Attention Space Opera Libretti passengers: we are now at a comfortable cruising altitude of… one moment, I have to Google something, um… very high. And, seeing as we are flying… very fast… we will reach our destination… when we get there.
You know what, i'm gonna invite another one of our authors up to the cockpit for an interview! Dean Anthony Brink, come on down!
Dean blew us away with his story, The Threepenny Space Opera, because it isn't a story at all--it's an opera! This proved slightly challenging for me personally, because I did not know how to edit or format a libretto. Thank the stars for Google, because no way were we going to let this magnificent story pass us by.
In 10 words or less, how would you describe your story?
In 10 words or less, how would you describe your story?
A sordid battle for our embodied hearts
What was the inspiration for this story? Be as brief or detailed as you want.
When Brian suggested someone write a space libretto based on the Three Penny Opera, I got right to work. I had been playing Kurt Weill’s songs on the piano for a few years and noticed his works with Brecht—whose theory of epic theatre I love—brought out a more playful as well as dissonant style in his compositions. I tried to emulate this spirit in line with all the tropes of space opera.
If your story had a theme song, what would it be?
But of course, “Mack the Knife.”
Tell me a little bit about yourself.
I grew up with immigrant stories on both sides of my family, and, well, live the American dream by becoming an immigrant myself—in Taiwan, where I have dual citizenship (and daughters).
What was the last book you read? Did you like it?
Philip K. Dick’s Time Out of Joint. There are amazing scenes and running ironies that resonate with all sorts of social questions then and now.
Do you have anything you want to promote? Other stories or books, your Etsy shop, a cool video you found online of dancing llamas that you think the world needs to see?
Links to more writing can be found on my blog, interpoetics.blogspot.com.
Anything else you want to say?
I took the call for libretti literally, and wrote a libretto (not a story). Anyone interested in developing music for a production (influenced by Kurt Weill’s original music for Brecht’s Three Penny Opera or not) please get in touch with me.
Read this story and 19 others in Space Opera Libretti, available wherever hilarious space opera anthologies are sold. So… You know. The Internet.
Originally from Tacoma, Washington, Dean Anthony
Brink now holds dual citizenship in Taiwan (ROC) where he
teaches science fiction and creative writing at National Chiao
Tung University. His speculative fiction has appeared in Every
Day Fiction (“Mr. Coffee”), Helios Quarterly (“The
Migration,” “The Scarlatti”), the Incarceration anthology (“The
San Francisco Funhouse”), the Itty Bitty anthology (“The
Bellenfants”), the Like a Woman anthology
(“DearDeparted®”), and Seit und Werden (“The Last Testament
of a Pacifist in Tokyo, 2047”). Poems have recently appeared
in Cordite Poetry Review, ecozon@, New Writing,
and Nimrod. Research interests include studies of Japanese and
Taiwanese poetry, experimental writing by Amiri Baraka, John
Ashbery, Richard Wright, and Pierre Guyotat, and philosophy of
science in the Kyoto School. He is author of Japanese Poetry
and Its Publics: From Colonial Taiwan to
Fukushima (Routledge, 2018). Updates and recipes are posted
at his blog: interpoetics.blogspot.com.
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