Earth In All Its Perspective: Orbital by Samantha Harvey

Here’s one for all the “I wasn’t really interested in getting that promotion anyway” folks.

Samantha Harvey’s “Orbital” is a slim but mega-impactful read that should come with a trigger warning for anyone with anxiety, including those that live in fear of climate change, catastrophic weather events, and well, Earth’s timeline in general.

A story of a single day in the lives of six astronauts aboard an orbiting space station, readers are invited inside the thoughts of each as they move through their routines, beginning with morning exercises and ending with a movie night, all while a mega-typhoon is swiftly moving toward landfall on Earth below.

Hence, the trigger warning. If you are at all anxious about our time on this planet and cover your ears anytime someone wants to talk about the sun eventually imploding or exploding, this might not be for you. Not that it’s a prerequisite for a Booker Prize nomination, but it does feel like any that I have read aren’t exactly warm, light-hearted rom coms. (Shuggie Bain, anyone?)

That said, if a reminder that your day job quite likely isn’t going to mean anything in a handful of generations, well, here you go! There’s nothing like an author that paints a well-illustrated picture of how many nanoseconds human life represents on the “existence of our galaxy in calendar form.” Spoiler alert: It’s not many.

This realization serves as the backdrop for each astronaut as they contemplate their own lives’ meanings. The importance of grief. The meaning of marriage. Parent-child relationships. Human connection. And, at the end of the day, our ties to the world around us, and how we understand our interdependence with nature.

“Orbital” is pretty close to exquisite in its prose and a love letter to Earth. It’s also fairly short, as previously mentioned, making it an easy one to knock out for competitive book counters and will give you a leg up in the “who’s reading the smart stuff” convo at your summer block party. Read it and go for a good long walk while we still have the privilege of doing so.