CL Pauwels at Large

As noted in my last WIR post, I generally avoid Oscar-winning movies and book prizes – Pulitzer, Booker, Pushcart…their choices almost always leave me cold. But the 143-page Orbital by Samantha Harvey joins Everett’s James as a welcome exception.

I ordered the ebook on a whim after reading a review somewhere (another thing I don’t read often – reviews – for reasons). The novel (!) setting and format of this novella, and my long-standing desire to travel through space (thank you, Star Trek), overrode those award-resistant doubts.

And I’m glad I did. Harvey follows the lives of the crew on the International Space Station – Russians on one end of the structure, Americans/Allies on the other…arbitrary boundaries even in space. But she does it in a fascinating way: sixteen sunrises and sunsets (from their perspective) in one 24-hour period on Earth. The chapter titles by orbit left the spatially-challenged me mentally spinning (still puzzling the ascending/descending for six of the chapters); fortunately, I was able to set those distinctions aside and lose myself in the glorious descriptions of visuals outside the station windows.

Inside the station, the potentially mundane activities of the six crew members were equally fascinating – from how they eat, sleep, and (ahem) expel waste, to the experiments they were each responsible for, how they spent their free time, and how they dealt with being away from their families for so long.

Escape the chaos of life here on Earth and join Harvey’s crew on the ISS. You’ll look at our planet – and the people who inhabit it – from an entirely different perspective.