The Calculating Stars (Lady Astronaut Universe, #1)

by Mary Robinette Kowal

I stood next to the desk and looked at the pages covered with calculations. “No, but I think this could be an extinction event.”

My husband was a good man. He believed in me. And he also had a huge blind spot, because he didn’t see how people would ignore what I said until he repeated it. “It doesn’t matter. I just don’t feel well. Okay?”

“Yes. Marriage, too, is a threshold between Before and After. We have many of these, every day, which we do not recognize. The threshold is not the question. There will always be Befores and Afters. The question is: what do you do after you cross that threshold?”

“Mr. President, with an all-male astronaut corps, is there a danger that the Communist bloc will perceive this as a military outpost rather than a colony?”

“Still. You make math seem interesting.” “Well, it is.” I shrugged. “Oh, I know it isn’t for most folks, but I think they’ve just been put off by people who taught them to be afraid of numbers.”

So thank you for giving me a place where I can be awful, and find my way back again.”

TIME is the scarcest resource, and the most essential to humanity’s space efforts. Since there is no way to increase the supply of this resource, the only sane choice is to make the best use of the small and rapidly dwindling quantity available.