Bright Futures SCI-FI BOOK CLUB: Orbital

Bright Futures: Return of the Sci Fi Book Club!

Please note this event will be in person at the shop.

Mara will be your host.

Our December meeting of Bright Futures will be discussing Orbital by Samantha Harvey

The Book:

WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 2024

A team of astronauts in the International Space Station collect meteorological data, conduct scientific experiments and test the limits of the human body. But mostly they observe.

Together they watch their silent blue planet, circling it sixteen times, spinning past continents and cycling through seasons, taking in glaciers and deserts, the peaks of mountains and the swells of oceans. Endless shows of spectacular beauty witnessed in a single day. Yet although separated from the world they cannot escape its constant pull.

News reaches them of the death of a mother, and with it comes thoughts of returning home. They look on as a typhoon gathers over an island and people they love, in awe of its magnificence and fearful of its destruction. The fragility of human life fills their conversations, their fears, their dreams.

So far from earth, they have never felt more part - or protective - of it. They begin to ask, what is life without earth? What is earth without humanity?

Please support the bookshop & the book club by ordering your books through Lighthouse, Use the code FACE-HUGGERS for bookclubbers 10% off.