A Close Reading Of R.O.A.U.S.S.

Report on an Unidentified Space Station is a science fiction short by J.G. Ballard, an “English novelist and short-story writer, satirist and essayist known for psychologically provocative works of fiction that explore the relations between human psychology, technology, sex and mass media.” (according to Wikipedia).

The story is publicly and freely available online, and it’s quite short, even for a short - so, go ahead and read it, before we take a closer look at it. Obviously there are spoilers ahead, as I’m going to discuss the story in more detail. So really, go read it. And then maybe, take half an hour to just sit there and ponder what you just read. Because this is not the kind of story that you are done with, after having read it in a few minutes.

Ever since I first discovered this short, many years ago, I keep remembering it, and coming back to it every few years. It’s a thought-provoking tale, that stays with you. And I feel it even has some elements that vaguely remind me of cosmic horror in the Lovecraftian sense. It’s the unknowable that’s the source of a feeling of unease and dread.

How Big Is The Station?

I don’t think it matters. It’s not the point - the story is much more about the psychology of humans being faced with something they cannot comprehend. People often describe the station as getting larger - but I don’t think that’s the case.

By the end of the story, it’s fairly obviousy that the reports of those people cannot be trusted. They still write things that sound remotely scientific - but they’ve gone fully religious and are no longer interested in the facts, nor operating scientifically. The proposed proportions of the station have gone absurd, and entered completely impossible territory.

So, we cannot believe those numbers they claim. Thus, if I had to wager a guess, I would say the station is roughly 500 meters. Because that’s what the first report says, and that estimate/measurement has been taken while they were landing on the station. Whatever then happened - whatever led to those people loosing grip on reality - at this point in the story still has had the least compromising effect on the people. The further we go, the more compromised they become, and less trustworthy their reports are. Thus, this very first report has to be the most plausible one. It could be off, of course, because during the emergency landing they didn’t have to properly measure things. But they’ve seen the station from outside, and deemed it too small to appear on charts, etc. - it has to be somewhere in that ball-park.

Apart from that, in the second report, when they first revise the size to being 1 mile, they still have an explanation for that size discrepancy. There’s some sort of instellar dust creating a thin local atomsphere that obscures the bulk of the station. And this can explain why a 1 mile station might appear as just 500 meters. It definitely does not explain how a 15,000 light year sized station could be hard to discover and too small to be on charts. So, these reports quickly start to contradict each other. And while it would seem the proper scientific approach to admit mistakes and revise your theory in the face of new, contradicting data - it’s not scientific to never consider that the new data might be wrong, that the instruments might be malfunctioning or giving wrong readings because of some sort of interference within the station.

So, the most likely answer to what the size of the station is, is somewhere in the ball-park of 500 meters.

When Do Things Start To Go Wrong?

Right from the start. But I think the moment it becomes obvious, is in Report 4. That’s when they make the decision to abandon all repair work, and focus on exploring the entire station instead. That is not a rational decision to make.

Sure, it does make some sense to try and locate those two missing crew members - but they are already assuming them dead. Their theory is, that they’ve fallen down an near-infinite elevator shaft. They also should be noticing that given everything they know or presume at that point, that finding these others is growing increasingly unlikely every time they revise their size estimate.

They now think the station is 500 miles in size - and at that point, the chances of those two lost finding their way back is higher, than the chances of a search team finding those two. So, even if they do send out search parties - they need to have someone stay put, in case the two find back. You can’t have everyone move on and away from your ship. Which you should still be repairing.

Giving up on repairs, and then everyone moving away without making sure they can ever find back to their ship… that makes no sense to do. At this point, they are no longer doing anything towards leaving this place.

And that makes us - the readers - see some other things in a differnt light. Like, when in Report 2 they say that repairs prove to be more complex and time-consuming than first expected… is that actually true? Or are at that point they already coming up with excuses to stay? Because, if you look at it - every decision they make, every choice they take, is always about staying longer and not leaving. They always come up with a seemingly rational reason to stick around.

And in that light - the sentence “to shorten this task we are carrying out a search of our temporary home” feels fishy. Wouldn’t having more people work on repairs - and fewer people going on a search speed things up? And why are they already calling it “home”? Even if still “temporary”.

Who says they even have to fully repair everything? If they just focussed all man-power on doing just the most important repairs they need to be able to leave - they might already have left. Instead they are making the decision which is then going to cause 2 members to get lost. Which in turn is going to cause the rest to abandon repairing the ship in favor of searching for those two lost. Which they later seem to just completely forget about doing. They aren’t even moving in the direction (towards the lower decks) where they think those two went.

Remember: exploring the station is not their mission. They just had to emergency land there when their real mission went south. They still have to finish that original mission - and THEN they can decide to return to that station with another ship later, and have exploring that be it’s own mission. A mission that also brings specialized equipment and the right experts and the right tools. And maybe does a more extensive external scan of the station first - instead of just blindly walking through the inside. They are changing their mission goals to do something their current mission is not well-equipped for.

How Do You Know They Are Mentally “Compromised”?

I’m not saying there’s anything supernatural going on. Might be - but maybe not. Maybe there’s just some weird gas on the station that they are breathing. Maybe they found water and rations on the station and there’s something weird in that - some substance or alien bacteria, who knows. Maybe it’s nothing on the station, but whatever happened before - what caused their emergency - left them in a highly traumatized and vulnerable state.

I don’t think it matters. Just like the true size of the station does not matter. It would seem totally possible to me, that the author never even decided upon “a true reason” to begin with - but always intended to let these things remain “unknowable”. The station and what it means is imho not what the author wanted to explore in this short. It’s just the backdrop for the purely human, psychological drama that unfolds.

