Deep Wheel Orcadia: A Novel

Product Information

An undoubtedly beautifully written book, and a fascinating reading experience. It does however leave some things to be desired, particularly where plot and to a lesser extent worldbuilding are concerned. How important these elements actually are to the overall experience of reading the book may vary from reader to reader; for myself I was definitely left wanting. 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. 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. Chair of the judges Dr Andrew M Butler said that Deep Wheel Orcadia is “the sort of book that makes you rethink what science fiction can do and makes the reading experience feel strange in a new and thrilling way”. Sampson, Fiona (1 October 2021). "The best recent poetry – review roundup". the Guardian . Retrieved 30 October 2022.

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. The book is split into three parts, and in the first one, there is a clear portrayal of a struggling community: people working to make ends meet and food being scarce, while on the other hand, some searching for their identity and their place in the world. Surprisingly, the Orkney is not that difficult to read. I read this twice, reading both the English and Orkney, with a good deal of the Orkney aloud. I am more engaged with the politics of the translation than the actual story itself, though the story is fine. I just think it should go on more. It seems too short and unfinished to be called a novel, as the cover of my copy does. It is also described as verse, and may be verse in the Orkney, but does not seem to be in verse in the English. 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.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. Gorgeous. In a relatively short space, Giles evokes a real sense of a community, with all its joy and difficulties. A helpful cast listing at the beginning ensures you always remember who's who, but each character feels distinct. They feel authentic and full, all while occupying a fantastic sci-fi space. Deep Wheel Orcadia is imaginative and playful with identity and technology, asks hard questions about home and art, explores family and friendship - without ever feeling rushed or stiff.

The Orkney language is, linguistically, a dialect of Scots, though we rarely call it that at home, preferring just "the wey we spaek". Scots itself, formally one of Scotland's national languages, is a sister language to English, grown from the same roots into a thrawn, disputed and often-pruned shrub. The Orkney variant is strongly influenced by Old Norse, and grew out of an older language, Norn, itself formed through the Viking colonisation of the islands that preceded Scottish influence. If that's confusing, so is all language: one of the appealing things to me about writing Orcadian is that it requires thorny exposition to trouble the history of things like "nation" and "language".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. Deep Wheel Orcadia is a magical first: a science-fiction verse-novel written in the Orkney dialect. This unique adventure in minority language poetry comes with a parallel translation into playful and vivid English, so the reader will miss no nuance of the original. The rich and varied cast weaves a compelling, lyric and effortlessly readable story around place and belonging, work and economy, generation and gender politics, love and desire – all with the lightness of touch, fluency and musicality one might expect of one the most talented poets to have emerged from Scotland in recent years. Hailing from Orkney, Harry Josephine Giles is widely known as a fine poet and spellbindingly original performer of their own work; Deep Wheel Orcadia now strikes out into audacious new space. 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.

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]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.