(The Conversation) – Samantha Harvey’s Orbital has won the 2024 Booker prize. What it so skilfully and ambitiously exposes is the human cost of space flight set against the urgency of the climate crisis.

While a typhoon of life-threatening proportions gathers across south-east Asia, six astronauts and cosmonauts hurtle around Earth on the International Space Station. Their everyday routine of tasteless food and laboratory work is in stark contrast to the awesome spectacle of the blue planet, oscillating between night and day, dark and light, where international borders are meaningless.

Orbital was written during lockdown when the meaning of home (for those lucky enough to have one) changed forever. There’s a sense in which Harvey’s six astronauts return us to that moment when our homes became prisons and we were forced to contemplate the global effects of a virus that had no respect for national boundaries.

On the International Space Station, borders are only visible on the side of the Earth that is under night and only really as clusters of artificial light which shows cities. Rivers are “nonsensical scorings … like strands of long fallen hair” and “the other side of the world will arrive in 40 minutes” blurring it all.

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Russian cosmonaut Anton contemplates US astronaut Michael Collins’ iconic photograph of Apollo 11 leaving the surface of the Moon in 1969 with the Earth beyond. He thinks “no Russian mind should be steeped in these thoughts”, but he is captivated by where the people are in the photograph. Is Collins the only human not to appear in it? Or is he the only human presence we can be sure of?

Shaun has a postcard of Diego Velázquez’s Las Meninas, sent to him by his wife. The painting’s complex composition has been said to create a unique illusion of reality where it is unclear who the subject is. Is it the viewer? The royal child? King Philip IV and Queen Mariana of Spain who are depicted on the wall?

“Welcome,” Shaun’s wife writes on the postcard, “to the labyrinth of mirrors that is human life.” The Italian astronaut Pietro solves the labyrinth with the simple observation that the dog at the child’s side must surely be the subject of the painting. “[It is] the only thing… that isn’t slightly laughable or trapped within a matrix of vanities.” Humans, Shaun concludes, are no big deal.

While we gaze at ourselves and try to “ascertain what makes us different” from a dog, which as French theorist Michel Foucault also observed is the only object in the painting that has no function other than to be seen, it reminds us that our differences are negligible. As Shaun concludes, we are also animals fighting for survival.

In 16 orbits, the Earth on its tilted axis delivers a succession of landmasses that the astronauts can name but are de-familiarised by distance and momentum. The Pyramids, the New Zealand fjords, and a desert of dunes are “entirely abstract [and] … could just as easily be a closeup of one of the heart cells they have in their Petri dishes”. Japanese astronaut Chie’s laboratory mice – the canaries in the coal mine of their endeavour – finally learn to negotiate micro gravity “rounding their shoebox module like little flying carpets”. And, on a spacewalk, British astronaut Nell looks back at the “vast spread of the space station and, in this moment it, not earth, feels like home”.

This disassociation from the planet is common among returned astronauts who often report a feeling of closer affinity with their spacecraft. Harvey’s evocative prose describes the tension between a longing for the planet they think of as “mother” and the ambition to leave home forever. At one point Shaun wonders why they are trying to go where the universe doesn’t want them when “there’s a perfectly good earth just there that does.” But later he expresses frustration with the necessity to orbit two hundred and fifty miles above the earth. The moon, he reckons, is just the start.

What Harvey’s novel so skilfully exposes is the human cost of space flight set against the urgency of the climate crisis. The future of humanity is written, Shaun tells Pietro, “with the gilded pens of billionaires”. So while an unprecedented weather event threatens life below, the six astronauts and cosmonauts are rigorously documenting “their own selves”, taking “blood, urine, faecal and saliva samples” and monitoring “heart rates and blood pressure and sleep patterns” to satisfy some “grand abstract dream of interplanetary life” away from Earth.

Orbital is a slim volume of 135 pages but the economy of Harvey’s writing manages to convey a whole universe of meaning. She taps the contemporary zeitgeist of planetary insecurity alongside the span of history from Las Meninas to the spectacle of astronauts “imagineered, branded and ready”, prepared for consumption by “Hollywood and sci-fi, Space Odyssey and Disney.” “They’re humans,” writes Harvey, “with a godly view that’s the blessing and also the curse.”

