A book written from the perspective of ISS astronauts. Follows 24 hours on the station, shows a little interaction between the astronauts but is mostly a description of an awe of earth, felt by all, with their individual connections to family life below, to political qualms, to the visibility of human habitation at night, and the complete lack of evidence during the day. Where are the borders, one astronaut thinks to themselves? They briefly touch on politics, how much of a farce, even theatre, it feels when looking at earth from above. If only it were so, another rebuffs. "The planet is shaped by the sheer amazing force of human want, which has changed everything, the forests, the poles, the reservoirs, the glaciers, the rivers, the seas, the mountains, the coastlines, the skies, a planet contoured and landscaped by want. (p.75)... just as the sculpting force of gravity has made a sphere of the planet and pushed and pulled the tides which shape the coasts, so has politics sculpted and shaped and left evidence of itself everywhere. Force, as an impersonal energy. Force that runs through the hands of people and of generations. From above, it can be seen as running through people but it appears as an energy in its own right, with its own laws, that humans can handle, but not control (as in Weil, S. 1939 The Iliad or the poem of force). And this shaping force does not just run through people.

 

The typhoon that morphs into a super typhoon exemplifies this as it builds and finally crashed the Philippine coast, shrinking and shaping islands as it does. The crew is asked to take pictures of it to help the ground react to the storm. But they are powerless to do anything else, as they watch it hit the shores and transform them instantly to chaos. The novel seems to illustrate that paradox of meaningfulness and its absence, of the individual human and mother earth, of their dynamic relationship with one another. Who is who? Who controls who? We are left to wonder.

 

As the astronauts get used to the life in microgravity, their body awareness shifts, they may feel like a tadpole, their heads dominating their awareness, they lose knowledge of where their limbs are at a given time, and despite extensive daily exercise, they lose muscle, the heart shrinks, the nose turns dry, and food tastes like the packaging looks: plain. And yet, there appears an odd sense of peace that settles in the souls on the station. Occasionally lists are presented, of annoying or exciting things they remember from earth. The lists read so oddly, present earthly life as far removed, both missed and transcended. Who cares about such trivialities, there is earth, there is Germany, there is Hong Kong, and there is the typhoon. The astronauts forget how to gossip, are unsure what to say to others on the ground, how could they describe what they see? How could they care for something they do not see? Not being involved in human activities on the ground, the appear as disinterested, as people on the ground appear about the wonder of earth. The Russian capsule and the European ban each other from using their toilets, apparently a directive from the ground. Perhaps the only piece of gossip they engage with, and they hardly even do that. Either side cannot see what the other does. And this odd parallel may be something that only the reader can see as they look on the page, like the astronauts look onto earth. In hindsight. What remains is the sense of wonder. And that is what might push humans together.

 

They understand they have worked their whole life to become an astronaut, one joking but not joking that he was one in the womb already. Now that they are on the station, well they are nothing in a sense but an experiment for the species, a means to an end. This realisation seems not to hit very hard, it does not really appear as a disappointment. They appear above human matters, and yet are right within them, only there because of human scientific activities on a capsule burning as much fuel as a million cars. They each feel an ambush of happiness at a time, with a desire to never leave the capsule, able to connect with any of the smallest things around them: a piece of Kevlar, the experimentation table: the "idea of home has imploded - grown so big, so distended and full, that it has caved in on itself" p.12. Up here, staying up here, Chie feels, she could do forever. It is only when she returns to the ground that her mother is really dead. The astronauts float in space. Order then chaos, then order, then chaos. The station continues on its orbit.