Orbital presents dreams as truer than waking life.' Do you agree?

Published in 2023, Samantha Harvey's novel Orbital surveys an earth scarred by the Anthropocene from the vantage point of the International Space Station, interrogating whether the relentless routines of conscious survival or the expansive realm of the unconscious mind offer a deeper understanding of mortal existence.¹ While the author initially concedes that the disciplined waking hours expose humanity to the overwhelming realities of cosmic indifference, she largely reveals that the intuitive leaps of sleep and emotional memory capture a more far-reaching truth about human interconnectedness.² Harvey therefore challenges her twenty-first-century audience to look beyond the boundaries of waking logic, urging contemporary readers to recognise the enduring value of kinship that the unconscious mind brings into focus.³

Harvey initially portrays the waking reality of orbit as an alienating exposure to cosmic magnitude, yet reveals that the internal resonances of memory and shared witness forge a truth of interdependence that transcends conscious isolation.⁴ Suspended in liminal space with the collective consciousness "they are so together"⁵ yet "so alone", the author's illustration of collectivity coalesces the crew into a unified psychological entity as the isolating sublimity of the void forges interdependence as individuals yearn for a belonging waking life cannot supply. Centring on the fragmented "trail of gunpowder" projecting a "milky cover" obscuring their "siphoning eye", the roving third-person narration drains the six of their perspectives that dissipate into smoke consumed by the overwhelming magnitude of space's boundless immensity. Thus, to resist cosmic erasure readers bear witness to Shaun's "postcard of Las Meninas," reflective of mere bystanders, mirroring their "privileged anxious view" of "mother Earth" and the bonds such distance clarifies. In doing so, the image articulates the duality between beauty and burden as her readership alongside the crew experience Earth's Anthropocene transformation while refusing the emotional detachment that conscious helplessness invites. This shared visual reality narrows into a private exposure when Chie's grief dismantles physical distance, exposing a truth the waking mind attempts to suppress.⁶ Through Chie's anguished chant "mother mother mother mother"⁷, Harvey captures the introspective weight of individual grief that invites readers to childishly echo the mantra in their own minds, establishing emotional memory as a deeper reality than physical separation. Yet, the author's discernment of the storm's "building magnificence" alongside Pietro's fixation on the "particular fisherman and his family" transforms the typhoon's immensity into a microcosm of shared vulnerability. Hence, the oxymoronic enchantment of an "unearthly watery light" residing from the typhoon magnifies the "tethers of biological life" as the station illuminates "the chapel['s]" sanctified nature whereby kinship transcends the "piddling speck" of our existence into a celebration of generational shelter. Accordingly, these internal reckonings expose that emotional truth outlasts the physical isolation of orbit. Harvey initially portrays the waking reality of orbit as an alienating exposure to cosmic magnitude, yet reveals that the internal resonances of memory and shared witness forge a truth of interdependence that transcends conscious isolation.⁸