Illustration Issue
https://issuu.com/orbitalmagazine2/docs/the_orbital_illustration_edition
19Feb 
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13Jan No Comments
No Comments Close To Me – Issue Two
https://issuu.com/orbitalmagazine2/docs/issue_two_close_to_me
15Nov No Comments
No Comments Healing Wounds and Fostering Hope in the City Of Joy: The Battle of Dr. Denis Mukwege
By Olivia Taylor
Trigger Warning: Discussions of rape and violence.
Rape is the cheapest weapon in war. It has the power to destroy families, empty villages and rid victims of any sense of dignity. Finding a solution for a crime against humanity like this feels almost hopeless. Still, there is one man who has dedicated his life to changing the world’s perspective by saving the lives of thousands of Congolese women who have endured the harrowing weaponisation of rape in times of war.
Dr. Denis Mukwege decided to study medicine after witnessing the complications that women in the Congo experience during childbirth due to their lack of specialist medical attention. As a result, Dr. Mukwege established Panzi Hospital to address his country’s alarming maternal mortality rates. It was ...
15Nov No Comments
No Comments Move On Up – Issue One
https://issuu.com/orbitalmagazinerhul/docs/issue_one_move_on_up
31Jul No Comments
No Comments It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over
By Olivia Taylor
We are led to believe that everything that starts eventually has to end. Last year as a part of my compulsory ‘Thinking as a Critic’ English module we briefly discussed teleology, specifically looking at its relation to literature. In a philosophical sense, teleology essentially describes the purpose of something by its finality rather than how it came to be, and so when this theory is applied to literature, often it becomes apparent that continuity cannot always be as rewarding as closure may be. The state of closure brings about a sense of completeness, it yields satisfaction. When it got to the point of writing our final assignment for this particular module, I was drawn back to our previous studies of closure with a question titled, ‘For what reason, if any, is clo...
14Jun No Comments
No Comments How Did Life End Up With Us?
By Felix Poreé and Olivia Taylor
Introduced as the first book of a quartet titled "The Secrets of Life: From Big Bang to Trump", SS O'Connor's How Did Life End Up With Us? presents itself as an attempt to answer the most pertinent of questions surrounding the laws of life, from the start of the Big Bang all the way to the ‘decisions’ that organisms make that ultimately determine their chances of survival. One anticipates that such questions would require substantial scientific research, and although O’Connor admits he is not a scientist, his undertaking, given to the reader in a conversational writing style, is divided into specific chapters that aim to cover such topics as natural selection, gene mutations, and evolutionary change, down to parasitism, mutualism, and altruism.
O’Con...
24Apr No Comments
No Comments Hopeless Romantic by Dolly Alderton
I have held myself back from discussing Dolly Alderton for quite some time now. I first read her debut memoir Everything I Know About Love three years ago, during lockdown, and I have not shut up about it since. I’ll admit, her fictional debut, Ghosts, did not impress me as much; I quickly realised it was her confessional tone that caught my attention, hence why her autobiographical work and her ‘Dear Dolly’ advice column have left such a lasting impression. Since reading Everything I Know About Love, I have continued to stay up to date with her work, but I only recently found an essay she wrote for The Pound Project in 2018 titled ‘Hopeless Romantic’.
The Pound Project is an independent publishing company founded by JP Watson. Their message is to shout about ‘the value of readin...
24Apr No Comments
No Comments The Democratic Downfall of Journalism
Daniel Pearl was an American journalist. Near the time of his abduction and death, he had been working in Mumbai, India as the Southeast Asia bureau chief of The Wall Street Journal, but had travelled with his family to Karachi, Pakistan to report on the United States’ War on Terrorism following the 9/11 attacks by Al-Qaeda in 2001. Pearl was recognised for his journalistic detail and his ability to empathise with how humanity - and our own human nature - is affected by international issues. Consequently, he was considerate of the reported portrayal of the Islamic world towards his Western readers. Nevertheless, during his time in Karachi in early 2002, Pearl was kidnapped and murdered by several Islamist jihadist groups working together, operating under the Lashkar-e-Omar umbrella. ...
7Jan No Comments
No Comments The Narration of Sisterhood
I have asked my sister to plait my hair a handful of times in the past, since she has always had this skill that I quite clearly lack. I quickly realised I would rather go without French or Dutch braids, especially if she was going to do them for me. She would pull so hard on my straight, thin strands, tug my head to the point it hurt and even hold pieces of my hair in her mouth so she could use her hands more efficiently. And yet, whilst she clearly was putting in the effort, my plaited hair would never look as good as hers. My sister’s beautiful, bouncy curls will twist together perfectly, always looking thick and healthy and will stay in place forever; her hair is everything mine isn't. However, she will always complain about how much maintenance is required for her hair, whereas I wil...
13Dec No Comments
No Comments The Self-Help ‘Genre’: Reading Towards a Fresh Start
Watching Sex and the City’s Charlotte York stumble through a bookstores ‘Self-Help’ section in search of Starting Over Yet Again, feels like a very accurate depiction of that particular experience, especially when you are a perfectly normal yet slightly unconfident and insecure person. Fortunately for both Charlotte and anyone else looking for novels like Starting Over Yet Again - which unfortunately isn’t a real book - Amazon exists. Therefore we don’t have to fumble through the self-help section shouting ‘travel… travel?’ in vain hope of masking any embarrassment.
But why should anyone be embarrassed of self-help books? Have we really created a stigma around reading for advice rather than asking? Whilst I haven’t (yet) bought a title similar to Starting Over Yet Again, I have r...