Hollywood aside, I was reminded more of John Carpenter’s budget film Dark Star where bored astronauts on an interminable mission to destroy unstable planets are fixated on their dwindling supply of toilet paper. There is a sense, in Orbital, that the mundanity of decay is already overwhelming the spectacle of orbit. The module is “old and creaky” and “a crack has appeared”. The International Space Station is, after all, due to be decommissioned in 2031. Harvey has written a novel for the end of the world as we know it. The hope it offers is that we might learn to know the earth differently, while we can.

Debra Benita Shaw, Debra Benita Shaw is Reader in Cultural Theory in the School of Architecture and Visual Arts, University of East London

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

During the first few weeks of the Trump administration, we’ve seen increased pressure on Muslim and immigrant communities in the United States.

In the face of these threats, which Marvel superhero might be best equipped to defend the people, ideals and institutions under attack? Some comic fans and critics are pointing to Kamala Khan, the new Ms. Marvel.

Khan, the brainchild of comic writer G. Willow Wilson and editor Sana Amanat, is a revamp of the classic Ms. Marvel character (originally named Carol Danvers and created in 1968). First introduced in early 2014, Khan is a Muslim, Pakistani-American teenager who fights crime in Jersey City and occasionally teams up with the Avengers.

Since Donald Trump’s inauguration, fans have created images of Khan tearing up a photo of the president, punching him (evoking a famous 1941 cover of Captain America punching Hitler) and grieving in her room. But the new Ms. Marvel’s significance extends beyond symbolism.

In Kamala Khan, Wilson and Amanat have created a superhero whose patriotism and contributions to Jersey City emerge because of her Muslim heritage, not despite it. She challenges the assumptions many Americans have about Muslims and is a radical departure from how the media tend to depict Muslim-Americans. She shows how Muslim-Americans and immigrants are not forces that threaten communities – as some would argue – but are people who can strengthen and preserve them.

Superhero-in-training

After inhaling a mysterious gas, Kamala Khan discovers she can stretch, enlarge, shrink and otherwise manipulate her body. Like many superheroes, she chooses to keep her identity a secret. She selects the Ms. Marvel moniker in homage to the first Ms. Marvel, Carol Danvers, who has since given up the name in favor of becoming Captain Marvel. Khan cites her family’s safety and her desire to lead a normal life, while also fearing that “the NSA will wiretap our mosque or something.”

As she wrestles with her newfound powers, her parents grow concerned about broken curfews and send her to the local imam for counseling. Rather than reinforcing her parents’ curfew or prying the truth from Khan, though, Sheikh Abdullah says, “I am asking you for something more difficult. If you insist on pursuing this thing you will not tell me about, do it with the qualities benefiting an upright young woman: courage, strength, honesty, compassion and self-respect.”

Her experience at the mosque becomes an important step on her journey to superheroism. Sheikh Abdullah contributes to her education, as does Wolverine. Islam is not a restrictive force in her story. Instead, the religion models for Khan many of the traits she needs in order to become an effective superhero. When her mother learns the truth about why her daughter is sneaking out, she “thank[s] God for having raised a righteous child.”

The comics paint an accurate portrait of Jersey City. Her brother Aamir is a committed Salafi (a conservative and sometimes controversial branch of Sunni Islam) and member of his university’s Muslim Student Association. Her best friend and occasional love interest, Bruno, works at a corner store and comes from Italian roots. The city’s diversity helps Kamala as she learns to be a more effective superhero. But it also rescues her from being a stand-in for all Muslim-American or Jersey City experiences.

Fighting a ‘war on terror culture’

Kamala’s brown skin and costume – self-fashioned from an old burkini – point to Marvel Comics’ desire to diversify its roster of superheroes (as well as writers and artists). As creator Sana Amanat explained on “Late Night With Seth Meyers” last month, representation is a powerful thing, especially in comics. It matters when readers who feel marginalized can see people like themselves performing heroic acts.

As one of 3.3 million Muslim-Americans, Khan flips the script on what Moustafa Bayoumi, author of “This Muslim American Life,” calls a “war on terror culture” that sees Muslim-Americans “not as complex human being[s] but only as purveyor[s] of possible future violence.”

Bayoumi’s book echoes other studies that detail the heightened suspicion and racial profiling Muslim-Americans have faced since 9/11, whether it’s in the workplace or interactions with the police. Each time there’s been a high-profile terrorist attack, these experiences, coupled with hate crimes and speech, intensify. Political rhetoric – like Donald Trump’s proposal to have a Muslim registry or his lie that thousands of Muslims cheered from Jersey City rooftops after the Twin Towers fell – only fans the flames.

Scholars of media psychology see this suspicion fostered, in part, by negative representations of Muslims in both news media outlets and popular culture, where they are depicted as bloodthirsty terrorists or slavish informants to a non-Muslim hero.

These stereotypes are so entrenched that a single positive Muslim character cannot counteract their effects. In fact, some point to the dangers of “balanced” representations, arguing that confronting stereotypes with wholly positive images only enforces a simplistic division between “good” and “bad” Muslims.

Unbreakable

Kamala Khan, however, signals an important development in cultural representations of Muslim-Americans. It’s not just because she is a powerful superhero instead of a terrorist. It’s because she is, at the same time, a clumsy teenager who makes a mountain of mistakes while trying to balance her abilities, school, friends and family. And it’s because Wilson surrounds Kamala with a diverse assortment of characters who demonstrate the array of heroic (and not-so-heroic) actions people can take.

For example, in one of Ms. Marvel’s most powerful narrative arcs, a planet attacks New York, leading to destruction eerily reminiscent of 9/11. Kamala works to protect Jersey City while realizing that her world has changed – and will change – irrevocably.

Carol Danvers appears to fill Kamala in on the gravity of the situation, telling her, “The fate of the world is out of your hands. It always was. But your fate – what you decide to do right now – is still up to you … Today is the day you stand up.” Kamala connects the talk with Sheikh Abdullah’s lectures about the value of one’s deeds, once again linking her superhero and religious training to rise to the occasion. In both cases, the lectures teach Kamala to take a stand to protect her community.

Arriving at the high school gym now serving as a safe haven for Jersey City residents, Kamala realizes her friends and classmates have been inspired by her heroism. They safely transport their neighbors to the gym while outfitting the space with water, food, dance parties and even a “non-denominational, non-judgmental prayer area.” The community response prompts Kamala to realize that “even if things are profoundly not okay, at least we’re not okay together. And even if we don’t always get along, we’re still connected by something you can’t break. Something there isn’t even a word for. Something … beautiful.”

Kamala Khan is precisely the hero America needs today, but not because of a bat sign in the sky or any single definitive image. She is, above all, committed to the idea that every member of her faith, her generation, and her city has value and that their lives should be respected and protected. She demonstrates that the most heroic action is to face even the most despair-inducing challenges of the world head on while standing up for – and empowering – every vulnerable neighbor, classmate or stranger. She shows us how diverse representation can transform into action and organization that connect whole communities “by something you can’t break.”

Katie M. Logan, Assistant Professor of Focused Inquiry, Virginia Commonwealth University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Related video added by Juan Cole:

Marvel Entertainment: “What is Ms. Marvel: Generation Why? – Marvel TL;DR”

The wave of recent attacks in Tunisia, Kuwait and Turkey, all apparently linked to Islamic State in some way, have reinforced the spectre of the unstoppable “Daesh death cult” whose tentacles of terror can reach deep into every corner of the globe

The omnipresence of the group has precipitated something of an identity crisis in the Muslim world. Many assumed IS would vanish as quickly as it had appeared. Airstrikes from above and local disillusionment from below would be its rapid undoing. But the stubborn persistence of IS, has put paid to any such wishful thinking.

The staying power of this atavistic throwback to the dark ages, which positively revels in barbaric savagery and violence, all while shrouded in the language and regalia of Islamic caliphs and religious piety, has prompted a great deal of renewed soul searching in the Muslim world.

A flurry of uncomfortable questions has exposed this existential crisis. How Islamic is Islamic State? What does a legitimate Caliphate look like in the 21st century? Why are young Muslims from every corner of the globe flocking to its standard? And perhaps, the most difficult question: if IS is so reviled, why on earth is it still winning?

