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).
“Dovey is simply one of the most elegant and intellectually bracing prose writers we have.” – Geordie Williamson, The Australian
