contact Zero. The now-redundant title Ethos Mythos still appears at the foot of the page for some of the poems from the sequence. Some phrases and lines in Space Opera link directly with Contact Zero, for example ‘gaze of the Medusa’, ‘chimaera obscura’, ‘I denounce everything: that is enough’ and ‘the membrane intercepts…’ A case of osmotic interchange confirming that the two were written in parallel and roughly about the same time.
Centre of Gravity – The Video
In February 1999 the London based digital filmmakers partnership OS2 expressed interest in using the published Space Opera text as the basis for a video film. Following discussions with Stride work started and progressed during February-April 1999. The final 6m.30s digital video production, referred to as the ‘onedotzero presentation version’, was based on parts 1-4 of the published sequence and called Centre of Gravity. It was hoped to produce a longer version incorporating parts 5-7 but this proved incompatible with the OS2 production schedule. However, the finished fragment, which includes many lines of animated original text used to overlay sequences of found footage and hi-tech diagrammatic graphics, together with an evocative soundscape of fractured effects and narrative by Firefox, successfully depicts the ‘technological breakdown of communications on board a deep space mission’.
Centre of Gravity was shown as part of wow + flutter 99, the ‘contemporary motion graphics and digital effects’ segment of the onedotzero3 digital moving image festival (in association with Film Four) held at the ICA, London between April 30-May 9, 1999. The Centre of Gravity screening took place at the ICA on May 6 and according to a press release was also shown at the SVC window (Wardour Street) and the soho_inc film festival the same year. Wow + flutter 99 films were subsequently screened at NFT2 in a Digital Underground strand on 10 August 1999.
Artwork of the Mythos and other Associations
The video title ‘Centre of Gravity’ is derived from a drawing of the same name dating from 1984. This ‘Centre of Gravity’ was incorporated into the promotional artwork for a 1985 Stride audiocassette music compilation (Step 50 in the Stride series) using the title of the original drawing.
The compilation included tracks from bands such as Face in the Crowd, Pacific 231 and Celestial Orgy, among others. The drawing itself featured as the cover art of the accompanying booklet and even on a promotional T-shirt. The inlay card for the Centre of Gravity cassette used another drawing entitled ‘The Way Of All Flesh I The Crypt’ (1981) from a graphic series with the general title Resident Aliens. ‘The Crypt’ drawing was rendered in a kind of techno-gothic style that pointed forward to the macabre SF ethos of Space Opera, as did various other drawings from this period. The ramshackle silhouette with its battered wheel and trailing wires in the ‘Centre of Gravity ‘illustration pays homage to Duchamp’s Bicycle Wheel readymade via the kinetic constructions of Jean Tinguely (particularly La Tour, 1960) many of which at been displayed at a Tate Gallery exhibition in 1982. These ‘mechanomorphs’ (the name probably a distant echo of Picabia’s dessins mechaniques) surfaced in a number of drawings included in a series called Satanic Planets (1984-1985) containing many images linked, in one way or another, to the Space Opera sequence.
The mechanomorphs became identified as the inhabitants of Neogaea, the planet of astroscarps described in the original 1984 poem with its disintegrating typography. From one perspective it is fair to say that the main sequence of prose poems written from March to May 1985 were based on, or inspired by, the Satanic Planets mechanomorph drawings and the general atmosphere of the graphic series. Of the seven illustrations in the 1997 Space Opera booklet only two (‘The Scene of the Crime’ and ‘Worker Display Arena’) are new to that publication. The others had all appeared elsewhere: in Stride Magazine (editions 21 and 23) and, as already noted, in the Centre of Gravity cassette artwork. Some were published in two sets of postcards (published separately by Stride in 1985) which also included the drawings ‘Satanic Planets’ and ‘Metacropolis’ (first published in Stride 17/18 double issue, 1984), both sharing an oblique relationship with the Space Opera mythos.
The poem ‘Metacropolis’ occurs in the collection Hidden Limbo (1978) published in Colour of Dust, and, together with the small collage ‘Another Stargate (The Eye of Time)’ dated 1970, may provide the earliest intimations of the imagery of the Space Opera cycle. A small drawing ‘Stargate Variation I (The Eye Of Time)’, from 1994 but based on the 1970 collage appeared in Monomyth Issues 24 & 36 in 2004 and 2005. The phrase ‘the eye of time’ occurs in ‘The Neon Fly-By’.
In ‘Discovered This Other Report’ (Space Opera 4) is the line ‘We escaped the decaying orbit.’ This is an overt reference to the drawing ‘Decaying Orbits’ (1985) from the Satanic Planets collection. This image appeared in the 1985 Stride poetry booklet Decaying Orbits (Step 84 in the Stride series) and has been published elsewhere, including the occult-zine Nox 7 (1990) and The Grail Anthology (2004), from Atlantean Publishing. The image ‘Decaying Orbits’ with its supermassive centre of attraction and in ‘mechanomorph’ style fragmented spacecraft is a symbolic, if oblique, resume of the entire Space Opera story.
Brief Points
The phrase ‘satellite gone’ in ‘Gaze of the Medusa’ is a line from a Lou Reed song.
