A FEW weeks ago, when putting out the bins on a clear night, I noticed a very bright “star”, somewhat brighter even than Venus, which was almost at the zenith, but moving quite quickly towards the east. I wondered whether it was the International Space Station (ISS). My phone confirmed in about a minute that it was indeed the ISS, and it had been almost directly overhead southern England, but in the minute that it took to Google that information, it was already over central Germany — and, as I looked up, the bright “star” was already quite low in the eastern sky, and much fainter.
This rapid movement across the Earth forms the backdrop to Samantha Harvey’s Orbital, a novel following 24 hours in the life of the crew of the ISS: six men and women coming towards the end of a six-month stint in what is the longest-ever human habitation in space, in operation since 2000 and now coming towards the end of its working life. Her characters, of five different nationalities, spend a routine day carrying out tests and performing repairs, battling the wasting effects of microgravity in the gym, eating, sleeping, and in some instances worrying about personal problems on the planet that whizzes below them.
The Earth itself is one of the main characters in the drama: one moment, the myriad channels of the Ganges Delta are popping through a porthole; a few chapters later, a character is looking wistfully at a stretch of Irish coast that peeps through a gap in the clouds. Her husband is farming there, awaiting her return.
Curiously, by day, human and, indeed, animal presence on Earth is essentially invisible from 250 miles above, revealed only by the occasional glint of sunlight on a distant jet or solar farm which would be inexplicable unless one already knew what it was. At night, our presence is revealed by the beautiful glimmering of cities connected by golden rivers of motorways: the shape of the lights of Karachi, Moscow, and Beijing is as familiar to the crew as the spires of churches from a local vantage point might be to us.
This isn’t a story of grand events, but one of intimacy set against a grand backdrop. Admittedly, it is set on a day when the first Moon mission since Apollo 17 in 1972 takes off — the only element of the story that is still, for a little while, science fiction rather than established reality. It is also a day when one of the characters is unable to attend the funeral of her elderly mother in Japan, and the friends of another are threatened by a supertyphoon in the Philippines. Yet, despite these personal and space events, this is not a work that is big on drama: and that’s all right, because drama would simply distract from the meditations and ruminations that the novel is really a vehicle for helping Harvey to explore.
© Urszula Soltys, 2019Samantha Harvey, the author of Orbital, which is on this year’s Booker Prize shortlist. The winner is to be announced this month
Is progress a good thing? Can humans ever be creative without also leaving destruction and mess in their wake? Why is it possible to be so lonely, even when living intimately among others? How much of what we think we achieve is simply the product of random chance?
Most of all, Orbital meditates on the glorious fragility of human life and culture, how tiny it is set against the vastness of space and the sheer depth of time. In a long rumination on time, Harvey notes that, if the entire sweep of time since the Big Bang were condensed into a year, the Church’s existence would be contained in the last five seconds, and the era of human space flight into less than half a second at the end.
After months on the ISS, would one get bored with these endlessly proceeding godlike vistas of Earth, surrounded by a canvas of stars far grander than are seen even from the darkest mountaintop? The crew never do. They are the reason that they make tremendous personal sacrifices over many years to become spacefarers. At one point, the characters abandon their experiments and repairs for a few minutes to watch with awe a spectacular aurora soaring for tens of miles above the Antarctic night, before, like everything, it vanishes off to the west as the ISS continues its endless free fall around the Earth.
It is for moments like this that the crew put up with the loss of taste and smell, increased cancer risk, months away from families, and constant medical tests, which are also an honest part of Harvey’s narrative.
Space is a paradoxical place — boring and majestic, damaging to health but conveying a freedom of movement which no earthbound human will know, explored together with a small company who become brothers and sisters across national differences — and yet remain strangers.
Ultimately, this is not a story about the cold of space, but a gentle and warm exploration of what it means to be human in an environment in which human beings were not designed to live. Even 400km above an aurora-bedecked Antarctic, these gently drawn astronauts and cosmonauts remain believable characters with human flaws, made in the image and likeness of God, whose creation they have been privileged to explore from such a divine vantage.
The Revd Gerry Lynch is Rector of the Wellsprings Benefice, in the diocese of Salisbury.
Orbital by Samantha Harvey is published by Vintage at £9.99 (£8.99); 978-5299-2293-6.
Listen to Gerry Lynch discuss the book with Ed Thornton in this week’s Church Times podcast. This is a monthly series produced in association with the Church Times Festival of Faith and Literature. Listen here.
ORBITAL — SOME QUESTIONS
- Nell marvels at Shaun’s crucifix, that a scientist could ever be such an orthodox believer (page 66). Do you ever have trouble reconciling your beliefs with science?
- Is it ever right to impose burdens on your family for the sake of your career, as many of the characters have done here?
- Pietro’s daughter doubts that progress is a good thing. On balance, has scientific and technological progress been a good thing for humanity?
- Nell found that when she went on a spacewalk, it was the ISS rather than Earth that seemed her home. Does our true home remain so for ever, or can it change through our life?
- Space is the last wilderness, but Low Earth Orbit is already cluttered with human debris. Is it morally right for us to explore space, knowing that we will damage some things about it simply by our presence?
- “Our lives here are inexpressibly trivial and monotonous at once”: how do you retain an awareness of the majestic in the monotony of your daily routine here on Earth?
IN OUR next Book Club on 6 December, we will print extra information about our next book, The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese. It is published by Grove Press at £10.99 (£9.89); 978-1-80471-045-6).
THE BOOK
Set in Kerala on India’s Malabar Coast, The Covenant of Water is a family saga covering the years from 1900 to 1977. Central to the story is the matriarch Big Ammachi, and it begins in the year 1900 as she sets off by boat as a young teenage bride to join her new husband — a 40-year-old widower with a small child. Covering three generations, the story covers all the joys and sorrows that the family experience. The family are Indian Christians, descendants of converts made by St Thomas in the first century AD; and Big Ammachi’s faith sustains her through times of loss and difficulty. Some of the main characters in the story are surgeons. The book charts the progress of medicine during the 20th century, and recalls diseases that were incurable and blighted people’s lives.
THE AUTHOR
Abraham Verghese is the Professor for the Theory and Practice of Medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine and is Senior Associate Chair of the Department of Internal Medicine. Born of Indian parents who were teachers in Ethiopia, he grew up near Addis Ababa, and began his medical training there. In 2016, he received the National Humanities Medal from President Obama. His success as a novelist came in 2009 with Cutting Stone, which became an international bestseller. Like his recent novel, it features characters who are surgeons. The author continues to write fiction as well as contribute to medical literature.