Orbital by Samantha Harvey

 

"The earth, from here, is like heaven. It flows with colour. A burst of hopeful colour. When we're on the planet we look up and think heaven is elsewhere, but here is what the astronauts and cosmonauts sometimes think: maybe all of us born to it have already died and are in an afterlife. If we must go to an improbable, hard-to-believe-in place when we die, that distant glassy orb with its beautiful, lonely light could well be it."