The poems were actually written in the Orkney dialect of Scottish. It’s not something you’ll be able to read, and, no, watching all six seasons of Outlander will not have prepared you in any way to read these poems. (Well. I did ken what a bairn was.) 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. The story is slight, although it does build to an exciting conclusion. Mostly, though, the book is a glimpse into this imagined way of life, and with the lyrical verse format of the writing the closest analogy I can make is that it is like an interstellar Under Milk Wood. Also, if an Orkney word doesn’t have a single English meaning, they’re gonna list all 3-4 meanings of the word smooshed together. You learn to love it.

Through them all you get a snapshot of the daily struggles and doubts, as people make everyday decisions that keep their community alive, while some wonder where the community will be in the years ahead. Whether their community will die or change, and whether there's a different between the two.Sampson, Fiona (1 October 2021). "The best recent poetry – review roundup". the Guardian . Retrieved 30 October 2022. One reason I distrust the kennings is that they only go one way. A single Orcadian word leads to a compound English term, and never the reverse. This feels like clumsy bragging about one's ane leid. 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. Merritt, Mike (10 January 2022). "Author Harry Josephine Giles pulls novel from Highland Book Prize in protest against all-white shortlists". The Times . Retrieved 27 October 2022. This newly minted Arthur C. Clark award winner has novelty, a surfeit of it in my opinion, but neglects the fundamentals. If you just care about reading something different then Deep Wheel Orcadia fits the bill, but if you value world building, well-written characters, a plot, or any form of resolution, then you should probably give this one a pass.

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. In my experience reading sci-fi (and to an extent other fantastical fiction) always involves interpreting new words or new uses of familiar words for concepts, technologies, and activities. This sometimes becomes an act of translation and certainly expands the reader's understanding of words' meanings and recombinations. Some sci-fi writers minimise reader effort of this sort with detailed explanations; Andy Weir springs to mind. Others create a whole new vocabulary and let the reader work out what they can from context cues, e.g. Hannu Rajaniemi. Most fall somewhere between the two extremes. Personally I love this element of sci-fi reading, which Jo Walton wrote memorably about in What Makes This Book So Great. The award was originally established by a grant from Clarke with the aim of promoting science fiction in Britain, and is currently administered by the Serendip Foundation, a voluntary organisation created to oversee the ongoing delivery and development of the award. 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.How Treasure Island was born out of Robert Louis Stevenson trying to amuse his stepson on a wet summer holiday in Braemar Along the way we also meet Astrid’s father Oyvind, Eynar the local bar owner, Noor the scientist, Olaf the ship’s captain, and a host of other entertaining and often slightly bizarre characters. 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.

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 ] Matthew Fitt Deep Wheel Orcadia is a mysterious and moving novel in verse about finding home in the farthest reaches. Giles lifts us to new worlds, in space and in language, we could never have imagined. A singular and numinous work Reading Deep Wheel Orcadia is a rich experience of interpretation and translation on multiple connected levels. The quote above gives you 'kist' and 'sleeping-chestcoffinbreast' for the place where a character is sleeping in her room on the space station. These options leave an area for the reader's imagination to fill, while making them more aware of this process of interpretation and visualisation from context. They delineate an area for interpretation in a way that a single word would not. I've never read a book that unveiled and examined the process of sci-fi linguistic world-building in this way before and found it riveting. The wheel has always been inhabited by the descendants of the Orcadian people, and their lifestyle echoes that of the Orkneys. Their economy is dependent of “fishing” for “lights”, a kind of superfuel that powers faster than light travel, which is found in the atmospheres of gas giants. They also harvest hulks, what appear to be alien spacecraft found trapped in the gravity well of the huge planet. It’s as if language itself becomes the book’s hero and the genre is all the richer for it,” he added.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. My sole criticism would be that the story ends quite abruptly and I would have liked it to carry on further. If you have an interest in sci-fi, languages in general, Scottish languages in particular, or are just looking for new and rewarding reading experiences, I definitely recommend Deep Wheel Orcadia. Both structure and content are compelling and unique. It is a rare and heady pleasure to read. Finally I scanned the Orcadian several times to get the rhythm of the words, then read it aloud and honestly this felt the beast way of interacting with the text. you got the strength of certain passages and lines, some words got greater strength from being spoken aloud. It really feels like a story that should be shared at night with friends. a b Kelly, Stuart (15 October 2021). "Book review: Deep Wheel Orcadia, by Harry Josephine Giles". The Scotsman . Retrieved 29 October 2022.