Only the Astronauts

by Ceridwen Dovey

Adrift in outer space, a motley crew of human-made objects tell their tales, making real history sweeter and stranger. Starman, a lovelorn mannequin orbiting the Sun in his cherry-red car, pines for his creator. The first sculpture ever taken to the Moon is possessed by the spirit of Neil Armstrong. The International Space Station, awaiting deorbit and burial in a spacecraft cemetery beneath the ocean, farewells its last astronauts. A team of tamponauts sets off on a perilous mission to Mars inspired by the courage of their predecessors. The Voyager 1 space probe – carrying its precious Golden Record – is captured by Oortians near the edge of the solar system and drawn into their baroque, glimmering rituals. By turns joyous and mournful, these object-astronauts are not high priests of the universe but something a little . . . weirder. From their inverted perspectives, they observe humans both intimately and from a great distance, bearing witness to a civilisation unable to live up to its own ideals. And yet each still finds in our planet – in their humans – something worthy of love.

Genres: Short Stories, Science Fiction, Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Space, Book Club, Astronomy

276 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 7, 2024

About the author

Ceridwen Dovey grew up in South Africa and Australia, studied as an undergraduate at Harvard, and now lives in Sydney. Her first novel, Blood Kin, was translated into fifteen languages and selected for the US National Book Foundation’s prestigious ‘5 Under 35’ award. J.M. Coetzee called it ‘A fable of the arrogance of power beneath whose dreamlike surface swirl currents of complex sensuality.' Her second work of fiction, Only the Animals, will be published by Penguin in 2014 (Australia) and Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 2015 (USA).

Reviews

[chichi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have never read anything like this collection of short stories before, they are whacky and wonderful! Ceridwen Dovey imbues souls into actual objects that have been launched into space as they meditate on what it means to be human and observe humanity from afar. Only the Astronauts weaves in real space history and each story gives powerful insights into the politics and ethics of space exploration as well as our society as a whole. All while being so moving and hopeful. This book had me crying on behalf of the International Space Station and empathising with tampons.

[EmG ReadsDaily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully original, humorous and thought-provoking short stories, told from the perspective of human-made, object-astronauts.

The audiobook is well-produced and is narrated brilliantly by Natasha Beaumont.

This has encouraged me to seek out more writing from Ceridwen Dovey.

Format: Audiobook, through Libby/Overdrive
Audio time: 6 hours, 35 minutes

[Ceinwen Langley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cohesive, weird, and moving.

[Geonn Cannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really good, really quick read, but probably almost impossible to find in the US, sadly. The first story has a bit too much "Elon" in it for my tastes. But if you're writing stories about man-made objects in outer space, the mannequin in a convertible he launched up there would be hard not to use.

[Elyse Lucas · Rating 5 out of 5]

I salute you, brave tamponauts 🫡

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed the different perspectives of the inanimate narrators and I really enjoyed the vastness of space. The power of imagination expressed here is remarkable - something rich and strange. It was really interesting when some of the history of the space program and the experiences of astronauts was brought in to some of the stories.

[Ashleigh · Rating 4 out of 5]

I immensely enjoyed my time with this quirky short story collection about objects in space. It is hard to explain the charm of this bizarre book but there is something that just works. For manmade objects there was such yearning for humanity which I found touching. This collection is definitely unique, I will not forget it any time soon!

[Robert Watson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, what a treat. This imaginative work of genius was recommended during a discussion I was fortunate to hear with Orbital author Samantha Harvey, as part of the Sydney Writers festival. A fabulous mix of humour and emotion as Ceridwen Dovey gives voice to a variety of real and imagined entities in deep space. Astoundingly good.

[Sandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 🌟
'I am caught between categories, between outsider and insider, the living and the undead; between odyssey and oddity, between trying too hard and playing hard to get. Between astronaut and freak. Yet my allegiance lies with you, my alpha, and I will do whatever it takes to claim my place at your side.'

[Malcolm · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF. 50 pages in, hadn’t enjoyed any of the book and couldn’t get interested in any of the lives of the inanimate objects that are the lead characters in the first two stories. So reluctantly decided to move on.

[Maddie o · Rating 3 out of 5]

Such a unique way of looking at life from a different perspective. I never knew I could feel something about inanimate objects.

[Rachael · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book. It is crazily creative and readers have to give in to the weirdness and ride it.

[Susan Winfield · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars.
What a charming collection of space-age stories! Suitable for most ages, however I think adults would get the most out of it.

'Starman' - told from the point of view of Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster and mannikin wearing a spacesuit which was launched into space in 2018 and is still orbiting Earth today. 'Starman' cuts a lonely figure in orbit - pining away for Elon, but he does encounter a few similar objects launched into space over the decades by various nations. Quite charming and amusing.

'Requiem' - told from the point of view of the soon-to-be decommissioned International Space Station - is a rather sentimental, but poignant look at the varied experiences of astronauts who have sent time on the ISS over the years. Some of these viewpoints are quite heartfelt, others will surprise you.

