51 pages • 1 hour read
Samantha HarveyOrbital
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Human Cost of Climate Change
Although the novel takes place in the low orbit of space, much of it concerns the relationship between the station crew and what is happening on the planet below. A major example of this is the looming threat of the storm that forms at the start of the novel and makes landfall by the end. Inasmuch as the novel is a chronicle of a day in the life of several astronauts, it is also a subtle cautionary tale about the destructive impact of climate change and its inequitable costs.
The typhoon forms over the Pacific Ocean and hurtles rapidly toward Southeast Asia, where it makes landfall over three countries that commonly experience typhoons—the Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia. Pietro serves as a lens into the tragedy that this event entails, thanks to his relationship with a fisherman on the island of Samar. Pietro hopes that the fisherman might get out in time before the typhoon strikes, but he also realizes that the fisherman has nowhere to go since his entire life is concentrated on the island. This raises the question of the sustainability of evacuation as a calamity response. If the proper response to a calamity that happens on a regular basis is evacuation, then it suggests that an area is uninhabitable, at least for certain portions of the year. At the same time, it is inequitable for the fisherman and his compatriots to bear the brunt of the calamity when none of them are responsible for the long-term causes that lead to the disaster.
Simultaneous with the formation of the typhoon is the launch of the new lunar mission, which promises the start of the next era in space exploration. When Shaun asks Pietro how this new mission reshapes the destiny of humankind, Pietro quips that it is being written by billionaires, who prefer to direct their resources toward rocket fuel rather than develop systems that would alleviate the burdens of people like the fisherman. Corollary to this is the fact that all the station crew members hail from Global North nations, countries that are traditionally associated with the kind of impact that negatively affects the world’s climate. In Chapter 11, the novel makes this explicit by examining the ways the space missions play into “the politics of want” (111), a term that the novel uses to refer to the Global North’s propensity to claim the world’s resources for its own interests. The world is literally reshaped by these nations’ desires, leading to deforestation and the rise in global temperature.
At the end of the novel, the lunar mission crew laugh with ground control over the story of a Chinese man who was struck by lightning more than anyone else on Earth. They interpret the story as a tale of idiocy, believing that the man had deliberately intended to be struck so many times. The ambiguity over whether this was actually the case hints at the mindset that surrounds space missions when it comes to its contribution to climate change. The new crew members have a callousness surrounding death, and this contrasts the thoughtfulness and dread with which the station crew views the impact of their programs’ actions on humanity. While Harvey admits admiration of many elements of space exploration, she also emphasizes through her nuanced perspective that improving the lives of people on Earth should take precedence over the potential colonization of new planets.
The Cosmic Insignificance of Humanity
With the launch of the lunar mission, the station crew members are left to contemplate the sudden sense of aimlessness that falls over their efforts. They can no longer feel that their actions are important when other people are taking bigger steps in space exploration that overshadow their own. The novel inflates this sense of insignificance by considering the smallness of the Earth against the vastness of the universe. It is difficult to think that anything is important or worthwhile in the grand scope of cosmic history.
In Chapter 18, the novel compresses all of cosmic history into a single year, imagining the Big Bang as January 1. Much of that year goes by before humanity even appears, emerging only in the final seconds of that year. This underscores the fact that human history is dwarfed by the scale of the universe to which it belongs. There may be other civilizations on other planets whose histories can help contextualize the meaning of human existence—a hypothesis that the Voyager probes attempt to investigate—but the lack of evidence toward that theory only deepens the sense of insignificance that surrounds human endeavor. In effect, human history is the result of a long series of accidents. Without the intention of intelligent creation, nothing has a destiny.
Shaun argues that this isn’t the case, interpreting every part of the universe as a sign that humanity was created with a certain level of heed. His hypothetical argument with Nell stalls on their differing interpretations of the universe, with neither one able to argue beyond a difference in observation. However, even Shaun’s faith is shaken by the incongruence between his interpretation and the suffering of certain segments of humanity, as evidenced by his dream in Chapter 20. He cannot make sense of a God who creates a species in his image, only to make it susceptible to suffering.
Chie’s navigation of grief offers a way forward through the feeling of insignificance of humanity. Looking back on her mother’s life, she tries to make sense of a portrait of her mother defiantly looking at the stars on the day of the first moon landing. Considering that her mother was a survivor of the 1945 atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Chie interprets that her mother’s life and, consequently, her own life were accidents of history. In this sense, her mother encouraged her to make something of this accident—a miracle, as she puts it—to make it worthwhile. This is what it means to honor the miracle of her life.
The Inevitability of Endings
Early on, the loss of Chie’s mother establishes the novel’s preoccupation with temporality and ephemerality. The knowledge that all things must eventually end not only haunts her as a person who must reckon with her mother’s death more viscerally when she returns home; it also perturbs the other astronauts as they consider the trajectories of their lives and the universe that surrounds them.
The novel leverages the distortion of time as a unique feature of space travel. For every 24 hours that pass in orbit, several whole days pass on Earth. No matter how much time Chie has experienced since she left the planet, much more time has elapsed for her mother. By going to space, Chie has, in a sense, accelerated her mother’s life to its very end. This draws a conundrum around her ambitions for her life: Either it was good for her to honor the miracle of her life by going to space, or it was better for her to remain on Earth and make the most of her time with her mother before she died. This choice is an illusion since there was no way Chie could have anticipated her mother’s death before she went into a space, yet it is difficult for her to elude being haunted by that choice in retrospect.
Fears of the end haunt Anton as well once he discovers a lump on his neck that threatens his career ambitions to travel to the moon. With the knowledge that the lump may render him ineligible for further missions, the integrity of his life starts to collapse, enabling him to consider the end of his marriage as well. Furthermore, the novel ends with the implication that the end is coming for the space station as well, thanks to cracks that appear on the modules and the foreshadowing of its eventual burial in the Pacific Ocean. Chapter 18 brings this sense of ending to an extreme as it hints at the very end of human life, dwarfing the feelings that surround these various endings.
Despite the relentlessness of time and the societal progress it entails, the novel uses the image of cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev as reassurance of the important roles that the six astronauts play in human history. If the station crew feels insignificant in the light of the lunar mission, then Krikalev, one of the first cosmonauts to inhabit the station, should feel even worse, as his efforts have been overshadowed by those of all the crew members who succeeded him. Instead, the novel frames his image as one of satisfaction and knowing resignation to the future. He understood that his efforts were destined to be overshadowed, yet this does not diminish the influence he has had on the present station cosmonauts or the other crew members on the station. Krikalev serves as an emblem of inspiration in the same way that Chie’s mother inspires her to go on living after her dream. No matter how futile and lonely time makes them feel, they have still achieved something that few others have. This aims to remove the dread associated with endings. While inevitable, they are not an indication of failure or insignificance; rather, they serve as a reminder of the inextinguishable value of continuous human efforts to thrive.
