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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. Which of the following do station crew members note wishing for?

2. Which of the following is noted in the novel as a way to say “hello”?

3. To what time are the station’s clocks set?

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

5. Which of the following does Shaun eat for lunch?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. What question does Shaun’s teacher ask about Las Meninas?

3. Why is Anton persistently tired?

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

5. Why does the station boast a Happy Birthday banner?

6. What, per the novel, underlies the desire never to leave the station among its crew?

7. Why is Shaun not surprised his wife remembers their teacher’s discussion of Las Meninas?

8. Why does Anton posit his brain repeats dreams?

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

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

How does Orbital consider the tension between restraint and freedom? That is, what does the novel say about how the concepts interact with one another? What in the text does the saying, and how does it do so?

Essay Topic 2

Conversely, given demonstrated efforts toward censorship in a number of countries, what would likely prompt bans of Orbital? By which groups? Why?

Essay Topic 3

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?

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