The Calculating Stars (Lady Astronaut Universe, #1) in The Sword and Laser

Feb 02, 2019 Silvana rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: mine-mine-mine, z-sff-2019-female-challenge, kindle-google, z-sl-laser-challenge-2019, reading-with-friends, z-sff-2019-reading-challenge, space-the-final-frontier, series-i-abandoned, female-nonbinary-authors, sci-fi

What a happy book. At first I thought this might be a solarpunk novel but when I checked the definition, nah, don't think so. (Or maybe hopepunk will fit the bill?)

An enjoyable, easy-to-read story about a woman who's a war-time pilot, a physicist, a mathematician, who came from a well-off Jewish family from the South, with a general of a father. Oh she also had this amazing group of friends and a very supporting handsome husband who liked exchanging space-themed innuendos with her. Now, that doe What a happy book. At first I thought this might be a solarpunk novel but when I checked the definition, nah, don't think so. (Or maybe hopepunk will fit the bill?)

An enjoyable, easy-to-read story about a woman who's a war-time pilot, a physicist, a mathematician, who came from a well-off Jewish family from the South, with a general of a father. Oh she also had this amazing group of friends and a very supporting handsome husband who liked exchanging space-themed innuendos with her. Now, that does not sound so bad, right? To me personally, she had almost everything.

But, of course our heroine still had to face discrimination especially because of her gender, which is the main driving plot of this novel: How we could get women into space? What if? It all started with a meteor followed by a space colony program. And came the long, windy road. Despite all her privileges, she had to face misogynistic and sexist coworkers/reporters/superiors etc, not to mention her own personal issues that I won't spoil here. As a woman I could definitely relate to the taunts and hardship, and I appreciate the efforts from the author to portray these. I could understand why she was given those privileges, since without them she would have more hoops to jump and obstacles to conquer and the plot needs to move forward so as to cover more SF parts, rocket science, orbital mechanics, launching sequences, and whatnots. There were other ladies here with their own (more dire) challenges due to skin colors, etc, some of which I really want to get move coverage in the later book(s). Remember Hidden Figures? Katherine Johnson and her friends had to face double challenges.

And what a great research the author had done with the space parts, especially since she took lots of inspirations from real life (there's a special part at the end of the book where she laid out her muses). I love everything about the pilot tests and simulations, and whenever she was in the air, I could feel the excitement. And of course the ladies' camaraderie parts, it's really uplifting and we should have more of that in SFF. ...more

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Mar 15, 2019 Sharlene rated it it was amazing

Shelves: library, women-writers, ebook, science-fiction, speculative-fiction, dystopian, 2019

I’m always excited to see what new ideas Kowal comes up with. I quite enjoyed her magical Regency series The Glamourist Histories. And on my TBR list, I have Ghost Talkers, a book about mediums of WWI who aid in the war by talking to the ghosts of men who have just died.

I love how she takes the ordinary and spins it just so very slightly, in a way that is so believable and enchanting.

But The Calculating Stars may be my favourite of her books so far.

At first I thought it would simply be a book ab ...more

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Jun 02, 2019 Tensy (bookdoyen) rated it it was ok

Shelves: science-fiction, did-not-finish

The beginning of this novel was terrific. Much of the inspiration for the group of women who make up the space program's computer corps was detailed in the book and movie, Hidden Figures. I loved that the main characters were Jewish and that Kowal dealt with issues of race and discrimination against women, but she lost the forest for the trees. The impact of the meteor did not seem to be reflected in the characters and this book tried to be too many things. The science fiction aspect of planning ...more

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May 24, 2020 James rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I was not sure what I was expecting when I picked this up, I studiously avoided reviews and only glanced at the dust jacket summary. Wow! This was a great read that tackled racial (could've swung much harder here, though, I appreciate the emerging wokeness of Elma) and gender issues (my mother did grad school in the early 60s and often told stories of the utter bullshit of it all, sadly, the same continues to happen) and wrapped it all up in a plausible alternate history (especially shitheaded w ...more

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Sep 28, 2020 Lisa rated it really liked it

Shelves: science-fiction, alternate-reality, 2020-popsugar

““A couple years of bad weather, and they’re telling us we have to go into space?” He shrugged, the flesh of his neck bunching over his collar with the movement. “Even if I believed this nonsense, why not spend the money making things better here on Earth?”” <<>>

Fictional global crisis vs. real global crisis we are living through yet the problems are the same: global crisis gets politicized instead of focused to the real problems.Average, Everyman Joe knows better than scientists what is actuall ...more

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