Introduction

At various moments during Alfonso Cuarón’s spectacular 2013 movie Gravity , the lead character, doctor-turned-astronaut Ryan Stone (played by Sandra Bullock), floats in space, untethered to anything, the rim of the earth a distant curve behind her. What little we learn about Ryan’s personal history reveals that she is also untethered in a more figurative sense: she has no partner, no family to speak of, and her life so far is defined mainly by a terrible loss – the death of her four-year-old daughter. When debris hits the Hubble telescope being repaired by Ryan and her fellow astronauts, everyone but Ryan perishes, and she is entirely alone. Ryan’s only chance of survival involves using the space shuttle Explorer to travel to a nearby Chinese space station, but when she discovers that the shuttle is out of fuel, she resigns herself to her fate. Speaking to the sole voice that comes faintly in over her radio, that of an Inuit radio operator named Aningaaq, she sums up her predicament:

I’m going to die, Aningaaq. I know, we’re all going to die, everybody knows that. But I’m going to die today. Funny, that. You know, to know. But the thing is, it’s that I’m still scared. I’m really scared. Nobody will mourn for me, no one will pray for my soul … Will you mourn for me? Will you say a prayer for me? Or is it too late? I mean, I’d say one for myself, but I’ve never prayed in my life, so … nobody ever taught me how. Nobody ever taught me how. ¹