Orbital (SF) - Samantha Harvey ***

This slim novel, focusing primarily on the inhabitants of the International Space Station, belongs firmly in the sub-genre of science fiction that is Lab Lit. This is SF where the science and technology is today's - some Lab Lit supporters suggest this means it isn't science fiction at all, but I happy to class it as such. The only slight extension to current knowledge is that it is set a little in the future, as one of the obsessions of the ISS astronauts is an upcoming manned moon launch, which inevitably makes them feel more than a touch inferior.

I do like the idea of these low-level astronauts feeling second rank compared with the moon landers - they are definitely in the 'bike with training wheels' class once there is some real space exploration going on. Thanks to Samantha Harvey, I can think of them as being like supermarket cola compared with the real thing (my simile, not hers). So an excellent premise. But I did find the way the book is written extremely difficult to get on with.

Frankly, it all feels more than a touch pretentious. Take the opening sentence 'Rotating about the earth in their spacecraft they are so together, and so alone, that even their thoughts, their internal mythologies, at times convene.' It made me feel a little queasy, with no weightlessness required. The very mannered writing style makes it difficult to identify with the characters or become engaged in the thin plot. Even when there's a good opportunity to cut down on the telling and do more showing, in a deep conversation about the Challenger disaster, it is written as reported text rather than dialogue, which dehumanises it for no good reason.

There are a couple of iffy bits of science too. The astronauts take lots of photos of a storm to help with meteorology - real ISS crew certainly do take pictures of storms, but they are pretty much valueless compared with satellite imagery for weather forecasting purposes. And the Sun is described as ‘an average star in a solar system of average everything’ - where both are actually relatively unusual.

The concept had a lot going for it, but the over-literary delivery spoiled it for me.

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Review by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here

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