Point of View

For most of In Ascension, MacInnes uses the first person narrative stance, excluding Part 5 “Ascension,” which is narrated in third person. Leigh, the scientist and astronaut narrator, begins telling the story of her life starting with her childhood, from a retrospective position. This point of telling mimics or suggests the position of Nereus, the spaceship she travels in, when it reaches beyond the Oort Cloud in the outer solar system. At the end of Part 4 the crew has lost contact with Control in Florida and has to calculate their position manually. K discovers they are in a distant constellation. “The constellations are irreconcilable from our present moment,” K says (404). “As in our location only makes sense if we are looking out from the past.” This is the same point Leigh appears to be telling her story from in the novel.

Because Leigh is a scientist...