If offered a free trip into space, Samantha Harvey says she would like to be “brave enough” to say yes — but then adds that in truth she’d probably be too scared to go.

The question is not as random as it may seem: 49-year-old Harvey has just won the prestigious Booker Prize for fiction for her novel Orbital, a story set aboard the International Space Station as it circles the Earth, unfurling along the way observations and meditations about the “suspended jewel” below and the preoccupations of the six humans on board “up there”.

Whatever her own trepidations about taking to the heavens, Harvey’s finely executed imagination of the reality of life suspended in low Earth orbit was found by the Booker judges to be “extraordinary” and “beautiful”.

The book, which came out a year ago, has already proven a hit with readers. The £50,000 award is set to spur sales further. Harvey, who was longlisted for the prize 15 years ago for her novel The Wilderness, is the first British author to win the Booker since 2020 and the first woman since 2019.

“I can’t even begin to process it. It’s just beyond anything that I hoped or imagined,” she says in quiet, precise tones when we meet the next morning. On the table between us stands “Iris”, the gilded Booker Prize trophy, surrounded by a generously filled bowl of fruit, a largely exhausted cafetière of coffee and bags of untouched pastries. “I’m utterly overwhelmed by it,” she adds.

The International Space Station is ‘a symbol of an era that I think is passing, or has already passed, one of post-cold war reconciliation and hope’

In truth, Harvey says, the book is “more about Earth than about space”. She wanted to write something that felt “vaguely pastoral”, to find a way of writing about the Earth and its natural environment that captured a “feeling of connection but also a feeling of sorrow towards what we are doing to it”.

For that she needed an angle, which is what took her to space and the ISS. While she’s no “space nerd” — Harvey’s previous books have roamed very much in earthly terrain, from the impact of Alzheimer’s, filial duty, insomnia and the searing consequences of a love triangle — she says that she has always been interested in the perspective on Earth that space offers.

The ISS proved a perfect observation deck. Her fictional version of the space station is populated with its six humans — four men, two women; four western and Japanese astronauts, two Russian cosmonauts — who circle our planet, observing the “magnificent seemingly unbreakable majesty of the natural environment that is the planet Earth and also the enormous human impact we are having on it”. The book — at 136 pages, it is second-shortest to ever win the Booker — tracks them, and our planet, through a “normal” 24-hour day, which in the world of the ISS involves 16 orbits of Earth with 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets.

Threaded through the novel is a gathering typhoon whose progress towards its ultimate devastating impact in south-east Asia is observed in beguiling prose. “It’s the plot,” says Harvey almost teasingly, addressing one of the observations about Orbital that the story does not follow a narrative form or contain the conflict central in much conventional storytelling.

To imagine all this required deep dives into the Nasa and European Space Agency archives, and many hours on the ISS live feed. It helped that she worked on the book through lockdown. (Tellingly “almost nothing” of the Russian space programme is accessible.) “I love research,” says Harvey. “It opens a creative door.” Do enough research and you get the point “to feel confident enough to make things up”.

The result is a startling and acutely presented contrast between the cosmic and the quotidian. There are beautiful descriptive passages of the world below, looping weather systems, continents blurring — “Asia come and gone” — as the space station whizzes along at 17,500mph. The creation of our galaxy — “some cosmic clumping thumping clashing banging Wild West Shoot-out of rock and gas”— is given lyrical treatment. Meanwhile, up there are the daily routines and realities — bland dinners, uncleared dishes, recycled urine and everything velcroed into place — and thoughts about “home”.

Space is “the one remaining wilderness”, says Harvey. And yet few novelists engage with it, leaving it more to the writers of sci-fi or memoir-penning astronauts. She believes that space offers “a really strange place in the human psyche”, caught between the now “humdrum” of routine missions and rocket launches, and the “mythical” that lends itself to sci-fi. Yet we fail to grasp the reality that space has been a natural lived environment for humans for the last quarter of a century on the ISS.

The space station, which was launched in 1998, is one of the few places where Russia and the west are co-operating in a meaningful way. “It’s a symbol of an era that I think is passing, or maybe has already passed, one of post-cold war reconciliation and hope,” says. In Orbital she writes about the growing cracks in the shell of the ageing ISS. Meanwhile, Moscow has previously threatened to quit the project.

Harvey adds that the ISS also belongs to a passing era in human exploration of space, where the next phases will be about establishing a staging post on the Moon to support future missions to Mars. That will involve a shift away from a focus on “our planet”, circling and looking down on Earth, to looking “out”. As such, Harvey sees the ISS freighted with a deep sense of nostalgia.

