Astrid is returning home from art school on Mars, looking for inspiration. Darling is fleeing a life that never fit, searching for somewhere to hide. They meet on Deep Wheel Orcadia, a distant space station struggling for survival as the pace of change threatens to leave the community behind.

a b c Richardson, Michael Lee (11 October 2021). "Harry Josephine Giles on Orkney Sci-Fi Deep Wheel Orcadia". The Skinny . Retrieved 28 October 2022. To call this something of an unusual book would be an understatement. Giles is a poet who works primarily in the Orcadian dialect, the local language of the Orkney Islands. It’s kind of a mixture of English, Scots dialect words and old Norse. Despite being subtitled “a novel” this book is written in verse and in this dialect. I'm glad it exists (I'm glad when anyone imagines themselves happy in the far future) but it's too contrived for me. In particular most of the noun translations / calques are overdone kennings ("wantneed" for "waant", "fullbursting" for "pangit" and "codeprogramscripture"). Obviously scifi is full of neologism and funny phonemes, and kenning is a natural way for a logicish intelligence to convey connotation and polysemy. But even very successful scifi prose often feels contrived, even if the novelty skeuomorphism is worth the loss in taste. And this isn't very successful. Deep Wheel Orcadia is a science-fiction novel by Harry Josephine Giles. It is a verse novel written in the Orcadian dialect of the Scots language in parallel with an English translation. The book won the 2022 Arthur C. Clarke award. It was published by Picador Poetry in 2021. [1] Plot [ edit ] The book is written in Orcadian verse, with an English translation provided in smaller text. [2] Translations for Orcadian words provide several possible English translations in a compound word. [3] The English translations were formatted to draw attention to the Orcadian, a technique also used by Gaelic poet Rody Gorman. [2] Awards [ edit ]For more information on the history of the ‘Harvest Home’, you can read more here: https://theorkneynews.scot/2020/12/08/the-harvest-home/ Sampson, Fiona (1 October 2021). "The best recent poetry – review roundup". the Guardian . Retrieved 30 October 2022.

Since I’m of a certain age and Scottish my first read of this was in the way it was originally set out, as an epic poem in Orcadian, and? For the most part I could understand what was written and in this form it was really satisfying, only rarely having to pop down to see the english translationinterpretationmeaning of the words used. So the story itself is of a space station in the middle of nowhere, its economy based on gathering some strange cosmic fuel source from a local gas giant, and about to collapse as a revolutionary advance in starship technology decimates demand for that resource. At the same time, there’s a resident xenologist studying the strange alien ships pulled up from the gas giant, and strange spectral energy ghosts have begun to haunt the station. Thankfully Giles also provides a plain English translation alongside the Orcadian text so that you don’t have to sit with an Orcadian dictionary at hand. This makes the experience of reading it somewhat akin to watching a foreign language movie with subtitles. In this translation they also provide a concatenated version of every possible option when a word doesn’t translate exactly into English. A symphony o yotuns, peedie suns and langships tae Mars, in Deep Wheel Orcadia Harry Josephine Giles hauds the starns in the loof o thier haun, terraformin new warlds in Scots. (A symphony of giants, miniature suns and longships to Mars, in Deep Wheel Orcadia Harry Josephine Giles holds the stars in the palm of their hand, terraforming new worlds in Scots.) The poems won the Arthur C. Clarke award for best science fiction writing because they help show what’s possible in the genre.

It’s as if language itself becomes the book’s hero and the genre is all the richer for it,” he added. The Guardian called the book "a book of astonishments". [7] The Orkney News made favourable comparisons between elements of the story and life on Orkney, such as bad internet speeds, but felt the ending was unsatisfying and the cast list excessive. [8] A space odyssey science fiction novel written in the Orcadian dialect in the form of an epic poem, if this isn’t enough to sell it to you read on.

a b Kelly, Stuart (15 October 2021). "Book review: Deep Wheel Orcadia, by Harry Josephine Giles". The Scotsman . Retrieved 29 October 2022. The question I'd like to ask is "Why do you write in English?" Inwith and outwith the grand and sprawling beast of that international language are many other tongues and possibilities. The commonplace monolingualism of these islands is false and forced: everyone carries multiple ways of speaking within them. Unearthing languages in the present and growing them into the future is a demand and a joy.

Harry Josephine Giles' DEEP WHEEL ORCADIA has a simple plot - it's a love story with familiar complications taking place on a space station that's purpose is to gather resources from the gas giant planet that it orbits. The groundbreaking originality and beauty of this work are derived from the subtle nuances of the Orcadian language, as well as Giles' gift for poetry and showcasing a minority language. Overall, this is a beautifully written book. I loved the poetic nature of its verses. Saying that, I felt there were far too many characters to form a connection with any of them – maybe that was the purpose, but for me, when I am reading a story, I like to feel some sort of emotional inkling. Also, the book doesn’t really have a proper ending. Again, that also could have been done purposely, but I felt as if the characters were just abandoned somewhere in space, circling the orbit. However, a theory is starting to emerge that “lights” are not what they seem to be, and may actually be a form of intelligent life, and this is beginning to be borne out by strange events happening around the station and also in the planet’s atmosphere.