Samantha Harvey’s Orbital is included on the VCE English and English as an Additional Language (EAL) Text List from 2026 onwards.
Set over a single day aboard the International Space Station, the novel follows six astronauts and cosmonauts as they orbit the Earth, observe the planet below and reflect on the lives, places and relationships they have temporarily left behind.
For VCE English and EAL teachers, Orbital offers rich opportunities to explore perspective, connection, isolation, time, mortality, environmental fragility and the ways human beings make meaning from their place in the world.
It also presents a distinctive teaching challenge. The novel is less driven by conventional plot than by observation, reflection and shifts in perspective. Students therefore need support in moving beyond summary and learning to analyse Harvey’s language, structure and narrative viewpoint.
This guide outlines some of the key ideas, literary features and teaching considerations that may be useful when planning a VCE English or EAL unit on Orbital.
What is Orbital about?
Orbital follows six people living and working aboard the International Space Station as they complete repeated orbits of the Earth.
Across the course of the novel, they observe oceans, cities, deserts, storms and changing light from space while also thinking about family, memory, mortality and the lives continuing below them.
The physical scale of the novel is enormous, but much of its meaning comes from intimate reflection.
Harvey repeatedly moves between the vastness of Earth and space and the small, individual experiences of the people inside the station. This contrast allows the novel to explore both the apparent insignificance and the extraordinary value of human life.
Key ideas in Orbital
Connection and isolation
The characters in Orbital are physically isolated from almost everyone else on Earth.
Yet they remain connected to the planet below through communication, memory, observation and emotional attachment.
This creates an important tension throughout the novel.
Students can consider whether physical distance necessarily produces disconnection, or whether the astronauts’ separation from Earth sometimes allows them to recognise forms of connection more clearly.
The confined environment of the station also creates its own community, requiring individuals from different nations and backgrounds to live and work together.
Perspective
Perspective is central to Orbital.
From space, political borders disappear and familiar places can appear transformed.
The astronauts see Earth in ways that most people never will, and this altered viewpoint encourages broader reflection on nationhood, conflict, environment and human existence.
Students can examine how Harvey uses physical perspective to create philosophical perspective.
A useful question is:
What becomes visible when familiar things are viewed from a different distance?
The fragility of Earth
The novel repeatedly presents Earth as beautiful, dynamic and vulnerable.
From orbit, environmental systems become visible on a vast scale. Weather patterns, oceans, coastlines and atmospheric changes take on new significance.
Students can consider how Harvey encourages readers to see the planet as both immense and fragile.
Rather than presenting environmental concerns only through argument, the novel often relies on imagery, contrast and perspective to create a sense of wonder and vulnerability.
Time
Time behaves differently in Orbital.
The crew repeatedly passes through daylight and darkness as the station circles the Earth, disrupting familiar ideas about morning, evening and the rhythm of a normal day.
This altered experience of time contributes to the novel’s reflective quality.
Students can examine how Harvey connects orbital time with memory, mortality and the temporary nature of human life.
Mortality and meaning
The scale of space encourages repeated reflection on the brevity of human life.
The astronauts observe a planet containing billions of people while confronting their own memories, relationships and fears.
The novel therefore raises questions about what makes individual lives meaningful.
Students may wish to consider whether Harvey presents human life as insignificant because of its smallness, or valuable precisely because it is temporary and fragile.
National identity and shared humanity
The International Space Station is both an international project and a confined community.
Its crew members come from different nations, cultures and personal histories, yet their shared experience complicates the boundaries that matter so strongly on Earth.
From orbit, national borders cannot be seen.
Students can consider how Harvey uses this contrast to explore the relationship between national identity and a broader sense of shared humanity.
Language and literary techniques students should analyse
Students studying Orbital need to pay close attention to Harvey’s language and narrative choices.
Important features include:
- imagery
- metaphor
- symbolism
- shifts in perspective
- narrative viewpoint
- sentence structure
- repetition
- juxtaposition and contrast
- description of landscape
- motifs
- patterns of light and darkness
- changes in scale
- transitions between observation and reflection
- structure and sequencing.
Students should continually ask:
How does Harvey’s language change the way the reader sees the Earth, the characters or human experience?
