Book Review — Orbital
We are a speck of dust in the cosmic scheme of things
We matter greatly and not at all. To reach some pinnacle of human achievement only to discover that your achievements are next to nothing and that to understand this is the greatest achievement of any life, which itself is nothing, and also much more than everything.
Samantha Harvey in Orbital
Initial Thoughts
I can’t remember the last time I read a science fiction book based on space exploration that made me feel insignificant and small. It made me feel that my life is just a femtosecond event in the history of the universe. In terms of the size of the universe, I feel I am not even a dust particle.
Response on Goodreads
In this section, you might feel that I am crowdsourcing reviews. But that’s not the point. I’m trying to understand why some people might feel put-off by this book.
In spite of being a Booker Prize winning work, Orbital has just 3.64 rating on Goodreads. The distribution of ratings show that 41% of the people who read the book thought it was average or below average. I happen to be in the majority category that gave the book 4-star rating.
I was kinda curious as to what the 1 star raters were saying. Some of it made sense.
A wholly unremarkable and boring space voyage. 90% repetitive imagery, 5% character development that fails to engage the reader in any meaningful way, and 5% philosophical analysis that is so rushed and shallow that it feels improvised. A real snooze fest.
Anonymous reader
I kinda wholly agree with this review though
This is not a novel, it’s a manifesto proclaiming love for the Earth, and parts of it are beautiful, but there’s only so many times I can read how empty Pacific at nighttime looks from space before I go crazy.
Huge swaths of the book read like a student scrambling to reach minimum word count in an essay, but there’s barely any plot to speak of, and when it appears it’s so lost between the never-ending descriptions of all the colours and shapes that Earth has that it makes barely any impact.
I am aware that I’m probably not a target for a book that’s a 200 page long poem, but I can safely say that Pale Blue Dot as Carl Sagan wrote it does the same in way less words and thus it’s way more impactful than this novel.
Marta
One more good critique
This book is an uncompelling pastiche of Carl Sagan's Cosmos, down to an exact copy of the Cosmic Calendar.
The book is not scientific enough to adequately educate on science, it's not speculative enough to be compelling science fiction, it doesn't have enough character development to be a compelling slice of life novel, and it doesn't have a narrative to be adequately described as a literary novel.
Instead, it falls squarely in the same category as the shower thoughts of that one stoner everyone knew in high school who could say "woah, space is so cool man." Utterly disappointing, and without even reading the other nominees for the Booker award, this should not have won.
Ian
The Booker Committee
If this is the low opinion of some of the readers, why did the Booker Committee give the award to this book? The question popped up in my head. So, I checked their site. And I found this.
‘In an unforgettable year for fiction, a book about a wounded world. Sometimes you encounter a book and cannot work out how this miraculous event has happened. As judges we were determined to find a book that moved us, a book that had capaciousness and resonance, that we are compelled to share. We wanted everything.
‘Orbital is our book. Samantha Harvey has written a novel propelled by the beauty of sixteen sunrises and sixteen sunsets. Everyone and no one is the subject, as six astronauts in the International Space Station circle the Earth observing the passages of weather across the fragility of borders and time zones. With her language of lyricism and acuity Harvey makes our world strange and new for us.
‘All year we have celebrated fiction that inhabits ideas rather than declaiming on issues, not finding answers but changing the question of what we wanted to explore. Our unanimity about Orbital recognises its beauty and ambition. It reflects Harvey’s extraordinary intensity of attention to the precious and precarious world we share.’
Edmund de Waal, Chair of judges
One feels that the committee was looking for something abstract and inspiring. Not serious plot or character depth in the story. The book ‘Orbital’ made them feel something. And you can’t judge them for being emotional humans.
My Review
Now that I have explored all views, I don’t think any of my opinions have modified or changed. It is true that the book lacks a plot, a definite ending and it has moments of boredom where one feels that he/she is reading a geography text.
In spite of these drawbacks and its similarity/copy paste of Carl Sagan’s cosmic calendar, the book reminds you that your life is just a fleeting moment in the larger scheme of things. It can be a nihilistic, depressing or inspiring thought depending on how you take this information.
I was kinda inspired, in spite of all drawbacks highlighted by one-star reviewers. I found the writing intense as I could not absorb more than thirty pages in a single sitting.
So, whether you like this book or not does not change its inherent value. It is grasped by certain kind of people. For others it can be boring. If you’re analytical then the book might bore the hell out of you. In any case, give it a try.
I leave the reader with this quote.
How are we writing the future of humanity? We're not writing anything, it's writing us. We're windblown leaves. We think we're the wind, but we're just the leaf.
Samantha Harvey in Orbital
Note: I had a discussion on this book with my friend. You can listen to the same over here: