Hello, Earth: 'Orbital' by Samantha Harvey – Book Recommendation

We like to con ourselves into believing that there is a beginning and an end to every story, as in the day and night of our own little lives. Infinity is infinitely hard to grasp. However, in Orbital, Samantha Harvey charts a day and night aboard a spaceship orbiting Earth in a beautiful circadian novel in which the vastness of space is lovingly condensed. The astronauts carry out their daily tasks, checks, and experiments, but scientific precision cannot undermine their sheer wonder at the ‘giddy mass of waltzing things’ filled with ‘such intricacy’ that passes before their eyes as they look out. Perspective is a real focus of this novel, as illustrated with repeated reference to a Velazquez painting in which it is unclear who is looking at whom: subject at painter, painter at subject, viewer at one or the other or both. Are those aboard the spaceship looking at the earth and all living upon it, or is it the other way around?

Orbital is, in fact, full of opposites and reflections, not least the shared experience of a handful of humans travelling in a confined space in outer space, reflecting our nature as beings confined in our small bodies with their short lifespan. The astronauts exist in borderless space, yet as they orbit Earth, they recognise its surface in terms of human maps and placenames. Despite the lack of gravity, the pull of the earth is intense as memories of home and family intrude into the astronauts’ thoughts. We get a feel for their personalities and, in the depiction of their mission, the realisation of the incredible potentiality of humanity alongside its inconsequentiality: ‘we think we’re the wind, but we’re just the leaf’. There is an awareness that, small as we are, we are still imbued with a sense of destiny and aspiration. Whilst ‘human want’ shapes everything on Earth, all humans are (like the astronauts) a means rather than an end in this eternal place. As for the mission itself, Harvey considers whether ‘man’s lust for space [represents] curiosity or ingratitude?’ Perhaps it is both, and maybe spaceships are ‘the totems of a species gone mad with self-love’. But what of love? One inhabitant of the spaceship grieves her mother, who has just passed away. Others miss their partners and children. And there is a wonderful description of the phonograph launched into space in 1977 carrying sounds of Earth. These include ‘[t]he sound signature of a love-flooded brain’: the recorded brainwaves of a woman in love. What, out there, could find and listen to this and understand the sound of being human - the sound of love - a music for which much music is made? Would they listen in wonder? Or laugh? Would they smash the record up in anger, disgust, or ignorance? Will we ever know?

It is perhaps the novel’s visual aspect that is its most conspicuous feature. Continuing the painterly theme, the novel is full of stunning imagery and awash with every gradation of the vivid colours of our planet. What makes Orbital so affecting, and what I believe is at its core, is Harvey’s articulation of the synthesis of pain, beauty, and even relief experienced as we realise that the universe is all and we are nothing but a minuscule, ephemeral part of it. It is the very definition of awe.

Orbital by Samantha Harvey. ISBN: 9781529922936