“A hand-span away beyond a skin of metal the universe unfolds in simple eternities.”
Title: Orbital
Author: Samantha Harvey
Pages: 137
Published by: Vintage (2024)
Four hundred kilometres above Earth, spinning in orbit, is the International Space Station. And on clear nights, this small but vital vessel can be seen on the horizon.
From terra firma it’s a mere speck on the skyline, but inside this compact metal container, the greatest of earth’s scientific minds are performing experiments in zero gravity and observing extreme weather for the betterment of humanity.
It’s up in the stars that we join Orbital, Samantha Harvey’s literary science fiction novel, which scooped the Booker Prize in 2024, launching her into the stratosphere alongside writers including Salman Rushdie, Hilary Mantel, and Margaret Atwood, amongst others.
Poignant and dreamlike, Orbital is a beautiful elegy to a space station in its twilight years, with NASA set to decommission the ISS as soon as 2030-31.
To the Moon
Floating in space are Chie, Roman, Shaun, Nell, Anton, and Pietro – six astronauts hailing from nations around the world and working together for the common cause of human advancement.
In many ways, this common interest is the main thread of Orbital. It’s less about who they are as individuals – and political differences seemingly evaporate upon contact with the atmosphere. Meanwhile, the strangeness and unique challenges of life in Zero-G atmosphere is a commonality shared only by the select few who make it into space.
Each chapter represents part of their journey in orbit, with the astronauts sharing ruminations on life back home. Chie carries grief, Shaun his religious faith, and Anton ponders on life after love. It’s a very humanist novel in some respects.
All the while, night turns to day and day turns to night — but for the team aboard the International Space Station (ISS), these transitions are far more frequent. Orbiting Earth sixteen times a day, the astronauts experience sixteen sunrises and sunsets all within just 24 hours.
It’s eye-opening moments like this that bring home the stunning, mesmeric, and yet terrifying oddities of space travel.
Conclusion
Orbital is very much a literary fiction novel, possessing elegant prose and a thoughtfulness that delivers a dizzying view of the universe.
And because of this, it’s a high risk piece of writing. In the hands of a less talented writer, there’s a real chance that Orbital could have come across as too esoteric and disconnected to the reader. Fortunately, this is not the case – and frankly, Samantha Harvey deserves every single accolade she gets.
Orbital is thoughtful and pondering, but without unnecessary complexity. And on the front inside cover, there’s even a map detailing the ISS’s full route. This is a subtle but really neat addition, and I found myself leafing back and forth to map the novel’s description to the station’s chartered course
Granting the reader an appreciation of the beauty and fragility of the earth, Harvey’s novel is a call to action, imploring us to take care of our only home. It’s a stellar piece of fiction, and will likely be one of the best books I review on the blog this year.