The next chapter in space exploration is also set to have new authors. While the likes of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos find no place in Orbital, there is a telling line when one of the characters ponders a media inquiry about “how we are writing the future of humanity”. The answer: “With the gilded pens of billionaires, I guess.”

Harvey worries about the shift to discovery driven by wealthy individuals rather than states. “I think we have an opportunity with space exploration to do things radically differently and we are not taking that opportunity. We are just repeating the same paradigm,” she says. “It is exploitative, the new frontier: whoever gets there first claims it.”

Meanwhile, “we are filling up low Earth orbit with junk that we have no way of disposing of. We’ve entirely trashed the field of space around our planet.”

As for her own life beyond Orbital, Harvey is just getting to grips with the relentless promotional schedule that awaits all Booker winners. Somewhat wistfully, she says that there is a love story of sorts that she began working on a while back and is “still taking shape in her mind” and that she is “desperate” to get back to writing.

“I feel that I can access a room in myself through writing that I cannot access in any other way,” she says. “And I kind of need to go back to that room quite often. At the same time, it’s the Booker Prize!”

Orbital by Samantha Harvey, Jonathan Cape £14.99, 136 pages

Frederick Studemann is the FT’s literary editor

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THE government is set to announce huge plans to create “pension megafunds” in a bid to boost both savers’ retirement pots and investment in the UK.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves will outline the plans to move around £800billion of pension savings into larger so-called “megafunds” in her first annual “Mansion House” speech this evening.

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Local government pension schemes, which manage around £400billion of that cash, will be forced to split into eight megafunds.

Eventually, the plan is to then group all other defined contribution (DC) schemes – what most workers save into – into a number of other big funds.

DC schemes are where you and your employer both put money into a scheme and the cash is invested to grow your pot over time.

The plan is to set a minimum amount these funds can have in them – currently touted as somewhere between £25billion and £50billion.

The government is also consulting on allowing fund managers – who manage where all this cash is invested – to move savers from schemes which are under-performing into schemes that will deliver them better value.

The megafund set-up is similar to the pension systems in other countries like Australia and Canada, where pension cash is pooled into huge so-called “superfunds” and invested on behalf of larger groups of savers.

Ms Reeves said the reforms are the biggest change to the pensions market “in decades” that will “boost people’s savings in retirement” and “drive economic growth”.

The government added: “Consolidating the assets into a handful of megafunds run by professional fund managers will allow them to invest more in assets like infrastructure, supporting economic growth and local investment.”

What do the changes mean for your money?

Currently, most workers in the UK are automatically enrolled into their workplace pension scheme.

These are usually DC schemes. The other type of pensions in the UK are “defined benefit” schemes, where workers receive a guaranteed income in retirement based on their years of service.

But “megafunds” will pool a number of workplace pension schemes together to create giant pots of money to invest.

The aim is that by having much larger amounts to invest, the cash returns on those investments will be far higher than having lots of smaller pots.

For example, if you returned 5% on £1,000 in a year, you would earn £50, but if you returned 5% on £100,000 over a year, you would earn £5,000, and so on.

This should mean savers should end up with much larger pots of money by the time they retire.

Having more cash also means investment managers can take more risk with their investments with the aim of achieving higher returns.

Looking at the bigger picture, the government is hoping that these larger pension funds can be used to invest in infrastructure projects, which will ultimately benefit everyone.

Currently, most DC pensions in the UK are too small to invest in any meaningful capacity in infrastructure projects, such as roads, railways or building developments.

But government analysis has found pension funds worth between £25billion and £50billion can achieve much greater “productive investment levels”.

For example, it found Canada’s pension schemes invest around four times more in infrastructure than the UK currently does, while Australia’s pension schemes invest around three times more.

By combining UK schemes, the government estimates it could unlock a whopping £80billion to invest in the country’s infrastructure.

Jon Greer, head of retirement policy at wealth manager Quilter, said that by pooling resources into larger funds, savers will access “high-yield investments that smaller schemes often miss”.

“Drawing inspiration from successful models in Australia and Canada, this approach has the potential to deliver stable returns while supporting meaningful long-term projects,” he added.

However, some pensions industry experts have expressed concern that the government’s main focus is on investing in the UK rather than achieving returns for savers.