How big the station is, and what actually causes the people to loose their minds, is besides the point. The more interesting part is, that these supposed scientists, never consider that they might be wrong. That they never try to falsify their theory, or do any kind of sanity-check of their assumptions. Instead, they just keep building more and more increasingly absurd theories on top of each other - just to never admit that they might be deceiving themselves.

This becomes very clear to me, when in Report 8 they come across what they think are the signs of another group of people. Signs of habitation, moved chairs, an elevator shaft forced open. They completely fail to realize, that it was themselves who did that. That they went in circles, came across their own tracks, and didn’t even recognize they were here before.

Previously they’ve already come up with theories of curvature in the station allowing space to bend in weird ways - which would make it possible for them to run in circles despite always going straight. Despite that, they still cannot accept that they might no longer know which direction they are going, where they came from, and that they accidentially returned to a spot they’ve already been before. They also cannot admit, that at this point, the no longer know the way back to their ship. Or that their companions - if still alive - might have found their way back to the ship.

They also aren’t considering that the size they are attributing to the station at this point - is completely impossible given their own observations during the emergency landing, when they still saw the station from outside. If you asked them to shift from 500 meter to light years in size - they’d call that impossible. But instead, they shifted in smaller increments, and found ways to rationalize each of those individual increments. But taken all together, that logic just completely falls apart.

In Report 9, they already talk about how they are forgetting how their journey even started. And that their destination is “the station itself, every floor and concourse within it”. And that’s completely mad - given that their idea of the size of the station has long exceeded what any human could explore in a lifetime. They don’t remember where they are coming from, they don’t know where they are going, and the only goal they have (explore it all), is not only completely impossible - but also pointless, as they already know, it’s all the same, and the station just repeats infinitely. (Or they just go in endless circles, with the same ~500 meters).

And that’s why they start worshipping the station as what “gives their lives their only meanin”. So, yeah, obviously they are no longer in their right minds there. But that’s not a sudden revelation - it has been a very gradual descent into madness, and the signs have been there all along. Why did the repairs take longer, and why did they think exploring the station would shorten repairs? And why did nobody object when they abandoned repairs in favor of exploring more (if “shortening repairs” indeed was the main reason to explore in the first place?).

It does sneak up upon the reader - especially when you first read the story - but on later re-reads you start notice the signs a lot earlier. As early as Report 2. You might even consider this sentence in Report 1:

A curious feature of the station is its powerful gravitational field, far stronger than would be suggested by its small mass. However, this probably represents a faulty reading by our instruments.

to be somewhat ominous already.

But when in Report 2 they say:

We explored several of the imposing staircases, each equipped with a substantial mezzanine, and found that they lead to identical concourses above and below.

you have to question if they are already circling back to the just the one single concourse without noticing it. Because it later becomes clear, they totally are going in circles without noticing - when they cross signs of their own tracks, and attribute that to another group of explorers moving about.

So What Is Actually Going On?

These people are loosing their minds. We don’t know why, or how, but they are clearly deceiving themselves into coming up with all sorts of reasons and beliefs, in order to remain at the station instead of leaving. They are clearly deceiving themselves into thinking the station is a lot larger than even physically possible - while in reality they are just going in circles.

They are abandoning their original mission, their repairs, their space-ship, their entire lives, even their two lost companions, everything - far too easily and for no good reason. Everything becomes about just seeing more of the station.

Some people might even read this as a depiction of addiction. All your thinking becomes about getting more of the substance - and the rationalisations behind chasing more of the substance and abandoning everything else for that, become increasingly flimsy and absurd.

It is a very interesting take - and it works. It completely does. But - I don’t think that Ballard had the intention of presenting just one definitive interpretation like that. I think the story is intentionally kept open to support many different interpretations.

You could also interpret the thing more religiously. Like, these scientists did not actually survive whatever accident they were in. The whole station and emergency landing and subsequent journey to worship - that’s their after-death experience. Some sort of purgatory or whatever. Might also be a valid reading - but not one I find particularly interesting.

You could surmise that there’s something supernatural going on, like that the station is sentient, or that there is some kind of force that lures in the scientists and drives them to stay and never want to leave again. But the beauty is, that a lot of the behavior and decision making we do see - while maybe a bit irrational and extreme and some points - still does feel very human and in some ways very plausible that a human being in extreme circumstances might take. It’s almost like a Stockholm syndrome kind of thing. The existence of the station saved those people’s lifes - but they also ended up trapped on there.

There’s also some clear parallels in feeling and tone to the backrooms. Which of course did not even exist yet, when this story was first published in 1982. The story is placed in waiting rooms and concourse like you’d find in a airport. The same kind of liminal space that feels weirdly spooky and empty when completely devoid of human activity.

What’s The Point Of It?

To make you think. To make you ponder human behavior.

This is what imho makes science fiction so great. It has that power, to blow your mind, to give you food for thought, to change your view of the world even. Good science fiction can do so much. Societal and Political criticism, philosophical ponderings, alternative world-views, defamiliarization, exploration of consequences of technology, thought experiments, interdisciplinary thinking, intellectual humility, moral ambiguity, and so on, and so forth.

And this is an imho brilliant example of that, because it achieves so much with so little words. It doesn’t need thousands of pages of world-building, any form of character development, not even a named protagonist. And it still does instill that sense of wonder, but also that existential dread found in cosmic horror. Without even having an antagonist - it’s all just in people’s minds.

This is the kind of literature, that offers few minutes of reading that lead to many hours of thinking. Or can lead to many hours of thinking - if you’re so inclined.

I do recommend reading stuff like that though - and also taking the time to let these thoughts happen. After reading - lay down the text and just sit in a comfy chair, and let your mind wander. No music, no radio, no TV, no checking feeds on a smart phone. Let your own thoughts be the sole and only distraction for once.

I promise it’s good for you!