Samantha Harvey, who has won the UK鈥檚 top fiction award, the Booker prize, for her novel Orbital, has created a new genre: nature writing about space.
鈥淚 see it as a kind of space pastoral,鈥� Harvey told the New 杏吧原创 podcast earlier in the year. 鈥淚 wanted to see what you could do with words in a painterly way to try to conjure up that rapturous, joyful, extraordinary and also now somewhat grief-stricken view of the Earth.鈥�
Orbital takes place over 24 hours on the International Space Station (ISS). There are six humans on board, who during the span of the novel observe 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets. We learn about their lives and their thoughts while in space, but the main character is the planet.
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In an announcement from the Booker prize about Orbital鈥檚 win, chair of judges Edmund de Waal said that Harvey鈥檚 鈥渓anguage of lyricism and acuity鈥� makes our world strange and new for us鈥�. The judges had been unanimous in choosing the novel as their winner, he said, ahead of shortlisted books that included Rachel Kushner鈥檚 Creation Lake. 鈥淥ur unanimity about Orbital recognises its beauty and ambition. It reflects Harvey鈥檚 extraordinary intensity of attention to the precious and precarious world we share,鈥� said de Waal.
There is great beauty in the view of our planet from space and, as Harvey told the New 杏吧原创聽podcast, it is inevitably tinged with grief for what we are doing to it. But she didn鈥檛 write her novel with a climate fiction hat on. She wanted to write a book about joy and beauty because those feelings are empowering.
鈥淭o be able to see beauty and to feel joy and to feel your heart expand 鈥� I wanted to try and capture that on the page because it feels like my only form of resistance,鈥� she said.
Harvey was clear that, of course, she will never go to space. But what if Jeff Bezos reads the book, rings her up and says 鈥淪amantha, you鈥檝e written this beautiful book and as your reward I want to invite you to space.鈥� Would she go?
鈥淚鈥檇 take it. Yeah, absolutely.鈥�
She was ambivalent about the boom in space tourism. 鈥淭here is a part of me that thinks we should deal with the problems that we have on Earth 鈥� which are numerous and profound 鈥� first,鈥� Harvey said.
Although she said the current space race feels like more of the same competitiveness between companies and nations that has contributed to the crises engulfing Earth鈥檚 climate and nature, she highlighted the collaborative example of the ISS over the past 20-plus years. It is one reason she has two Russian cosmonauts in her book, along with four astronauts.
鈥淸The approach to the ISS] has been science-based, it hasn鈥檛 been a land grab, it鈥檚 been about nations cooperating with one another and it鈥檚 sad that we are coming to an end of that era,鈥� she said.
The Booker prize, which is worth 拢50,000 to its winner, has been won in the past by authors including Salman Rushdie, Hilary Mantel and Richard Flanagan.
