Folk keep asking me while I chose to write an Orkney language science fiction verse novel, and I can hardly blame them: such a pile-up of noun adjuncts demands the question. But the truth is that I didn't choose to write Deep Wheel Orcadia in the way I did: the writing started happening before I thought properly about why. 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. a b c Richardson, Michael Lee (11 October 2021). "Harry Josephine Giles on Orkney Sci-Fi Deep Wheel Orcadia". The Skinny . Retrieved 28 October 2022.

It follows Astrid who is returning home from art school on Mars, and Darling, who is fleeing a life that never fits. The pair meet on Deep Wheel Orcadia, a distant space station struggling for survival as the pace of change threatens to leave the community behind. 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. The poems won the Arthur C. Clarke award for best science fiction writing because they help show what’s possible in the genre. 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. 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.

In 2022, Deep Wheel Orcadia won the Arthur C. Clarke Award, where it was praised for its writing and its use of language. [6] Reception [ edit ] One of the most beautiful books I have ever read, Deep Wheel Orcadia is a science fiction poem written in the Orkney dialect. Because this is primarily a spoken language, Giles must render the speech into recognizable form while preserving the character of the spoken word—no mean feat. Orkney is derived from Scots, but also contains the influence of the Norse, making it unique and musical. As is almost always the case where a work has flat characters, the relationships between them were likewise uninteresting. Even if someone looked me right in the eye and told me that they were truly invested in the relationship between Margit and Gunnie I wouldn’t believe them. Astrid the artist is the main character of the story, but her relationship with her parents is boilerplate, I didn’t care about her struggles to come to terms with the truth that you can’t go home again, nor did I care about her romance with newcomer Darling. We’re told about that romance but aren’t made to feel it, and if a romance completely fails to make you feel anything then what’s its point? 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. Since I’m of a certain age and Scottish my first read of this was in the way it was originally set out, as an epic poem in Orcadian, and? For the most part I could understand what was written and in this form it was really satisfying, only rarely having to pop down to see the english translationinterpretationmeaning of the words used.

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. 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]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. The story, such as it is, involves two young girls, Astrid and Darling, arriving on the Deep Wheel Orcadia, a space station orbiting a gas giant in a far distant star system. It is humanity’s furthest station from Earth and the closest to the galactic centre. 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.

Overall, this is a beautifully written book. I loved the poetic nature of its verses. Saying that, I felt there were far too many characters to form a connection with any of them – maybe that was the purpose, but for me, when I am reading a story, I like to feel some sort of emotional inkling. Also, the book doesn’t really have a proper ending. Again, that also could have been done purposely, but I felt as if the characters were just abandoned somewhere in space, circling the orbit.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. 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.