Six Degrees of Separation: From Orbital to Station Eternity

The Six Degrees of Separation meme is hosted by Kate at booksaremyfavoriteandbest. The idea behind the meme is to start with a book and use common points between two books to end up with links to six books, forming a chain. The common points may be obvious, like a word in the title or a shared theme, or more personal. Every month Kate provides the title of a book as the starting point.

The starting book this month is Orbital by Samantha Harvey. For once, I have actually read the book. It depicts one day in the life of six astronauts on the International Space Station, watching the sunrises and sunsets and monitoring a typhoon threatening inhabited islands. The reader is privy to their thoughts, and watches their activities and their regimen.

Reading Orbital motivated me to read more about life on the International Space Station. I want to know how astronauts are selected for this type of mission and how they train for it.  I don't even like to fly in an airplane (of any size) but I would love to know more about the lives of people who live in the space station.

1st degree:

My first book is from my husband's shelves: Lonely Planet's The Universe. This book has a wealth of information about Earth and the other planets, and other parts of the known universe. Photos on every page. There are smaller sections on the manned space flights and the International Space Station. A lovely book to dip into now and then.

2nd degree:

I am sticking with the space station theme throughout, and my next book is Endurance: My Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery, by Scott Kelly with Margaret Lazarus Dean, a memoir published in 2017. Per his website: "A veteran of four space flights, Kelly commanded the International Space Station (ISS) on three expeditions and was a member of the yearlong mission to the ISS." 

I have purchased a copy of this book to read sometime this year. 

3rd degree:

My next link is a short story, "Stranger Station" by Damon Knight, which I read in Bug-Eyed Monsters, edited by Bill Pronzini and Barry N. Malzberg. The story is about a race of aliens that were so massive and repulsive to humans that the contact has been sparse and only occasionally do the aliens visit a space station that is set aside especially to enable that visit. When one of the aliens comes, it is for one purpose, to provide a substance for the humans which the humans have come to rely on. The story focuses on the one human who is on the space station to facilitate the exchange with the alien being. He is alone on Stranger Station until the alien arrives, although he can communicate with a computer AI called "Aunt Jane." 

"Stranger Station" was first published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, December 1956, but has been included in a good number of anthologies since then.

4th degree:

Since reading Orbital, I have been looking for fiction set on a space station, and I found that my son has several books that fit that category. This is one he read: Diving into the Wreck by Kristine Kathlyn Rusch. The heroine of the book explores derelict space vehicles, sometimes for salvage, sometimes as a historian. The book consists of three connected novellas and at least one of them is about The Room of Lost Souls, which is an abandoned space station which most people consider a myth.  It sounds great and I will be reading this book.

5th degree:

The fifth link in my chain is to The Burning Dark by Adam Christopher. From the description on the back of the book:

Back in the day, Captain Abraham Idaho Cleveland had led the Fleet into battle against an implacable machine intelligence capable of devouring entire worlds. But after saving a planet, and getting a bum robot knee in the process, he finds himself relegated to one of the most remote backwaters in Fleetspace to oversee the decommissioning of a semi-deserted space station well past its use-by date.

This one sounds good too, so I will add it to my TBR list.

6th degree:

My sixth book is a genre blend of mystery and science fiction: Station Eternity by Mur Lafferty, first published in October 2022. 

From the back of the book:

From idyllic small towns to claustrophobic urban landscapes, Mallory Viridian is constantly embroiled in murder cases that only she has the insight to solve. But outside of a classic mystery novel, being surrounded by death doesn’t make you a charming amateur detective, it makes you a suspect and a social pariah. So when Mallory gets the opportunity to take refuge on a sentient space station, she thinks she has the solution. Surely the murders will stop if her only company is alien beings. At first her new existence is peacefully quiet…and markedly devoid of homicide.

Unfortunately for Mallory, that doesn't last very long. I love mystery and science fiction mixed, so I will probably read this one too.

My Six Degrees started in space and it stayed mostly in space. It started with a novel about our International Space Station, but took me to science fiction worlds set in the future. It also added four books to my "To Read" list.

The next Six Degrees will be on February 1st, 2025 and the starting book will be a classic – Dangerous Liaisons by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos.