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A slender novel of epic power, Orbital deftly snapshots one day in the lives of six women and men hurtling through space - not towards the moon or the vast unknown, but around our planet.
Selected for one of the last space station missions of its kind before the program is dismantled, these astronauts and cosmonauts—from America, Russia, Italy, Britain, and Japan—have left their lives behind to travel at a speed of over seventeen thousand miles an hour as the earth reels below. We glimpse moments of their earthly lives through brief communications with family, their photos and talismans; we watch them whip up dehydrated meals, float in gravity-free sleep, and exercise in regimented routines to prevent atrophying muscles; we witness them form bonds that will stand between them and utter solitude. Most of all, we are with them as they behold and record their silent blue planet. Their experiences of sixteen sunrises and sunsets and the bright, blinking constellations of the galaxy are at once breathtakingly awesome and surprisingly intimate. So are the marks of civilization far below, encrusted on the planet on which we live.
Profound, contemplative and gorgeous, Orbital is an eloquent meditation on space and a moving elegy to our humanity, environment, and planet.
Excerpt
Orbital by Samantha Harvey
Roman wakes early. He sloughs off his sleeping bag and swims in the dark to the lab window. Where are we, where are we? Where on earth. It's night and there's land. Into view edges a giant city nebula among reddish-rust-nothing; no, two cities, Johannesburg and Pretoria locked together like a binary star. Just beyond the hoop of the atmosphere is the sun, and in the next minute it will clear the horizon and flood the earth, and dawn will come and go in a matter of seconds before daylight is everywhere at once. Central and East Africa suddenly bright and hot.
Today is his four hundredth and thirty-fourth day in space, a tally arrived at over three different missions. He keeps close count. Of this mission it's day eighty-eight. In a single nine-month mission there are in total roughly five hundred and forty hours of morning exercise. Five hundred morning and afternoon meetings with the American, European and Russian crews on the ground. Four thousand three...
What book or books are you reading this week? (01/23/2025)
I am going to be starting Orbital by Samantha Harvey.
-Brenda_Wychock
What are some books you loved reading in 2024?
Here are some of my 2024 fiction favorites: :books: There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak (historical fiction) :books: Orbital by Samantha Harvey (literary fiction) :books: Babel by R F Kuang (fantasy) :books: The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Armin (classic) :books: A Psalm for the Wild Bui...
-Gabi_J
What do you think of Orbital winning the 2024 Booker Prize
...owse.com https://www.bookbrowse.com/news/detail/index.cfm/news_item_number/3323/news/orbital-by-samantha-harvey-wins-the-booker-prize-2024 Book News: Orbital by Samantha Harvey wins the Booker Prize 2024 Orbital by Samantha Harvey wins the Booker Prize 2024 - book and publishing news stories
-nick
What is your book club reading in 2025?
...a Bulwinkel The Madstone by Elizabeth Crook The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot The Women by Kristin Hannah Sorrowful Mysteries by Stephen Harrigan Orbital by Samantha Harvey The Lion Women of Tehran by Marjan Kamali The Secret Life of Sunflowers by Marta Molnar & Dana Marton The God of the Woods by Liz Moore The Bee Sting...
-Anne_Glasgow
Samantha Harvey sets her novel Orbital aboard the International Space Station in the near future, imagining its crew of six as they go about their tasks over a single 24-hour period. Traveling at 17,500 miles/28,000 kilometers per hour, the ISS completes its trip around the Earth 16 times each day—once every 90 minutes. Each of the book's chapters occurs during one of these orbits. Rather than outlining the astronauts' tasks or introducing dramatic actions, the author focuses instead on their observations and contemplations of the orb they circle. The result is a lovely, lyrical work that is a wonder to read...continued
Full Review
(696 words)
(Reviewed by Kim Kovacs).
Samantha Harvey's Booker Prize–winning novel Orbital takes place aboard the International Space Station (ISS).
On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched the first man-made satellite, Sputnik 1, into space. According to NASA's website, the event "had a 'Pearl Harbor' effect on American public opinion. It was a shock, introducing the average citizen to the space age in a crisis setting." In response, the United States started its own space program, culminating in a piloted flight to Earth's moon in 1969. As of 2024, the United States remains the only nation to have completed a mission of this kind.
From the beginning, American space program engineers considered options for not only traveling through...
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