A difficult truth

It is safe to state that the Muslim world, through varying degrees of denial, apathy and self-interest, has largely failed to respond to the challenge posed by IS with any sort of coherence.

It is of course unfair to speak of the Muslim world in these monolithic terms, but perhaps the only body that might claim to speak as the collective voice of the Muslim world with some modicum of legitimacy is the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). It is the second largest inter-governmental organisation in the world, with 57 sovereign member states from across the Muslim world. So on the rare occasions when it manages to speak with a unified voice, we would perhaps be wise to sit up and listen.

At the 42nd summit of the OIC, which took place in June in Kuwait, assembled foreign ministers collectively committed to a laudable shared vision for the Muslim world. It should promote tolerance, strengthen civil society, address socio-economic inequalities and target vitriolic hate speech and extremist thought. All are important counterweights to the appeal of extremism and IS.

Days later, the OIC met again in Jeddah in pursuit of the so-called Istanbul Process – the implementation of a UN resolution on religious intolerance and hate speech. Considering how damaging these last two factors have been in fomenting sectarianism and nurturing fundamentalism in many Muslim majority countries, the significance of these initiatives should not be underestimated.

All the more surprising then, that they have been almost universally neglected by the Western press. Perhaps this is partly understandable. A steady stream of earlier initiatives, from condemnations and fatwas against terrorism, to de-radicalisation programmes, proved themselves to be almost entirely impotent in the past.

Those sceptical of these sorts of projects (and I count myself among them) might be forgiven for doubting that change can somehow materialise from within the very bowels of moribund autocracies, authoritarian regimes, and conservative fiefdoms. After all, many of the ruling despots of the Muslim world, now railing against Islamic State’s moral bankruptcy and flagrant violation of Muslim cultural or ethical norms, have at some point either shared similar views or behaved in similarly abhorrent ways.

Enter Frodo

Discussing the OIC summit with a very senior Muslim political figure, I mentioned my apprehension over these seemingly hollow calls for reform. Was this not just another talking shop, aimed at assuaging their own cognitive dissonance?

His response was quite remarkable. I half expected him to defend the record of the countries present, or argue that now was a time for unity in the face of adversity, rather than internal criticism.

He did neither. Instead, he cited The Lord of the Rings. Sensing my bafflement, he continued by explaining that just as the One Ring could only be destroyed in the fires of Mount Doom, where it had originally been forged by the Dark Lord Sauron, Islamic State too could only be destroyed within the very heart of the Muslim world where it had been forged.

When I mentioned that I was writing this article, and wanted to attribute his unorthodox but rather clever analogy, he paled and refused point blank. An understandable response – which respected intellectual would wish to be seen trivialising the most serious political issues of our time by drawing parallels with fairy tales about hobbits and orcs? And so he shall remain nameless.

But what he said makes sense. IS and its predecessor al-Qaeda are born of problems inherent in the Muslim world. Leaders have not just failed their people with authoritarianism, poor governance and neglect. They have also peddled sectarian rivalries and promoted intolerant, puritanical creeds as distractions from their own political mismanagement and illegitimacy.

Of course, that is not to deny that the outside world is culpable too. We cannot understand the rise of IS without understanding the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq; or the wanton destruction of its infrastructure; or the dismantlement of its security apparatus; or the instatement of a divisive sectarian political administration in Baghdad. Nor should we forget the broader context of decades of Western support for Middle Eastern despots and dictators at the expense of their people.

Stretching the Lord of the Rings analogy further still, when Sauron created the One Ring, he concentrated a great part of his own inherent power and self within it. Thus, Sauron’s fate became bound to that of the Ring, and when it was destroyed in the fires of Mount Doom, so was he.

The legitimacy and appeal of Islamic State lies in its bastardised religious and political ideology. When Islamic State falls, and it will surely fall, the worldview that gave rise to it will also be exposed for the hollow sham that it was.

There has been a seismic shift in the Muslim world of late, which was reflected in the refreshing honesty in the language at these recent summits. The West would be unwise to reject the unique role the Muslim world can, and indeed must, play in discrediting extremist ideology from within.

