The Eighty-minute Hour

This is a space opera, which, in this case, is a combination of songs and science guaranteed to enlarge your imagination by at least one half with all sorts of intergalactic merriment, melodrama, and dealing off the bottom of the deck.
Brian Aldiss conveniently stands the whole genre on its head with his troop of dotty characters bursting into full throated warbling at the twist of a plot.