Adrift in outer space, a motley crew of human-made objects tell their tales,
making real history sweeter and stranger.
Description
Starman, a lovelorn mannequin orbiting the Sun in his cherry-red car, pines for his creator. The first sculpture ever taken to the Moon is possessed by the spirit of Neil Armstrong. The International Space Station, awaiting deorbit and burial in a spacecraft cemetery beneath the ocean, farewells its last astronauts. A team of tamponauts sets off on a perilous mission to Mars inspired by the courage of their predecessors. The Voyager 1 space probe - carrying its precious Golden Record - is captured by Oortians near the edge of the solar system and drawn into their baroque, glimmering rituals.
By turns joyous and mournful, these object-astronauts are not high priests of the universe but something a little…weirder. From their inverted perspectives, they observe humans both intimately and from a great distance, bearing witness to a civilisation unable to live up to its own ideals. And yet each still finds in our planet – in their humans – something worthy of love.
Published by Penguin Random House, May 2024
If you’re interested in learning more about the ideas behind these stories, you can read Ceridwen’s essays “Telling Stories From The Perspectives Of Objects” (Sydney Review of Books, February 2023) and “Writing the Inner Lives of Space Objects” (Kill Your Darlings, November 2022).
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"[Dovey] is a writer of preternatural intelligence and imagination, and here she deftly marries the playful and the profound...readers will fall under the spell of her voices, and have the sense, on finishing, of having ventured into a place of unusual and unearthly beauty."
– Adele Dumont, The Guardian
"[C]ompletely, utterly captivating...Ceridwen Dovey might technically be writing about space junk and satellites, but these stories are about humanity — what we build, what we treasure, and what we carelessly throw away. Just like humanity's forays to space, Only the Astronauts is a bold project, achieved against the odds. Bravo."
- Claire Nichols, ABC News
“Dovey is simply one of the most elegant and intellectually bracing prose writers we have.”
– Geordie Williamson, The Australian
"You can trust Ceridwen Dovey for scientific accuracy, as you marvel at the manner in which she weaves ancient legends, history and human nature into a fabric of storytelling that can move you to laughter, tears, and fear of the future, while somehow juggling in the mix a grandeur that provides a mysterious form of hope."
– Carmel Bird, The Sydney Morning Herald
"Dovey’s Only the Astronauts is an aching and profound book. The moments of farce and pathos highlight the vanity of space, where billionaires and superpowers go to flex. In the background there is Earth, which seems a perfectly good planet. Dovey’s book suggests that, no matter how far we fly, we never really leave it, or the mortal determinations that make life meaningful."
– Tony Hughes-d'Aeth, The Conversation
"Dovey's imagination is unlimited and there is much to assimilate, so many fascinating facts to find, within this extraordinary fiction. And many ethical depths to navigate through her engagement with these non-human protagonists."
– Miriam Cosic, The Saturday Paper