The Arab Spring was one such sign of a burgeoning organic secular revolt from within. It deserved genuine support and solidarity from Western states, but sadly received neither. Save for the fragile Tunisian case, the Arab Spring is now well and truly dead. But, let us prepare to be part of the next Spring.

Akil N Awan is Associate Professor in Modern History, Political Violence and Terrorism at Royal Holloway.

This article was originally published on The Conversation.
Read the original article.

Akil N Awan is Associate Professor in Modern History, Political Violence and Terrorism at Royal Holloway

——

Related video added by Juan Cole:

Wall Street Journal: “The Fall of Ramadi: How ISIS Seized a Key Iraqi City”

            By Juan Cole |

            The Office

            Adib was winning at cards again.   Bashir was already out, sitting in a corner with his French novel. 

            Soliman hated losing, even though they didn’t play for much in the way of stakes.  They only had their share of the neighborhood protection money — greasy, taped-together old notes proffered by the housewives and pensioners.  They were the miserable souls who didn’t have enough in savings to get a ticket to a neighboring country and escape this hellhole.  The neighbors paid willingly to have the militia patrol, and keep out other militias. 

            Adib, Soliman, Bashir and a couple of other guys went out sometimes, wearing khaki and ski masks and hobnail boots they’d bought at the Thursday flea market for almost nothing, Kalashnikovs at the ready.  There was only so much  surveillance you could do.  It wasn’t like their neighborhood was worth looting, or had tall buildings.   Guerrillas prized tall buildings, like soldiers loved hills in the old days of conventional warfare.  Get a mortar emplacement up on one, you controlled a quarter of the city.

            Their office used to be someone’s luxury apartment, but those people lived in Paris now.  They had better, too.  Amber bulbs flickered on ornate lamps like flowers hanging off a bush.  Louis XIV chairs showed off ankles with sexy curves.   A militia, Bashir always said, had to have an office.

            Bashir looked up from his book, grey streaks in his mustache. He stared at beaming Adib, a cat that had gulped down a rat whole.

            "You smile too much, Adib.  A commando should have a straight face, a little menacing, a little bored.   Like you might put one right between the ribs, just at random." 

            Soliman was glad to see him upbraided for gloating.  Adib was just a teenager.  He should be playing video games.  Who would be afraid of him? Artillery howled in the distance and the lights blinked.

            Bashir pointed at Soliman.  "And you. You have no guile.  You’re no good at cards." 

            "I’m good at other things."

            Bashir shook his head.   Adib laughed.   A militia office was no place to laugh.  Adib had caught his drift.  They both had their eye on Leila.  They had gone to her apartment to collect a donation and were met by the mother.  The old lady had run out of money so she dumped a bracelet into their rucksack.  She kept sweeping her hand behind her, gesturing to her daughter to stay hidden, in the back room.  But the girl had peered out and they caught her eye. 

            Leila sneaked out and came by the office sometimes.  They sat around talking about what they would do when the war was over.  She stared hungrily at their khaki, like she wanted to make a meal of it.

             Adib raked in the bills he had won, then downed some milky arak, a licorice-tasting drink cut with water.  "You only dream of being good.  Me, I’ve been more practical."

            Soliman looked up sharply.  "What do you mean by that?"

            "You should hear the sounds she makes!   We did it under the overpass a couple of nights ago."

            "Somebody’s mouth is bigger than his other organs."

            Adib pursed his lips.  He unsnapped the front pocket of his shirt and pulled a pendant out.   It was Leila’s.  

            Bashir swiveled around, alarmed.  "She’s just a girl, Soliman.  They’re a lira a half dozen.  They like the sound of boots and the flash of gun barrel.  Lots more gazelles in that desert, boy."

            Soliman stood and swung his Kalashnikov around.  "Take it back!   You’ve insulted her honor!  Admit you’ve never been near her!"

            Adib was grinning again, swinging the pendant.  "Inside her, it’s like holiday sweets."

            Bashir shrugged and went back to his novel.  "If you boys want to off yourselves, be my guest.  But my advice is to change the subject.  She’s not worth it."

            Soliman put his finger on the trigger to show he meant business.  "Take it back!"

            "If you could get it up, you could have been there first."   Neon white teeth.

