Post #1617684
2026-04-22 16:18 UTC
Orbital by Samantha Harvey
It's set over the 16 orbital day and night cycles the International Space Station traverses in a single day.
It's a Booker Prize winner, so I think we can say I don't get Literature.
It's effectively a Slice Of Life novella over a time period too small for anything of note to happen. They observe a typhoon building, someone gets news, someone has a worry, but there is not time for any of this to develop in any meaningful way.
It has a pretty poetic cant to it, which goes some way to hide a lot of the time the author is listing things they have researched about the ISS but has literally no time to explore.
Not for me. I think the conceit would have been handled better by a genre fiction author.
#bookstodon #orbital
Replies (1)
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@bodger@beige.party 2026-04-22 16:22
@bloognoo We read it as part of my book group, and my thoughts were the same as yours. I spent the whole book waiting for the aliens! Or even a micro-meteor hitting the ISS and causing some action. The last chapters the team were asleep!! Not a book for me.