For example, identifying imagery describing the planet becomes more useful when students explain how that imagery contributes to ideas about beauty, fragility, distance or connection.
Teaching a novel with limited conventional plot
One of the challenges of teaching Orbital is that students may initially look for the kind of plot progression they expect from a more conventional novel.
The novel’s structure is instead driven by repeated orbits, shifting observations and reflections.
Teachers may therefore find it useful to help students track:
- changes in perspective
- recurring images and motifs
- connections between external observation and internal thought
- patterns in the presentation of Earth
- shifts between individual and collective experience.
This helps students recognise that structure itself is meaningful.
The repeated orbital movement creates continuity while also allowing Harvey to return to similar ideas from different angles.
The importance of scale
One of the most distinctive features of Orbital is its movement between different scales.
The novel can shift rapidly from:
- continents to individual people
- vast weather systems to private memories
- the history of the planet to a single human life
- global conflict to intimate relationships.
These shifts are important because they influence the way readers understand value and significance.
Students can consider how Harvey uses scale to complicate the idea that small things are unimportant.
A possible teaching sequence for Orbital
1. Introduce the novel and its setting
Establish essential background about the International Space Station, life in orbit and the novel’s unusual structure.
2. Build first-reading understanding
Help students track the six central characters, significant observations and recurring ideas across the novel.
3. Explore perspective and setting
Examine how the view from space shapes the characters’ understanding of Earth and human life.
4. Analyse Harvey’s language
Develop students’ ability to analyse imagery, metaphor, sentence structure, repetition and shifts in scale.
5. Track recurring ideas and motifs
Explore patterns relating to light and darkness, Earth, weather, movement, memory and mortality.
6. Develop broader interpretations
Move from individual passages towards larger ideas about connection, environment, perspective, time and meaning.
7. Develop analytical writing
Students can practise constructing arguments, selecting evidence and explaining how Harvey’s literary choices support their interpretations.
8. Progress towards sustained analytical responses
Students can then plan and write complete responses to a range of text-response topics.
Questions students can consider while studying Orbital
- How does distance change the way the characters understand Earth?
- What does the novel suggest about the relationship between isolation and connection?
- Why does Harvey repeatedly contrast the vast with the intimate?
- How does the novel represent the fragility of the planet?
- What role does time play in shaping the characters’ experience?
- How do the repeated orbits influence the structure of the novel?
- What becomes less important when Earth is viewed from space?
- What becomes more important?
- How does Harvey challenge familiar ideas about national borders and identity?
- How does the novel connect mortality with meaning?
- Why does Harvey return repeatedly to imagery of light, darkness and movement?
- What does Orbital suggest about humanity’s place within the natural world?
These questions can help students move from first-reading comprehension towards interpretation and analytical writing.
Orbital VCE English and EAL teaching resources
For teachers looking to reduce preparation time, Lesson Ready offers a complete 14-lesson VCE English and EAL unit for Orbital.
The unit supports students as they move from understanding the novel, its structure and central concerns towards close analysis and analytical writing.
Resources include:
- editable lesson slideshows
- editable student worksheets
- detailed sample answers
- contextual activities
- analysis of key ideas and literary features
- exploration of narrative structure, style and perspective
- analytical writing activities
- essay preparation and practice.
Because the resources are editable, teachers can adapt lessons and activities to suit their own classes.
Teachers who do not require the complete unit can also access individual lessons for Orbital.
Lesson Ready also offers Additional Resources for the novel, including comprehensive First Reading Questions with sample answers and sample essay topics. These can be used during the initial study of the text, for consolidation, revision or analytical writing preparation.
Preparing to teach Orbital for VCE English and EAL
Orbital offers students a text that is both accessible in its central situation and complex in the ideas it develops.
Its strongest teaching opportunities come from helping students recognise how Harvey’s language, perspective and structure transform observation into meaning.
Students who learn to track recurring ideas, analyse shifts in scale and perspective, and connect individual passages to broader interpretations will be well placed to write thoughtful analytical responses.
The novel rewards close reading because its most significant ideas often emerge through patterns rather than dramatic events.