Tom Selby, director of public policy at AJ Bell, warned: “Conflating a government goal of driving investment in the UK and people’s retirement outcomes brings a danger because the risks are all taken with members’ money. 

“If it goes well, everyone can celebrate – but it’s clearly possible that it will go the other way, so there needs to be some caution in this push to use other people’s money to drive economic growth.”

The past doesn’t predict the future. But if a company has been paying dividends for a long time, that can give investors confidence in its ability to continue doing so. It demonstrates that the company can weather a lot of adversity and innovate and launch new products to meet changing demand. Those are key characteristics investors will want to see when considering long-term investments.

Three stocks that have not only been around for a century but have also been paying dividends for that long are Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO), Eli Lilly (NYSE: LLY), and Abbott Laboratories (NYSE: ABT). Here’s why these can be some of the safest stocks you can add to your portfolio today.

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Coca-Cola has an iconic brand that’s known all around the world. It’s a top Warren Buffett holding, and a big reason for that is its strong brand power. Its products are found in millions of households, across hundreds of countries. While the company is known for its Coke products, it has evolved over the years and now has more than 200 brands, branching out beyond just soft drinks and into coffee, tea, and water.

The company has created no-sugar products to meet changing customer demand, and it has also expanded via acquisitions. Coca-Cola may not be the growth machine it once was, but it’s still a reliable business to invest in. It has generated $10.4 billion in profit over the past four quarters on sales of $46.4 billion, for a profit margin of 22%.

Coca-Cola has paid a dividend going back to 1893. Today, it’s part of an exclusive club of Dividend Kings, which have increased their dividend payments for more than 50 straight years. Its dividend yields 3%, and if your priority is to generate a safe and recurring dividend, Coca-Cola may be an ideal stock to put into your portfolio right now.

Eli Lilly is a hot growth stock to buy, as investors are bullish on its prospects in the weight loss market. The company has an incredibly promising product in tirzepatide, which regulators have approved for diabetes treatment (Mounjaro) and weight loss (Zepbound). At its peak, tirzepatide may be the best-selling drug ever, with some analysts projecting that its annual revenue will eventually top more than $50 billion.

To put into perspective just how massive that is, consider that Eli Lilly generated $34 billion in sales last year — from all of its products. With so much excitement surrounding Eli Lilly’s potential, it’s little wonder that the healthcare stock has risen by more than 200% in just the past three years.

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(Bloomberg) — ASML Holding NV (ASML), the Dutch maker of advanced chip-making machines that are critical to global supply chains, reaffirmed its long-term revenue outlook as it bets on an artificial intelligence-driven boom in semiconductor demand.

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The Dutch firm projected that sales in 2030 will range from €44 billion ($46 billion) to €60 billion, in line with its previous forecast, according to a statement issued as part of the company’s investor day on Thursday.

The outlook is meant to reassure investors after the company’s order intake significantly missed analysts’ estimates in the third quarter, sparking a selloff in its shares and those of other chip-related businesses. Chipmakers such as Nvidia Corp. have enjoyed a boom in demand for their AI chips. But sales to other key buyers, including automakers and mobile phone and PC manufacturers, have remained mired in a prolonged slump.

“A few weeks ago, we had a bit of a conservative view for 2025,” Chief Executive Officer Christophe Fouquet said at the investor day. “In many ways, this is related to the change of the market. But when it comes to 2030, we are still very, very bullish.”

ASML expects growing AI demand will help boost global chip sales to over $1 trillion by 2030, which it said represents an annual growth rate in the semiconductor market of about 9%.

ASML is the only company in the world that makes the kind of lithography machines that help semiconductor companies in turn produce the advanced chips powering everything from Apple Inc.’s smartphones to Nvidia’s AI accelerators. As such, it is often viewed as a bellwether for the broader industry and an early indicator of global semiconductor demand.

Manufacturing more cutting-edge AI chips will mean more of ASML’s advanced extreme ultraviolet lithography machines will be needed by semiconductor makers. The company foresees double-digit growth in EUV spending annually through 2030 for both advanced logic and DRAM.

The company forecast a gross margin of between approximately 56% and 60%​ in 2030.

ASML shares rose as much as 5.9% in Amsterdam on Thursday, the biggest intraday gain since July 31. They were up 5% to €659.10 at 1:18 p.m.

While ASML in October cut its sales outlook for next year, it said on Thursday it will maintain its spending priorities. ASML currently has an ongoing €12 billion buyback through 2025 of which only 14% has been repurchased.

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