I stumbled upon Chris Hadfield’s Masterclass on space travel almost by accident. [Chris Hadfield is a Canadian test pilot and astronaut who has spent a considerable amount of time on the International Space Station.] I had a coworker who firmly believed the Earth was flat, and I firmly disagreed. But I also knew very little about space. So every time my coworker blurted out another random “fact” that he had picked up from the internet, I was baffled. Thus, Chris Hadfield’s Masterclass on space travel […]

Best for: Anyone wanting a beautiful bit of writing that isn’t about a plot so much as a feeling. In a nutshell: A day in the life of four astronauts and two cosmonauts as they orbit the earth 16 times. Worth quoting: “We find out about our own unspecialness and in a flush of innocence we feel quite glad – if we’re not special then we might not be alone.” “We think we’re the wind, but we’re just the leaf.” Why I chose it: This […]

“Our lives here are inexpressibly trivial and momentous at once, it seems he’s about to wake up and say. Both repetitive and unprecedented. We matter greatly and not at all.” “Trivial and momentous at once” feels like an appropriate descriptor for Samantha Harvey’s “Orbital.” The book details a single day in the lives of four astronauts and two cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station. Over the course of 24 hours, the characters orbit the Earth sixteen times, witnessing sixteen sunrises and sixteen sunsets. Most of […]

In the near future, six astronauts (well, technically four astronauts and two cosmonauts) spend a day on the International Space Station orbiting the planet sixteen times. While they do so, a separate crew of astronauts prepare for the first moon landing in decades. Back on Earth, a massive superstorm is bearing down on the South Pacific, and the crew is tasked with documenting its progress from space. A spacewalk is conducted, scientific experiments involving lab mice and heart cells are monitored, and the crew does […]