The Calculating Stars (Lady Astronaut Universe, #1) in Beyond Reality

Aug 30, 2018 Tomislav rated it liked it

Shelves: alternate-history, science-fiction

I read Mary Robinette Kowal’s 2018 alternate history novel “The Calculating Stars” in kindle format. It is the first of a series that currently includes the sequel novel The Fated Sky (2018). Two further sequels have been announced at this time – “The Relentless Moon” and “The Derivative Base”. I have previously read and enjoyed Kowal’s story “The Lady Astronaut of Mars” in a stand-alone release from tor.com – which won the 2014 Hugo in the novelette category. According to Kowal’s acknowledgemen I read Mary Robinette Kowal’s 2018 alternate history novel “The Calculating Stars” in kindle format. It is the first of a series that currently includes the sequel novel The Fated Sky (2018). Two further sequels have been announced at this time – “The Relentless Moon” and “The Derivative Base”. I have previously read and enjoyed Kowal’s story “The Lady Astronaut of Mars” in a stand-alone release from tor.com – which won the 2014 Hugo in the novelette category. According to Kowal’s acknowledgements, The Calculating Stars and The Fated Sky were initially envisioned as a single novel – but it evolved into two that were both published in 2018. The Calculating Stars could be read as stand-alone, but I think most people will go on to read both.

The point of departure for this alternate history novel seems to be the impact of a major meteorite off the east coast of North America on March 3, 1952. But because the focus of the story is on the space program that grows after that climate-changing apocalypse, Kowal has made a few changes in history prior to that date. Specifically, that Thomas Dewey defeated Harry Truman for president of the US in 1944, and that a fledgling space program was already in place by 1952.

The first-person protagonist, Elma York, and her husband Nathaniel were on a fly-out-of-DC vacation in the Poconos when the meteorite hit, and barely manage to fly west to Ohio in the immediate aftermath. I live on the coast of South Carolina myself, and Elma’s family history as a Southern Jew with relatives in Charleston, gave me a strong immediacy of events. Being a mathematician/physicist, with a meteorologist brother, Elma comes to realize that one of the consequences of an ocean strike will be a permanent climate change to the Earth. After a new US capital is established in the Kansas City area, the couple relocates there and both become deeply involved in the space program necessary to develop the possibility of an alternate home for humanity on Mars. Let me put this plainly – I loved the concept, the reasonably realistic plot, and the social commentary of this novel.

A lot of the historical speculation of “The Calculating Stars” is in the same historical context of women and people of color in the space program and in the world of science and engineering in general as Hidden Figures: The Untold True Story of Four African-American Women Who Helped Launch Our Nation into Space. That non-fiction book and the somewhat fictionalized film based on it were released two years prior, in 2016. Unfortunately, even though the universe of The Calculating Stars already existed in the form of published stories and pre-publication manuscripts, this novel now feels quite derivative to me. That view was probably enhanced by cover art that reminds me of the film.

But more importantly, the personality of the main character just felt wrong to me. Elma is an experienced World War 2 WASP pilot, holds *two* doctorates in mathematics and physics, has an idealized husband who worships her, becomes woke to racial prejudice before other white people around her, and generally is a Mary Sue. At the same time, other than some strange and frequent euphemisms for sex with Nathaniel, she thinks and behaves on a level that I associate with high school – rather than that of some accomplished women I do know. I don’t hold hard-sf to be primarily about characters, but the best of it succeeds with both concepts and characters. Elma was a big miss for me. ...more

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Jun 24, 2019 Bookbrow rated it liked it

** Minor spoilers**

Interesting concept, the rocket science is pretty good although I think that the some of the world building is sacrificed for the characterization which is ardent. Details are missing, more about the orbital station, more about the lunar station, a bit more about how things work. That said it peaked my curiosity enough that I read the follow-up.

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