'The Fallen Astronaut' - told from the point of view of Neil Armstrong's ghost (spirit?) on the Moon This story was far from my favourite - a little too sentimental for me!

'We, the Tamponauts' - an absolute riot! In 1983 Sally Ride became the 1st American woman (3rd woman overall) to go into Space. The story goes that they sent up a supply of 100 tampons for her, and is the inspiration for this story - a very tongue-in-cheek and worthwhile look at the female presence in Space. We follow four 'Tamponauts' on their very own mission to Mars, in search of life - but Mars has a few surprises for them!

'Hackgold / Hacksilver' - a sentient Voyager 1 is journeying through the Oort Cloud (somewhere out past Pluto) when it is captured by strange beings called the 'Oortians' and integrated into their incomprehensible society. This one didn't quite reach me the way the other stories did...

[Dani Ringrose · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wish this collection had the same impact on me as Only the Animals did. I think because there was some overlap in the technique and aims of the collections that they didn't gut-punch me the way the previous one did.

Despite that, these are a perfectly profound collection of stories, with the expected - and thoughtful - musings on humanity that can come from narrating a series of stories from the perspective of inanimate objects jettisoned into space by humanity's hubris could provide.

I do wonder how different Starman would have been written in 2025.

I feel like Starman was the seed of the idea for the whole collection, and it was kinda fun to see some great overlaps between these stories - Yuri Gagarin turns up a couple of times, the billionaire scoffed at by various space items - and a guest appearance from Plautus the tortoise from Only the Animals. I was incredibly relieved to see that Dovey included the golden record sent off with Voyager, and used it to explore the relationship of the Sagans, since I became enamoured with them after seeing Contact in 1997. I love space exploration, and grew up in the era of the Space Shuttles, the later heydays of the missions, and this was a collection written with genuine love and admiration for those journeys. I wish I was alive during the moon landing and the way it captured humanity.

Requiem held my interest rather than becoming overbearing in its in experimental voice. The space station narrates the experiences of the astronauts that inhabit it, and it becomes a parental-symbiotic relationship. It could've reached for "quaint observations" of human behaviour, but didn't, and instead illustrated the fondness the astronauts would've had for it. Must've been fun to research.

The Fallen Astronaut was my other favourite, wonderfully reminiscent in nature, philosophising both about the moon's history in astronomy and Neil Armstrong's experiences both on the moon's surface and after. Just a perfect story about a man and a rock.


"Cutting cords, whether literal or figurative, is never simple for humans. I believe it all stems from the way human babies are born, though it has not been my good fortune to witness a birth."

"It will be easier for my humans, too, the ones who have known and loved me, to picture me buried in one place. They won't see the truth of it: that I will be nothing more than scrap metal strewn across the seabed."

"In later years, I liked to watch the Shuttles do their slow, mesmerising loop-the-loops in preparation for docking with me: that trusting tumble, like courtship. The approaching Shuttle would roll over to show me its belly so the humans onboard could check its heat shields were intact, and the Disasters could never again happen (I cannot bear to speak of them)."

"They must write on paper, not screens. They can take sippy cups of vodka with them, for inspiration. Everyone has to wear a party hat, ealastic straps cutting into their chins."

"Those of us who walked on Moonland were traumatised by our journeys in different ways, but none of us became poets."

"Why did Buzz and I not lie down right away when we got here and make moondust angels in the soil? Why did we not kiss the Moon rocks to see if they were still warm, place them down each other's spines, grounding ourselves in a new world?"

"The humans do not know it, but I've found this place - and this intelligent species - because they put pieces of metal together to make me, and then threw me out into the void.
Yes, Carl and Annie did this to you. They floated you and your twin. It was a death sentence."

"My own laughter ebbed away too, and a great shame filled me. For so many years, across such an expanse of space and time, you and I had proudly carried these identical Records that were meant to be celestial messages in a bottle. We were brainwashed, sister, to believe that we were special. The humans did not properly prepare us for the universe into which we were dispatched, or exiled. We had simply waltzed into the cosmos, high on our own importance, two princesses prepared to be adored."

[Ali · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't know if it was the mood I was in when I read this, but there was something unbearably sad about these tales of those absorbed, discarded and inspired by the human drive into space. As with her previous Only The Animals, Dovey is here exploring the perspectives of those with little control over large events that prove cataclysmic - the crash test dummies, the probes, the space stations, and in one surreal piece inspired by the now legendary Sally Ride story*, a bunch of tampons. Obviously, these are imaginative stories, which get a good deal more surreal than you may expect based on her previous work, but the central theme, that of the cost of endeavour and how little we think of others, is very similar. Not all of the entries here worked for me - I found the tampon entry overly long, and the last just got a little too all over the place - but I do love the way these stories make you think. And at their best - the space station entry in particular - they are so achingingly human.

