Space, man
The unexpected religion of Space, two books you should read instead of (or in addition to) Atmosphere by TJR, and a game: far-fetched conspiracy or plot of the next great American novel??
Bowie said it best: “There's a starman waiting in the sky // He'd like to come and meet us // But he thinks he'd blow our minds.”
In the first few moments of reconnecting with the Artemis II space crew after their ascent to Space, they wasted no time blowing our minds.
One of the most important things they could tell us was: “We forgot how beautiful it is to look down on Earth from space.”
While we’re down here arguing and “obliterating” and obsoleting ourselves and focusing on our differences, there are four humans rocketing around the moon having a religious experience about what it means to have life on Earth.
The absolute awe of life: “From up here you look like one thing. Homo Sapiens is all of us.”
Only the most elite few get this experience. They’d already seen two moon rises in the short span it took them to make contact. They are gods of our modern life, breaking through with what religion no longer can.
I’ve never been a “religious” person. But I am in a perpetual quest for moments of awe. The closest thing I can find, I realize, to the perspective of Space.
We mere mortals can only find approximations. Watch the sunset at the beach, where the horizon is always just three miles away, like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Just 0.012% of our home’s circumference visible at once.
To get more perspective, go stand on a mountain ridge line as the wind rips through you. Buildings and cars and the stress and noise of modern life shrink down to texture and detail.
Go somewhere dark and look up at the night sky. Watch an airplane make its path across the sky for as long as possible. I left for a backpacking trip on 9/11. A few days in we realized we hadn’t seen an airplane in days—all we had were the satellites, and far fewer 25 years ago, than in tonight’s night sky. We were out there alone, tiny humans sharing food and laughs and blister care in the wilds of the woods.
So significantly insignificant. So insignificantly significant.
Get lost in the absolute throbbing mass of a market street halfway around the world. The heat, the smells, the crush of people on their own crusade yet moving as one, the deafening cacophony of human life.
Touch grass, as they say. We are but ants.
Listen when the astronauts go to Space and can’t wait to get back to Earth. They marvel at the gravity of all this.
Ground Control to Major Tom
Speaking of Bowie, I don’t want to go as far as to say Taylor Jenkins Reid ruined Space Oddity for me. But now when I hear that song I think of her book and I get annoyed with what she did with the ending.
Quick synopsis: set in the 1980s, Atmosphere follows a group of Astronauts as they apply for NASA, train, and go to Space. Two of the women in the program end up falling in love. Space Oddity by Bowie is “their song” and it plays a role in the end of the book, when shit hits the fan with the mission. One of the women is on the Space Shuttle, and the other is part of ground control.
Yes, it was interesting and very her to tell a queer story set in the 80s Space Program.
Yes, it seems most apropos that “ground control to Major Tom” played a role in communicating love.
Yes, I would love one ounce of TJR’s talent.
I sped through this book. I liked it. But I’m still allowed to be annoyed. And, yet, I love that she recognizes that to go to Space makes truer the need to return to Earth. To what makes us human. TJR:
“Listen to me,” Joan said. “I was circling two hundred miles above the Earth, and all I wanted was to get home and see you. Do you understand that? Do you understand that I don’t care how big or small this world is, that you are the center of mine? Do you understand that, to someone, you are everything that matters on this entire planet?”
Maybe we just all need more Space right now. I won’t yuck your yum if you loved Atmosphere, but here are two other better books I highly recommend spending time with:
Orbital by Samantha Harvey
I read this book mostly on a train and in a train station in Portugal in December 2023. I was so moved by this slim, Booker prize-winning novel that chronicles one day in the life of astronauts orbiting Earth. Alone on a train platform, I sat on a bench in the sun. Kindle in hand. I was quietly crying, paragraphs and sentences taking my breath. I kept looking up and out at the view of Porto. The chaos and movement and sound compared to the pin-drop vacuum silence of the journey on the page.
A man came up to me to offer a tissue and ask if I was alright.
“Continents and countries come one after the other and the earth feels – not small, but almost endlessly connected, an epic poem of flowing verses.”
All I could communicate was “this book is just so beautiful.” He smiled and walked away. There we were as strangers, crossing paths just once in our lives. How significantly insignificant.
“The earth, from here, is like heaven. It flows with colour. A burst of hopeful colour. When we’re on that planet we look up and think heaven is elsewhere, but here is what the astronauts and cosmonauts sometimes think: maybe all of us born to it have already died and are in an afterlife. If we must go to an improbable, hard-to-believe-in place when we die, that glassy, distant orb with its beautiful lonely light shows could well be it.”
Go, Samantha Harvey, go.
Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space by Adam Higginbotham
This book made my top books of 2024 and I highly recommend the audio. It’s a wildly compelling “page turner,” which you don’t always get in a non-fiction book, much less one filled with jargon and lots and lots of characters.
