Harvey, Samantha
Entry updated 26 February 2024. Tagged: Author.
(? - ) UK teacher and author whose third novel, All Is Song (2012), clearly does not represent its reincarnation of Socrates (470-399 BCE) in contemporary London as literally intended, though there is a clear similitude between the eidolon and the man dying now. She is of sf interest for her fifth novel, Orbital (2023), a contemplative rendering of its six protagonists' sensory responses to their visions of the planet beneath them during sixteen orbits of their Space Station, which amount to a single day of the world. The trip to the Moon undertaken at this point, the political situation beneath them, and the visible signs of Anthropocene devastation, hint at a moment in the very Near Future. The flattened affect of the six hints at the supernumerary future of flesh creatures in the exploration/exploitation of the universe. The novel ends with a vision of our Posthuman destiny, if any of us survive the Suicide below, an insight quoted in at least one review of the tale: as "exo-skeletal-cybernetic-machine-deathless-postbeings who've harnessed the energy of some hapless star and guzzled it dry." [JC]
Samantha Harvey
born UK
works (highly selected)
- All Is Song (London: Jonathan Cape, 2012) [hb/]
- Orbital (London: Jonathan Cape, 2023) [hb/]
links
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