Marjolijn van Heemstra (translated by Jonathan Reeder)
(W. W. Norton)
AMONG the many reasons to rail against the tech elites is their desire to place themselves in a cosmic context. In 2018, Elon Musk tweeted “we must preserve the light of consciousness by becoming a spacefaring civilization and extending life to other planets”. He has only doubled down since then.
But what if a cosmological perspective wasn’t just a backdrop for the arrogance (maybe hubris) of space moguls? What if it could calm our personal anxieties, take the edge off social divisions and be a resource for everyday well-being?
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This is the hope of journalist and poet , laid out in a charming yet challenging book, In Light-Years There’s No Hurry: Cosmic perspectives on everyday life. It is an account of her year as a space reporter for news site De Correspondent (she was also once “house poet” at the European Space Agency in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, where she now lives). That year saw school climate strikes, the murder of George Floyd, gilet jaunes protests in France and the covid-19 pandemic.
“Brokenness” is everywhere. But van Heemstra thinks the “overview effect” – the moral, even spiritual transformation many astronauts report after seeing Earth from space – may be a route to repair. She sets out to take “a space journey” on Earth, a journey “that will take me to the corners of the universe, with both my feet on the ground”.
This involves interviews with a diverse cast of the astrophysically aware, who van Heemstra mines for their wisdom. Take theologian Wil van den Bercken, who grapples with the awareness of living “statistically speaking, on a negligible planet in an unfathomable universe… Begin your day with what you truly are –deeply improbable. If we appreciated this fully, wouldn’t we take better care of each other and the planet?”
The writer observes technologists devising virtual reality experiences that try to remind us we are all astronauts, but keep forgetting it. Yet you could just gaze at a starry night for the same effect, she says – or she could, were the Netherlands not in the top five countries for light pollution.
Van Heemstra is always ready with a beautiful, apposite quote: the Iroquois say “we have the night so the earth can rest”, and Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa writes: “I am the size of what I see.” The gentle activism of her own life – gathering with neighbours in parks at night, feeling cosmological connection beyond the city’s glare – threads humanely through the book.
She hangs out with biologists who are prototyping tiny algae farms designed to feed astronauts on Mars missions. For such a great adventure to happen, empathy is a functional necessity. When you are squashed into a few square metres, the most important thing is to be kind to one another, she writes.
What is most affecting are van Heemstra’s stumbling, tender attempts to use her cosmic insights to heal fraying social relationships around her. She is anxious about being seen as an alien in her neighbourhood – just another middle-class “gentrifier”. So she strikes up a scratchy relationship with Bob, a former industrial worker and volunteer for the Red Cross.
Asking him if the sense we are all earthbound space travellers could unite us, Bob says that a walk under the stars is a great de-stresser. “Then you’ve got the space to think about others,” he tells her. Which leaves van Heemstra, who asks great, probing questions, with one big answer. “If you want to be changed by space, don’t try to change it first. You can substitute space for anything – a view, a landscape, your neighbour.” This is her final caution to “visionary” space moguls, who are, to say the least of it, in a hurry.
Pat Kane is a writer based in London