It’s the very real account and research into what went wrong with the Challenger Space Shuttle explosion in 1986. When you read how much hubris and group think was involved, and how many things went wrong all the time at NASA, it’s hard to believe TJR’s take on the outcome of proverbial shit hitting the fan.
I also have a friend who thinks my take on Atmosphere being unbelievable is 180 degrees wrong.1 That the fact that so many small things went wrong but so many big things went right, that they achieved so much, means that Atmosphere is believable.
She got a NASA tour once with an important official of some kind who said that a lot of the NASA issues happened during career generation transitions. The mid-80s Space Program suffered because some of the people who learned by doing retired. And more mistakes happened as people again learned by doing. I don’t know if this is factually accurate, or simply the hubris of one man protecting a legacy. But if his career—and his belief in the giant leaps of mankind—is at all responsible for enabling these Artemis dispatches, maybe my friend is right.
Maybe we need the miracle of Space delivered to as many people as possible. Far more people will read TJR than either of these two books I lovingly place into your hands, whispering: “read this.”
Conspiracy theory … or plot of the next great American novel?
Sometimes it is really fun to take a kernel of truth and play with what the story could become. As I play with writing fiction, I do this a lot. I guess you could call it “having an imagination.”
If you’re craving building a creative practice, this is an easy thing to do. It’s like deciding you want to do more sports and start with running because all you need is a pair of shoes.
All you need for this creative practice is that brain inside your skull and some time away from the glowing Siren’s song of your devices.
Here’s one on theme for this moment in (Space and) time. First, “just the facts, ma’am”:
By now maybe you’ve heard that a Senior FEMA official admits he was “once transported to a Waffle House 50 miles away.” Sounds like a drug and alcohol problem to me. But, he claims it was an act of God.
JD “I love couches” Vance has recently unveiled his new obsession: aliens. And he promises a podcast host he’s on it: “I have not been able to spend enough time on this, but I am going to. Trust me, I’m obsessed with this.”
The crew of Artemis II is going to lose contact with the Earth for approximately 41 minutes on April 6th when they’re on the dark side of the moon.
Now the key question: Who WILL they be in contact with if not us?
Our current administration is incredibly good at the art of distraction. What a better reason to abort a failed, idiotic war in Iran than a threat to all of humanity.
Will a news cycle next week be that the aliens made contact when our fellow homo sapiens were on the dark side of the moon?
Epstein files? No, no time for that. We must focus on obliterating these aliens before they obliterate us. I look forward to Jessica Yellin’s un-noisy coverage of this one.
While looking for a Kalshi prediction related to Artemis II talking with aliens, I found a few other fascinating predictions:
80% chance we will not confirm aliens exist before 2027.
And yet, a 73% chance Trump will release UFO files by 2027.
AND a 56% chance a new interstellar visitor will be confirmed before 2027.
If this doesn’t happen for real next week, someone should write this novel. It’s all giving real Bill Pullman vibes.2 Someone could have a LOT of fun with this. Aliens on the dark side of the moon?! Are they here for good or for evil? Are they us from the future, back to save us from ourselves? To tell us how wrong we were to focus on our differences?
But here I am back to the woo of Space. Probably the most important line from President Thomas J. Witmore’s speech gets overlooked due to the fervor with which he declares a worldwide Independence Day—if you’re not jumping out of your seat cheering by then, try harder. But hold up. Rewind 30 seconds. More Space-unites-us-all talk:
“Mankind should have new meaning today. We will be united in our common interests.”
If only.
Let the magic and religion of Space be a reminder to spend time on our commonalities.
April Reading
April is an off-the-chart month for new release books, especially April 7th. I’m having some serious FOMO.
I committed myself to a two-book “project” of my own making. The first book is a little slow so far (but good!). Stay tuned to find out if I sneak some books in before tackling the 2nd book of the project. How can I not with all the goodness coming out?!
I’m eyeing Yesteryear since it seems like a book everyone is going to be talking about: a trad-wife gets magically transported to the 1800s. And also Dear Monica Lewinsky. There’s something so tantalizing about reading a book that the general collective is also reading.
Here we are all on earth together, reading the same thing at the same time, as 4 astronauts look down, marveling at our splendor.
Then there’s the new Emma Straub. The new Xochitl Gonzalez. And the—after years—new Maria Semple. LFG BOOKSSSS!!!
P.S.
So this is week two of having a Substack and now here I am publishing post two. That was unexpected. I make no promises (probably for both the good of you—and me) that this is the cadence. Too unhinged? Just unhinged enough? Thanks for reading!!
Hiiiii my fellow 4th grade rollerbladder.
I watched this move in the theater three times the summer it came out. Don’t at me, bro.
Just unhinged enough!!