*On the one hand I do love this story for what it says about how unprepared for female biology hard science usually is. On the other, the story usually leaves out that the engineers involved were not all male, and that they were very unsure of the effective of low gravity on menstruation, they were pretty sure changing a tampon was likely to be challenging, and the risks of bodily fluid escaping to float in the cabin were very real with all the personal hygiene equipment (the urine catchers, prior to Ride, were all designed around penises and notoriously came in "large, gigantic, humonguos"sizes because in the original "small, medium, large" no-one ever chose small. Ride and other women did at least force a redesign to everyone's benefit. But my point is that there were lots of ways menstruation could go wrong, and they wanted to make sure there were plenty of spares if they did. Yes, that still doesn't justify 100 tampons for six days.

[Kathryn M · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Actual rating: 4.25 - 4.5).

This story collection is strange, quirky, and unexpectedly deeply moving. The central conceit - the story of human-made objects in space, told from their perspective - is relatively simple, but the spin that Dovey puts on it is off-centre and intriguing. I would say it's a slow burn book; its appeal creeps up on you, reaching through the (on the face of it) quite silly premises of some of the stories to achieve emotional depths and resonances that take you by surprise. In terms of a favourite story, I find it hard to go past the loving dignity in Requiem (the story of the ISS, told as a reflection just before its demise), but I also have a huge soft spot for the only story to include putative aliens, Hackgold/Hacksilver, and for Voyager 1 (its protagonist).

At the end of the day, these are stories about the greed and the generosity, the loveliness and the ugliness, of humanity, reflected back to us through the things we make and send before us. I thoroughly enjoyed it, was moved by it, and will certainly return to it to reflect again on the ideas.

[Sarah]

I loved the first two sections of this book - the voyage of Starman is extremely funny and the final days of the ISS (which Dovey has also made a short film about with director Rowena Potts) was beautiful. Then things get deeply silly after that and I’m not sure what to make of it! The difficulty may be that I listened to the audiobook, and the narrator’s delivery is extremely earnest. Perhaps it would have been easier for me to take in the more dry text of the page. I do usually enjoy absurdity handled seriously, which I remember Dovey doing wonderfully in parts of Only the Animals, but this audio performance made the tamponauts in particular feel a bit twee (though the colonial mars rovers were fun). I enjoyed the thread of space environmentalism and mixed human tenderness and hubris throughout, and would recommend to anyone who doesn’t mind a little earnest absurdity!

[Nicole · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked up this book hoping for a quick little sci-fi novel which would be a sort of palate cleanser between some of the heavier fiction I have been reading. I found all of those things and more in 'Only the Astronauts.' A tenderly written, evocative, anthropomorphised view of our relationship with space and the objects which we have sent into its arms. Dovey writes with the intense innocence most of us would imagine these objects carrying, but does so without undermining their objectives, or the narrative which scientific objectives have imposed upon them. I borrowed this book from the library, but will certainly be purchasing it if I ever see it on the shelves.

[Josiah Morgan · Rating 3 out of 5]

The three stars are almost entirely for the second story/novella in here, "REQUIEM," which is a beautifully imagined piece of writing. Overall, the collection betrays its central conceit. The stories are ostensibly voiced by non-human beings, but Dovey only allows her non-human beings to observe human stories. It's effectively like replacing a third-person omniscient voice with a first-person subject that observes the exact way a third-person omniscient voice does. Kind of pointless in my opinion.

[Farrells Bookshop · Rating 5 out of 5]

A short story collection unlike anything you've read before. Different human-made objects tell their stories of space exploration, observing humans from a unique vantage point. Strange, moving and full of love.

Read by Mahli

[Emily Wrayburn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full of whimsy and melancholia and a bit of silliness. I really enjoyed these (though there were times when Starman made me feel a little uncomfortable - a deliberate choice on the part of the author, I think - and sometimes Tamponauts felt just too silly. But otherwise...)

[David O'Connell · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75

A varied, dazzlingly original concept, though not as good as her earlier book Only the Animals.

All 5 tales have merit but the final one about the Oortians, Voyager probe and its Golden Record from Earth is pure genius and my absolute favourite.

[Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

Moments of unexpected beauty, pathos and humour interspersed throughout delightful prose. I read this in a day. The first book I have done so in quite some time. That is the true review....

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Objects have secret lives that they tell only to Ceridwen Dovey.

[H Alexander · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was fine.

[Brenton Campbell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Starman was my favourite story! I love Dovey’s style and way to tell stories.

[Kate H · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 rounded up. A couple of the stories weren’t that great, but some have stayed with me - always a good sign.

[Missyd · Rating 3 out of 5]

Requiem and Hackgold/Hacksilver were excellent. You’ll probably never read another story like ‘we, the tamponauts’ I did laugh out loud that the tamponauts’ were funded by the luxury tax.

[Meg · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought this was just fantastic. Very weird, completely unique.