"Orbital" by Samantha Harvey

For the month of June, we will read the Protected content "Orbital" by British writer Samantha Harvey.

Winner of the Protected content Prize, it incorporates elements of science fiction, literary fiction and philosophical drama. It follows six fictional astronauts over 24 hours on an orbiting space station.

Description from Goodreads:
"A slender novel of epic power and the winner of the Booker Prize Protected content , Orbital deftly snapshots one day in the lives of six women and men traveling through space. Selected for one of the last space station missions of its kind before the program is dismantled, these astronauts and cosmonauts—from America, Russia, Italy, Britain, and Japan—have left their lives behind to travel at a speed of over seventeen thousand miles an hour as the earth reels below. We glimpse moments of their earthly lives through brief communications with family, their photos and talismans; we watch them whip up dehydrated meals, float in gravity-free sleep, and exercise in regimented routines to prevent atrophying muscles; we witness them form bonds that will stand between them and utter solitude. Most of all, we are with them as they behold and record their silent blue planet. Their experiences of sixteen sunrises and sunsets and the bright, blinking constellations of the galaxy are at once breathtakingly awesome and surprisingly intimate."

207 pages

Pdf/Epub download link:
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