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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. To which of the following is space compared?

2. What do the station crew note eating in space?

3. On what constellation does Anton fix his consideration?

4. How old is Shaun when he encounters Las Meninas?

5. How many orbits does the station make of the earth in a day?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why is Anton persistently tired?

2. What are the normal topics of conversation among the station crew?

3. How does Shaun report watching the first moon landing?

4. Why does Anton posit his brain repeats dreams?

5. Why does the fisherman not flee from the typhoon?

6. To what does the novel compare the experience of traveling from earth to the station?

7. How are the cells with which Anton and Roman work derived?

8. What question does the novel posit aliens might ask about the presence of the station and missions on it?

9. What is it that prompts the fisherman to realize his children’s beauty?

10. Why does Chie, in particular, hesitate to leave the station?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

A lack of formal sectional division in the novel obliges a fairly arbitrary breakdown of the text for purposes of study and discussion. On what grounds might the current divisions be in place? Why and how are they appropriate to the text?

Essay Topic 2

The novel makes a point of noting many, many physical locations as the space station passes over them. What effect does that geographic litany have on the text, and how does that effect manifest? That is, what is the novel doing when it lists so many locations, and how is it doing so?

Essay Topic 3

Into what medium is Orbital most apt for adaptation? What in the text tells you as much? How does it suggest that such an adaptation would work?

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