Shelly Dennison reviews the Booker Prize winning climate fiction novel Orbital by Samantha Harvey:
The Climate Fiction Prize was launched at the Hay Festival in June 2024 with the aim of celebrating ‘the most inspiring novels tackling the climate crisis.’ The organisers explained their vision for the prize: ‘Through great stories, it will support societies to fully grasp the climate change threat and to embrace its solutions. It’s not enough for audiences to know about climate change; they need to see an uncertain future and understand that change is urgent but possible.’ The longlist was announced in November 2024, featuring nine novels covering an array of literary styles, genres and settings.
Climate fiction is broadly defined as stories that engage with the climate crisis and our response to it. Fiction allows writers and readers to imaginatively enter into different worlds, different ways of living and different visions of what change might look like in a way that non-fiction can’t. The Climate Fiction Prize website suggests three broad questions that might be asked when thinking about climate fiction – how is the major challenge of our times being reflected in fiction? How does fiction allow us to explore our individual and collective response to climate change? What impact can climate fiction have?
As a keen fiction reader, I find these questions fascinating and decided to read my way through at least some of the longlist starting with Samantha Harvey’s ‘Orbital’. ‘Orbital’ hit the headlines in November, when it won the 2024 Booker Prize. Whilst climate fiction is clearly having something of a moment, it’s not the first time it’s featured on the Booker list. Back in 2018 Richard Powers’ brilliant novel ‘The Overstory’ was shortlisted. His sprawling tale follows nine interlocking stories of activism and resistance, as ordinary Americans fight to save their trees and forests. ‘Orbital’, by contrast is a tightly constructed, slim book. Its 136 pages follow a day in the life of the four astronauts (from England, America, Italy and Japan) and two Russian cosmonauts in their spacecraft. Each of the day’s 16 orbits is a chapter. Despite this tight construction, it’s focus is naturally wider than ‘The Overstory’ as it covers the whole planet and space.
It’s a beautifully written and thoughtful book, often feeling more akin to poetry than prose. The descriptions of the view of the planet are the literary equivalent of the sequences at the start of a David Attenborough series ‘the pleating and folding of the Dolomites and Alps, dark snowless peaks, indigo valleys, olive plains, the endless run of riverbeds.’ This is a book that delights in showing us the wonder of the Earth. This sweeping narrative sits in tension with the claustrophobic feel of life on board, the constraints of living with little privacy, the routine tasks and experiments that fill the days. However, the very literary style can have a slightly distancing effect and the conciseness of the novel means that the characters don’t feel as fully fleshed out as they might. This is a shame, because the story most comes to life when it considers what it is to be human. The most touching strand is the Japanese astronaut, Chie, starting to process the death of her mother which has happened just a few days prior to the narrative. The descriptions of her wooden house are powerful because they are specific. The same applies to the strand which deals with an approaching typhoon; when Pietro is recalling meeting a fisherman and his family in the Philippines, the typhoon becomes personal rather than a force. The few items the crew have brought with them from home include a postcard, a photograph and a felt moon given by a son. These touches help ground them to their earth-bound lives. There are more philosophical tangents, at one point the characters consider whether robots could do their jobs, ‘but what would it be to cast out into space creations that had no eyes to see it and no heart to fear or exult in it?’ The American astronaut is a Christian, and this allows some discussion of the idea of a Creator.
Scrolling back to the Climate Fiction Prize’s questions about how climate change is being reflected in fiction means asking, firstly, how does ‘Orbital’ allow us to explore our individual and collective response to climate change? And secondly what impact might it have? There are two key things worth pulling out here, one is that this is a book about wonder and awe, the central message is why would we not want to protect something as beautiful and precious as Earth? The other is that it is about recognising the impact of humanity, ‘The planet is shaped by the sheer amazing force of human want, which has changed everything, the forests, the poles, the reservoirs, the glaciers, the rivers, the seas, the mountains, the coastlines, the skies, a planet contoured and landscaped by want.’ Pollutants in the air, melting ice sheets and typhoons are all mentioned. This is all fairly clearly delineated. The difficulty comes when thinking about impact. Space exploration is, to put it mildly, not an option open to most of us. The characters are at their most relatable, not when viewing the world from afar, but when when dreaming of fresh doughnuts or autumn leaves. This isn’t a book that deals with solutions or offers alternative visions of how to live. The ‘so what now?’ is left unsaid. For some readers this may work perfectly well as a spur to action but I suspect for others ‘Orbital’ will remain on the level of simply being a beautiful book. By contrast, ‘The Overstory’ discussed earlier, shows a variety of possible responses and is concerned with the perhaps more immediately relatable subject of trees.
For me, ‘Orbital’ was a book to admire rather than love. There’s a slightly dream-like haziness about the shimmering prose that, ultimately, I found distancing rather than compelling. I’m looking forward to reading more of the Climate Fiction Prize longlist though and seeing how other novelists approach the theme.
Shelly Dennison is a director of JRI and Digital Engagement Officer at CPRE Bedfordshire, the countryside charity.