I was moved by Samantha Harvey’s Booker Prize acceptance speech and look forward to reading Orbital (“I’m so not an astronaut!” Samantha Harvey on her Booker Prize-winning space novel – and the anxiety that drove it, 13 November). However, I worry that her book may encourage the idea that we need to get off the planet to recognize, in her words, that “what we do to the Earth, we do to ourselves”. This view was encouraged by the famous photograph Earthrise, and by astronauts such as Edgar Mitchell, who thought that seeing the beauty and fragility of the Earth from space would bring about a shift in consciousness and a sense of unity and oneness. .
This shift simply did not occur, as evidenced by the accelerated loss of other life forms brought about by human action. Seeking an outside view can stop us from seeing what is before our eyes and in every breath: that we are part of a living planet every moment.
Peter Rede
Emeritus Professor, University of Bath
