Orbital - by Samantha Harvey

The 2024 winner of the Booker Prize, Orbital explores the experience of six astronauts aboard the International Space Station over a single day. The book, written with the care of a nature writer, uses the astronauts' collective perspective to reflect on humanity's relationship with Earth, climate change, and the meaning of life, all while circling the globe 16 times.
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This month's Illiterati read is a loving meditation on the feelings of being removed from where it's all at, watching Life happen from so far afield that it loses relevance, not only to the observers but to perspective itself, while nevertheless insisting on defining our existential center. ISS astronauts, soon to be a bygone marker of a bygone era of our bygone species, reflect through port windows on the gravity of their earthly scenario.

If that doesn't apathetically scream Gen-X to you like Michael Hutchence rolling rat-haired young ladies and Djarum clove cigarettes around on the floor of Dogs in Space, helping reinforce our firm crush on any collaboration between the supposedly opposed hard and soft sciences, I don't know what will.

Illiterati are also launching a New Media component to our reading series. A week or two after each book reading we plan to meet for a group screening of the story's film adaptation. Prepare yourself for lively, non-disrespectful discussion and snacks!