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In that regard, it’s interesting Alexandra Harris of The Guardian wrote that Orbital is “a hopeful book (…) it studies people who act on their hope. It’s an Anthropocene book resistant to doom.” I couldn’t disagree more. Is that yet another a case of the eye of the beholder, or did Harris misread?
I admit Harvey leaves open a small, small possibility for some kind of future interplanetary harmonious human life, but as she shows too much awareness of climate change, deep time and human nature, that possibility is one on paper only, purely academic, “some grand abstract dream”. All things considered, there is no techno-optimism in Orbital. Our “restless spirit of endeavour” made space flight possible, but will end it too. She mentions the Challenger, and our four astronauts and two cosmonauts each flew up to the ISS on a “kerosene bomb”. Pietro hesitates to call progress good, and it is human want that has clearly wrecked the planet – the orange of fires in the Amazon forest visible from space. It’s not humanity per se either, Orbital does not play the blame/shame game, Harvey admitting that probably all life “leaves some kind of destruction behind it”.
I’m not even sure the book’s main characters act on hope: they seem to be driven by deep irrational urges just as the next guy, and lack free will – both in their decisions to go into space, but also in how they spend their meticulously schemed time aboard their close quartered titanium trap.
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Full review on Weighing A Pig
Bormgans
