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Space

Orbital wins the Booker prize: “I see it as a kind of space pastoral"

Samantha Harvey has won the UK's top fiction prize for a novel that takes place over 24 hours on the International Space Station

By Rowan Hooper

12 November 2024

New Scientist. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

The International Space Station

MSFC/NASA

Samantha Harvey, who has won the UK’s top fiction award, the Booker prize, for her novel Orbital, has created a new genre: nature writing about space.

“I see it as a kind of space pastoral,” Harvey told the New Scientist podcast earlier in the year. “I wanted to see what you could do with words in a painterly way to try to conjure up that rapturous, joyful, extraordinary and also now somewhat grief-stricken view of the Earth.”

Orbital takes place over 24 hours on the International Space Station (ISS). There are six…

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