The 1970 collage ‘Another Stargate (The Eye of Time)’ was subsequently incorporated into a series of Xerox-based repromontage images Another Stargate/Another Room (1987). A sub-set of this series, with poems by Rupert Loydell, was included in Chain Lightning (1989) a project from Apparitions Press. The image ‘The Eye Of Time’ provided the basis for a short poem with the title ‘Some Other Star’.
The French mathematician, who gave his name to the Roche Limit, Edouard Roche (1820-1883) was a real historical figure, known for his work in celestial mechanics.
Glendenning (‘old G’ the Exosociobiologist) is a fictional character. His expedition to Neogaea is situated in the remote past in relation to the ‘present’ action of Space Opera.
The names ‘Cassegrain’, ‘Herschelian’, ‘Coude’ and ‘Schmidtt’ refer to astronomical telescopes and their lenses.
Much of the jargon in Space Opera, such as ‘trophic eggs’, ‘ergatomorphs’, ‘psychogenic symbioses’ and so on was derived from the book Sociobiology: The Abridged Edition (1980) by Edward O Wilson, particularly the description of insect societies and behaviour.
The multi media Centre of Gravity Collection (2010) is listed in the Poetry Library catalogue
Space Opera Publication History, 1985-1997
Space Opera I The First Report From Neogaea, Stride 21, 1985
Space Opera (Prelude) Gaze Of The Medusa , Stride 24/25 The Serendipity Caper, 1986
Space Opera I The First Report From Neogaea, Stride 24/25 The Serendipity Caper, 1986
Space Opera II This Report Follows, Stride 24/25 The Serendipity Caper, 1986
Space Opera III The Neon Flyby, Stride 24/25 The Serendipity Caper, 1986
Space Opera IV Discovered This Other Report, Stride 24/25 The Serendipity Caper, 1986
Space Opera V Neogaea, Stride 24/25 The Serendipity Caper, 1986
Space Opera VI Space Opera, Stride 24/25 The Serendipity Caper, 1986
Space Opera VII Anathema (We Are All Survivors), Stride 24/25 The Serendipity Caper, 1986
Space Opera (Prelude) Gaze Of The Medusa , Fantasy Commentator Vol III, 3/4, Nos. 47/48, Fall 1995
Space Opera III The Neon Flyby, Fantasy Commentator Vol III, 3/4, Nos. 47/48, Fall 1995
Space Opera IV Discovered This Other Report, Fantasy Commentator Vol III 3/4, Nos 47/48, Fall 1995
Space Opera (Prelude) Gaze Of The Medusa , Space Opera, Stride Publications, 1997
Space Opera I The First Report From Neogaea, Space Opera, Stride Publications, 1997
Space Opera II This Report Follows, Space Opera, Stride Publications, 1997
Space Opera III The Neon Flyby, Space Opera, Stride Publications, 1997
Space Opera IV Discovered This Other Report, Space Opera, Stride Publications, 1997
Space Opera V Neogaea, Space Opera, Stride Publications, 1997
Space Opera VI Space Opera, Space Opera, Stride Publications, 1997
Space Opera VII Anathema (We Are All Survivors), Space Opera, Stride Publications, 1997
Related Artwork – Publication History 1984-2008
Metacropolis, Stride 17/18 Autumn 1984, Stride Publications, 1984
Satanic Planets, Stride 17/18 Autumn 1984, Stride Publications, 1984
Centre Of Gravity, Centre Of Gravity C60 (Step 50) [booklet] cover art, Stride Publications, 1985
Centre Of Gravity, Centre Of Gravity C60 (Step 50) [postcard], Stride Publications, 1985
The Way Of All Flesh I The Crypt, Centre Of Gravity C60 (Step 50) [inlay card], Stride Publications, 1985
Decaying Orbits, Decaying Orbits (Step 84), Stride Publications, 1985
The Question, Decaying Orbits (Step 84), Stride Publications, 1985
Contact Zero 4 Flesh Eating Beasts, Stride 21 Summer 1985, Stride Publications, 1985
Contact Zero 5 The Rattlesnake Pit Organ, Stride 21 Summer 1985, Stride Publications, 1985
Life On Neogaea, Stride 21 Summer 1985, Stride Publications, 1985
Styx Insect III (Social Symbioses On Neogaea), Stride 21 Summer 1985, Stride Publications, 1985
Life On Neogaea, Stride Postcards [bronze], Stride Publications, 1985
Styx Insect III (Social Symbioses On Neogaea), Stride Postcards, Stride Publications, 1985
Metacropolis, Stride Postcards, Stride Publications, 1985
Satanic Planets, Stride Postcards, Stride Publications, 1985
Angel With Raiding Party, Stride 23 Spring 1986, Stride Publications, 1986
