“To looking at the earth from space is a bit like a child looking in a mirror and realizing for the first time that the person in the mirror is herself. What we do to the earth, we do to ourselves,” the novelist and winner of this year’s Booker Prize, Samantha Harveysaid in her acceptance speech last week.
Orbitalthe winning novel, gives us the view from space. Set on the International Space Station (ISS), it records one day from the perspectives of six astronauts. One day in space means 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets. Instead of the asteroids and aliens of science fiction, here is the everyday routine of chores, meals and sleep. The characters’ backstories are seen as briefly as passing stars. The only narrative drive is a typhoon threatening the Philippines. Nature replaces human drama as the focus of the novel. It’s all about perspective.
Last year’s Booker winner, Prophet Song by Paul Lynchpresented Ireland as a fascist state. Like Orbital, it took a claustrophobic setting as the stage for big ideas. But where Lynch gave us a dystopian close-up, Orbital offers an idealized space view of the world. It is a love letter to our wounded planet, encompassing grief, injustice, the mysteries of the universe and the urgency of the climate crisis. But unlike the apocalyptic scenarios of most climate fiction, Orbital offers kaleidoscopic visions of Earth’s beauty: “a rolling indivisible globe that knows no possibility of separation”.
This may seem like a fleeting snapshot of humanity: never mind the dirt on the pavement, the view from the heavens is divine! Compared to Percival Everett’s Jamesa reimagining of huckleberry finn from the point of view of the slave jim, or Rachel Kushner’s Creation Lakeabout a group of eco-activists in rural France, Orbital was not the most overtly political novel on the shortlist. But it is no surprise that it is also a finalist for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction. For all the lyrical descriptions of earthly grandeur, there are ominous reminders “at the hand of politics and human choices” on everything below.
The novel’s message is one of unity and peace: on the ISS, the six astronauts drink each other’s recycled urine; dream the same dreams and catch each other’s tears (liquids cannot be released in the capsule). Through the windows, the only man-made border visible at night is a string of lights between Pakistan and India. From space there is “no wall or barrier: no tribes, no war or corruption or no specific reason for fear”.
The characters’ feelings of awe, connection, and protectiveness toward Earth have been reported by astronauts since Yuri Gagarin in 1961, in what became known as the “overview effect“. Ed Dwightwho this year, at 90, became the oldest person to go into space, proposed: “Every politician who has international power should be forced to take three orbits around the Earth before taking office. It will change all these battles on the ground here.”
As the space shuttle era is replaced by the rise of commercial space tourism, Orbital marks the end of an era of international cooperation. For now, the oversight effect remains elusive, with the exception of billionaire tech bros. But fiction can give us that perspective. In a time of geopolitical crisis and the ongoing Cop29 Summitit’s hard to remember a Booker winner who so vividly reflected the historical moment. We have to look in the mirror.
