In Orbital, stewardship replaces conquest as humanity's calling.' Discuss.

Published in 2023, Samantha Harvey's novel Orbital traces sixteen circuits of an Earth scarred by the Anthropocene, interrogating whether humanity's drive for cosmic conquest must yield to a quiet ethic of stewardship.¹ While the space station initially seems a triumph of technological mastery suspended above the void, the novel reveals that witnessing the imperilled planet from orbit destabilises human assumptions of dominance, reframing humanity's absolute purpose as the guardianship of a fragile world.² Harvey therefore challenges her modern audience to abandon the aggressive pursuit of territorial expansion, urging contemporary readers to embrace care over dominion as they confront their responsibility to the vulnerable planet that sustains existence.³

Harvey initially presents the orbital perspective as a confrontation with human vulnerability, revealing that such distance dismantles illusions of conquest by fostering an intense recognition of Earth's fragility.⁴ Suspended in liminal space between connection and separation, the portrayal of the crew's collective consciousness "they are so together"⁵ yet "so alone" coalesces the six into a unified psychological entity, revealing how the void exposes the need for earthly stewardship. Centring on the fragmented "trail of gunpowder" whose "milky cover" obscures the "siphoning eye", the roving third-person narration drains the crew of perspective, their gaze consumed by an immensity heedless of human territorial claims. Thus, to resist cosmic erasure readers bear witness to Shaun's "postcard of Las Meninas", its bystanders mirroring the crew's "privileged anxious view" of "mother Earth", reframing watching from a posture of conquest to vigilant care. In doing so, this shared witness articulates the duality between beauty and burden as Harvey's readership alongside the crew experience Earth's Anthropocene transformation, remaining helpless to protect the human existence flourishing below. This collective helplessness narrows into solitary mourning when Chie's grief over her mother's death exposes the imperilled nature of terrestrial life.⁶ Through Chie's anguished chant "mother mother mother mother"⁷, the narrative perspective captures the introspective weight of individual grief, inviting readers to echo the mantra and revealing how mourning binds the six to the vulnerable planet. Yet, the storm's "building magnificence" held alongside Pietro's fixation on the "particular fisherman and his family" transforms the typhoon's immensity into a meditation on shared vulnerability, serving as a microcosm for humanity's fragile custodianship. Hence, the oxymoronic enchantment of an "unearthly watery light" magnifying the "tethers of biological life" within "the chapel['s]" sanctified shelter outlasts the "piddling speck" of human mastery, alchemising expansion into a celebration of generational protection. By interweaving this distant witness with intimate grief, Harvey establishes preservation as humanity's supreme duty. Harvey initially presents the orbital perspective as a confrontation with human vulnerability, revealing that such distance dismantles illusions of conquest by fostering an intense recognition of Earth's fragility.⁸