The Cathedral Of The Damned, Stride 23 Spring 1986, Stride Publications, 1986
The Question, Stride 23 Spring 1986, Stride Publications, 1986
Contact Zero (Complete), Stride 24/25 The Serendipity Caper Summer 1986, Stride Publications, 1986
The Neo Nova, Stride 24/25 The Serendipity Caper Summer 1986, Stride Publications, 1986
Satanic Planets, Formaos Vol 1 No 5 March 1987, Sothis Publishing, 1987
Styx Insect III (Social Symbioses On Neogaea), Nox, Vol 1 No 4 Issue 4 Mar 1987, Disrupters Press. 1987
Another Stargate/Another Room, Chain Lightning, Apparitions Press, 1989
Decaying Orbits, Nox, Vol 2 No 3 Issue 7 Jan 1990, Disrupters Press, 1990
Angel With Raiding Party, Chimaera Obscura, Phlebas, 1992
The Cathedral Of The Damned, Chimaera Obscura, Phlebas, 1992
Angel With Raiding Party, Space Opera, Stride Publications, 1997
Centre Of Gravity, Space Opera, Stride Publications, 1997
Life On Neogaea, Space Opera, Stride Publications, 1997
Scene Of The Crime, Space Opera, Stride Publications, 1997
The Neo Nova, Space Opera, Stride Publications, 1997
The Question, Space Opera, Stride Publications, 1997
Worker Display Arena, Space Opera, Stride Publications, 1997
Life On Neogaea, Space Opera [cover art], Stride Publications, 1997
The Elastic Mirror, Death's Door, Springbeach Press, 1999
Satanic Planets, Cold Print, Feb 2001
Decaying Orbits, The Grail Anthology, Atlantean Publishing, 2004
Stargate Variation I (The Eye Of Time), Monomyth Vol 4.1 No 26 Issue 28 2004, Atlantean Publishing, 2004
Stargate Variation I (The Eye Of Time), Monomyth Vol 5.4 No 34 Issue 36 2005, Atlantean Publishing, 2005
Astroscarp III, Midnight Street, Issue 9, May/June 2007, Immediate Direction, 2007
The Colossus Of Neon, Old Rossum's Book Of Practical Robots, Atlantean Publishing, 2008
Selected References
Bruinsma, Max, Exploding Cinema. Rotterdam Film Course, Sandberg Institute, 1999
Denyer, Trevor (ed.) Midnight Street, Issue 9, May/June 2007, Immediate Direction, 2007
Evans, A C, Decaying Orbits, Stride Publications, 1985
Evans, A C, Chimaera Obscura, The Phlebas Press, 1992
Evans, A C, Space Opera, Stride Publications, 1997
Evans, A C, Colour of Dust, Stride Publications, 1999
Hanson, Matt/ Walter, Shane R J, onedotzero3, Film Four/ICA, 1999
Jebb, Keith, A C Evans Space Opera/A C Evans Dream Vortex, PQR, 1998
Kopaska-Merkel, David C, Space Opera, Dreams and Nightmares, 1997
Loydell, Rupert M (ed.) Stride 17/18, Autumn, 1984
Loydell, Rupert M (ed.) Stride 21, Summer, 1985
Loydell, Rupert M (ed.) Stride 23, Spring, 1986
Loydell, Rupert M (ed.) Stride 24/25, The Serendipity Caper: An Anthology of Prose, Summer, 1986
Marsh, Jane, Jane Marsh Interviews the Poet A C Evans, Neon Highway 13, 2008
Ratcliffe, John (ed.) Cold Print, Feb 2001
Ross, Sian (ed.), Death’s Door, Springbeach Press, 1999
Ryan, Paul A (ed.), Formaos Vol 1 No 5 March 1987, Sothis Publishing, 1987
Sennitt, Stephen (ed.), Nox, Vol 1 No 4 Issue 4 Mar 1987, Disrupters Press, 1987
Sennett, Stephen (ed.), Nox, Vol 2 No 3 Issue 7 Jan 1990, Disrupters Press, 1990
Sneyd, Steve, A C Evans SF Poetry Sequence Space Opera, Data Dump 104, 2006
Sneyd, Steve, A C Evans Space Opera poem sequence, Data Dump 43, 1999
Sneyd, Steve, Flights From The Iron Moon, The Hilltop Press, 1995
Sneyd, Steve, Space Opera: An Interview with A C Evans, Fantasy Commentator Vol VIII, 3/4 Nos, 47/ 48, Fall, 1995
Sneyd, Steve, Space Opera, Data Dump 25, 1998
Sneyd, Steve, Term Speculative Poetry has more definitions, perhaps…, Data Dump 128, 2008
Tyrer, D-J (ed.), The Grail Anthology, Atlantean Publishing, 2004
Tyrer, D-J (ed.), Monomyth Vol 4.1 No 26 Issue 28 2004, Atlantean Publishing, 2004
Tyrer, D-J (ed.), Monomyth Vol 5.4 No 34 Issue 36 2005, Atlantean Publishing, 2005
Tyrer, D-J (ed.), Old Rossum’s Book of Practical Robots, Atlantean Publishing, 2008
Various Contributors, Chain Lightning, Apparitions Press, 1989
Wilson, Edward O, Sociobiology: The Abridged Edition, Belknap Press, 1980
Zine Kat , Space Opera by A C Evans, Dragon's Breath 46/47, 1998
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