The first I heard about the novel Orbital was when I read that it had won the Booker Prize for 2024. It seems I wasn’t the only one whose radar it passed under. The Seattle Public Library, usually top-of-the-line in its acquisitions, didn’t have a copy, or at least they had so few that the sudden demand ensured that it would be a long time before it was available. Even Amazon had run out. I could order it in advance, but the delivery date would be months in the future. In fact, the book appeared to be completely out of print, and after it unexpectedly won a major award, its publisher was scrambling to catch up.

I think that at least part of the sudden interest in it is that a book that appears to be science fiction so seldom wins a major literary award like the Booker. It isn’t really science fiction, but it comes close. It concerns a twenty-four hour period in the lives of six astronauts, four men and two women from five different countries, on the International Space Station. It’s a short novel, not much longer than a novella, and it has very little plot. It is more in the nature of a prose poem. It drifts from the viewpoint of one astronaut to the next, and there are extended passages describing the appearance of Earth as the space station revolves around it. In a twenty-four hour period, the station makes sixteen orbits, and the chapters are divided according to each orbit.

Harvey goes into the backgrounds of the characters, but ultimately what it amounts to is this: “Whatever they were before they came here, whatever their differences in training or background, in motive or character, whatever country they hail from and however their nations clash, they are equalized here by the delicate might of their spaceship.” The author also emphasizes that from their vantage point the politics of Earth have little significance. From space no national boundaries can be discerned; instead, the astronauts perceive the Earth as home to all, a home that needs protection. “Before long, for all of them, a desire takes hold. It’s the desire – no, the need (fueled by fervor) – to protect this huge but tiny Earth.” And: “Can humans not find peace with one another? With the Earth? It’s not a fond wish but a fretful demand.” As if the microcosm of the space station and its denizens from various lands working in harmony signifies what humankind in general could and should be like.

At heart this is a very personal novel. If you want to learn about the real intricacies of living on the space station, read the fascinating memoir Endurance: A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery by Scott Kelly, an American astronaut who spent a year there. However, often as I read Orbital I felt that just behind the musings of the characters was the author Harvey, watching the International Space Station’s live stream and using it as a springboard to ponder philosophical and existential matters. Plot appears irrelevant when confronted with such grand ideas. I liked the artistic freedom that the unusually simple structure represented. Sometimes educators and critics put literary works into stringent categories from which, they intimate, authors should not deviate, when in fact writers should feel free to approach their art in whatever damn way they please. On the other hand, I grew up reading the so-called new wave science fiction of Roger Zelazny, Samuel Delaney, Ursula Le Guin, and others, and sometimes Harvey’s prose, in comparison, strikes me as slow-moving and ponderous. Ultimately, though, I realize that every literary work is different and has to be taken on its own terms. In the case of Orbital, you should settle in for a slow, stately, elegantly-written prose poem that provides insight into the human condition from a cosmic perspective.