            Soliman took a step forward, but tripped over his own glass of arak and lost his balance.  He tried to brace himself and his finger pulled the trigger.

            Adib flipped back, flinging Leila’s pendant against the wall.   A red tulip was blooming in his chest.    His eyes, quizzical, flickered out.

            Soliman ran to his friend but his head was heavy and there was no breath on his lips, which smelled of licorice.  He looked at Bashir through watery eyes.

            The older man had not bothered to rise.  His black unibrow undulated like a cobra.  "You idiot!"

            "It was an accident!  What can we do?"

            "It was a moronic accident.  But all our efforts are for the party.  Go see Hani at the photocopy shop."

            The next day the city’s walls and light poles were plastered with pictures of Adib.  Underneath his smiling portrait, large cursive letters spelled out the word "Martyr."

—

The Fall of the New Year Throne

Many, many thanks to everyone who followed the serialized sword and sorcery novel I have posted here since last January.

I had written a version of it in the early 1990s. I wasn’t satisfied with it and ultimately got drawn into other projects. The book was intended as the first of a trilogy, telling the story of the ancient Persian figures, Jamshid, Zohak and Faridun. These stories were part of ancient Iranian (and to some extent Indo-European and Indo-Iranian) lore. They were retold by Abu’l-Qasim Firdawsi in his epic Persian poem, the Shahnameh. But I went back beyond Firdawsi, to the early Zoroastrian (Parsi) texts, which told what I thought was a much more complex and interesting set of stories about these figures than did the medieval poet.

One thing that attracted me about the material was that it clearly was about conflicts among generals, holy men and workers– i.e. it had resonances with the contemporary Middle East! But it was also a world of wonder with distinctive legends and mythical creatures. Too much of Sword and Sorcery as a genre is just a re-imagining of medieval Europe, and ancient Persia seemed a world worth exploring in this context. Being a historian, I went back and did a lot of reading about the ancient Near East where the novel is set, and had fun exploring. Of course, this is a novel, so I used the material as a basis for imaginings.

Silly me, last winter I thought the Middle East might be settling down, and I could finally get some real leisure back after over a decade of blogging the region intensively. So I got out a printed-off MS of the sword and sorcery novel and retrieved the old Word files and tried my hand at reworking the material.

It quickly became apparent to me that I would never get to it unless I more or less blogged the rewrite. It just had become my habit to write things I thought might be of interest and then to post them. Having some of you follow the serialization was important to me as a motivator to continue putting up the sections of the chapters. Otherwise, the business of life would have just pushed it into the background again.

It worked! You sometimes complained when I fell behind, and asked for more. And I finally completed a draft of the novel (see below). I also think that the serialization process, posting episodes in digestible chunks, helped improve the writing and the structure. I’ll let others decide.

I have to say I was a little surprised that I did not get more comment and input– though I am *very* grateful for what I did get. I suppose this blog is self-selected for nonfiction readers and so perhaps it wasn’t the best venue for a fantasy novel. Anyway, I had thought there would be some crowdsourcing of critique, and for the most part that didn’t happen. A little puzzled. But then there are now whole sites dedicated to mutual critique.

I suppose the important thing is that I wanted to see the novel become available, and now it is. I was inspired in this regard by Cory Doctorow, who put his early novels up on the web. For all of you who followed it so far, or who told me they would only pick it up once it was complete, here is the link, below, to where you can get the pdf file (suitable for many tablet programs, from iBooks to Stanza to Kindle). Many, many thanks for your support. I’m hoping things will work out so that it appears more formally and I’ll be encouraged to go on to the second and third volumes.

For The Fall of the New Year Throne, click here)

———–

Comments and suggestions on the installments are welcome, but they should please be constructive. Commenters relinquish the rights to any ideas they express in the comments section, which become the property of Juan Cole. Presumably they want them incorporated into the final work, and they might be. The novel is copyright by Juan Cole, 2014, and may not be mirrored or reproduced without express permission from the author.

Davis is the translator of Faces of Love: Hafez and the Poets of Shiraz

For Barnes and Noble fans the book is here.

And here it is at the indie Powell’s books

I’ll try to embed one of Davis’s superb translations here: