Author: Callum Williams
Williams, Callum, 2025 A New Frontier for Environmental Fiction: Space Junk and Cultural Memory, Flinders University, College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
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11,000 metric tons of material currently orbit planet Earth. Most of this is debris, including objects like dead satellites, discarded booster rockets, abandoned space stations, pieces of metal scrap, flecks of paint, and even a glove dropped by an astronaut on a spacewalk. While confined to the low, medium and geostationary orbits of Earth (LEO, MEO, and GEO respectively), space junk poses risks to the future of humanity. In 1978, Donald J. Kessler and Burton Cour-Palais published their seminal article, predicting the creation of a debris belt around Earth, should the pollution of its orbit continue. Hypervelocity collision events between satellites could lead to the exponential creation of more debris, which in turn could lead to more collisions, and so forth—Kessler syndrome, as it’s known. This would stifle space programs, destroy the satellites we rely on for communication and data collection, and effectively cut humanity off from the stars above. Such an existential problem bears similarity to climate change on Earth. Both are runaway disasters that are driven by humanity’s exploitation of nature. Both can be curtailed through sustainable approaches to expansion.
However, space junk in our orbit highlights a secondary field of research linked to environmental concerns: the preservation of archaeological records and the cultural memories we attach to artefacts. While space is littered with junk, it’s also home to some of the first objects humanity ever launched beyond our atmosphere. The US satellite Vanguard continues to circle us, sixty years after it took to space. The original moon landing module still sits on the lunar surface. Voyager 1 and 2 are both piloting into interstellar space at this very moment, carrying with them depictions of human life etched into the grooves of a gold-plated record. Our material histories exist beyond the confines of our planet. One day in the distant future, the satellites, probes, and space stations of Earth may be our only cultural link to the memory of our lives today.
My creative novel and accompanying exegesis set out to explore the intersections between the environmental threat of space junk and its symbolic potential as artefacts of cultural memory. My novel comprises a mosaic of short stories, interconnected fragments of a galaxy decimated by last-stage capitalism and the debris rings left in expansion’s wake. Surviving objects exist across many generations, reappearing at times throughout the novel, bringing new meaning and understanding to the humans that encounter them. My exegesis takes an analytical approach to both the fictional literature and academic research around space junk, integrating this knowledge into the rationale for my fiction writing. Key texts include Alice Gorman’s Dr Space Junk vs The Universe, Milner and Burgmann’s Science Fiction and Climate Change: A Sociological Approach, Amitav Ghosh’s Great Derangement, Karl Schroeder’s ‘Laika’s Ghost’, Makoto Yukimura’s Planetes, as well as Pierre Nora, Jan and Aleida Assmann, and Lisa Bennett’s work on Cultural memory. With reference to these texts, I argue space junk’s use as a symbol for environmental concern and cultural memory is underutilised in modern fiction.
Keywords: space junk, fiction, ecological fiction, literature, enviroment, cultural memory, hyperobjects, science fiction, debris, waste, mosaic novel, novel, creative writing
Subject: Environmental Science thesis
Thesis type: Doctor of Philosophy
Completed: 2025
School: College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
Supervisor: Lisa Bennett