Three space missions, two spacewalks, and a David Bowie cover that went viral. There are few things Chris Hadfield hasn’t done. Now, the retired Canadian astronaut is using the power of storytelling in fiction to give readers a sneak peek into living in-orbit.
Chris Hadfield has always loved a good story. If you had met the decorated ex-astronaut and science communicator when he was nine years old, you would probably have found him devouring a sci-fi comic book or quoting Star Trek and 2001: A Space Odyssey. But he probably wouldn’t have believed you if you told him people travel to space in real life.
That all changed when Hadfield watched the grainy footage of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin take their first steps on the Moon on television in 1969. Suddenly, there was a kernel of truth to the fantastical space adventures he immersed himself in. Now he knew exactly what he was going to do when he grew up. “People were actually flying in space,” Hadfield told The Brilliant. “It was intoxicating. I was like ‘wow, this is something I could do’.”
Did he ever. Over his 21-year career as an astronaut, Hadfield completed three space missions and two space walks, making him the first Canadian to venture into space outside of a spacecraft. But the Moon landing did more than inspire Hadfield to follow in the Apollo crew’s weightless footsteps. Just as Armstrong and Aldrin’s space boots left enduring imprints on the Moon, the flurry of images, videos and articles that followed the event demonstrated how effective storytelling can make a lasting impact. Hadfield recalls that in the decade after the Apollo 11 mission, the United States had more PhDs per capita than any other time. “I watched how the Americans went to the Moon, and they shared the heck out of it,” he says. “I think that set a bit in my mind right at the start that if you’re doing something really cool, don’t keep it to yourself.”
Houston, we have a selfie
Forbes has described Hadfield as “perhaps the most social media savvy astronaut ever to leave Earth”, and with good reason. During his five-month stint as commander of the International Space Station (ISS) in 2013 – his third and final mission – Hadfield spent his free time documenting daily life in orbit on his Twitter account. In addition to sharing breathtaking views of Earth from 400 kilometres above it, Hadfield shared videos of himself brushing his teeth, wringing out handtowels and clipping his nails in microgravity, transforming the most mundane of tasks into captivating snapshots of life in space.
But it was a video of Hadfield performing a slightly tweaked cover of David Bowie’s Space Oddity while floating weightlessly with a guitar that catapulted him to dizzying heights on the internet. Since it was posted in May 2013, the video has been viewed over 51m times, with Bowie himself reportedly calling Hadfield’s rendition “poignant”. And while Hadfield left Earth at the end of 2012 with around 20,000 Twitter followers, his account had amassed 800,000 by the time he landed home. That following has since grown to a massive 2.3m.
Hadfield’s knack for connecting with people isn’t limited to social media. Since retiring as an astronaut with the Canadian Space Agency in 2013, Hadfield has published three books, including his bestselling autobiography, An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth. He has also kept busy doing numerous TED Talks, public speaking engagements, and various teaching and consulting roles.
Hadfield’s latest mission involves walking the line between fact and fiction, much like the sci-fi stories that enthralled him as a child. In October 2021, Hadfield published his first novel. The Apollo Murders is a thriller that weaves a darker, more twisted version of the infamous Cold War space race between the United States and Soviet Union. Hadfield drew on his own experiences as an astronaut to make his fictional version of history as authentic as possible. “If you’re a first-time fiction author, I think you have the easiest resource to draw on if you write about something you are already an expert in naturally,” he says. The story is rich with vivid technical details that range from the mechanics of spaceflight to what happens when an astronaut throws up in their helmet.
Producing a Tom Clancy-esque page turner wasn’t Hadfield’s only motivation when he sat down to write during lockdown in the pandemic. He also wanted to find another way of offering people a window into what the astronaut experience is really like. A perk of writing fiction is that the possibilities are limitless, he says. “You can write whatever you want and so you can really tell the story completely and with a lot of human perspective.”
One small step, one giant leap into the unknown
Hadfield’s approach to writing his novel mirrors his strategy to becoming an astronaut, a decision he made when he was just 10 years old. Growing up on a corn farm in Milton, southern Ontario, Hadfield’s career goals couldn’t have seemed further out of reach. For a start, Hadfield was from the “wrong country”. At the time, there were no Canadian astronauts, and the Canadian Space Agency was still two decades away from opening its doors. “I don’t know how big of an obstacle you can get beyond impossible,” says Hadfield.
Such pesky obstacles aside, Hadfield’s ambitions became a guiding light in his daily decision-making, and he broke his lofty goal into bite-sized steps. When he learnt that astronauts train underwater, he took scuba diving lessons. To meet the minimum requirement of 1,000 hours flying jet aircraft, Hadfield joined the Royal Canadian Air Cadets and earned a glider pilot license at 15 years old. A year later, he picked up a powered pilot scholarship. “I had my pilot’s license before I had my driver’s license,” he says.
Hadfield applied this same step-by-step mindset to the daunting task of putting pen to blank paper. To get himself up to speed, he took a course led by bestselling novelist James Patterson on the MasterClass online learning platform and read Stephen King’s book On Writing. He also read novels by thriller luminaries such as Dick Francis and James Michener to learn the secrets of writing a book that people can’t put down. In addition to drawing on his own experiences, Hadfield did copious amounts of research to find the factual detail needed to bring his story to life.
“I think having long-term goals and then breaking it down into pieces where you can improve your own skillset is absolutely vital,” he says. “It allows you to succeed incrementally. You don’t have to wait to the end to measure whether you’re getting there or not.”
Like many first-time novelists, Hadfield agonised over every detail and sentence, an experience that invoked memories of his early days as an astronaut. “You don’t know what’s important and what isn’t,” he says. “It’s like my first spaceflight. Everything was of equal importance because I hadn’t flown in space yet.” When Hadfield sent the first draft to his editor it was a sprawling 195,000 words long. The final word count in the published book is a lean 135,000. “There were 60,000 words that were declared superfluous,” he says.
“Without external guidance, I would not be nearly as good a communicator.”
With the ink barely dry on the pages of The Apollo Murders, Hadfield is already busy working on his second novel in a ski cabin two hours from his home. Having an entirely new plot and subject matter to play with keeps him motivated, because it involves learning a “huge amount”. But his ultimate goal is the same as that kid who dreamed of travelling to space like his sci-fi heroes. “I’m trying to explore and understand the Universe,” says Hadfield. “You can work and study your whole life, but to truly get anywhere near expertise takes a lot of time and a lot of work. That means that almost everything you know about the world is because of a story somebody told you.”
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Article by Gemma Conroy
Photo credit: NASA
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