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On a cold spring night in 1952, a huge meteorite fell to earth and obliterated much of the east coast of the United States, including Washington D.C. The ensuing climate cataclysm will soon render the earth inhospitable for humanity, as the last such meteorite did for the dinosaurs. This looming threat calls for a radically accelerated effort to colonize space, and requires a much larger share of humanity to take part in the process. Elma York's experience as a WASP pilot and mathematician earns her a place in the International Aerospace Coalition's attempts to put man on the moon, as a calculator. But with so many skilled and experienced women pilots and scientists involved with the program, it doesn't take long before Elma begins to wonder why they can't go into space, too. Elma's drive to become the first Lady Astronaut is so strong that even the most dearly held conventions of society may not stand a chance against her.… (more)
User reviews
So I’m fairly sure that this book was written for someone like me. I was convinced before starting this book that it was going to be a 5-star read, maybe 4-stars if there was some flaws or it didn’t emotionally connect because how could a book about women in a space program eventually living in space possibly disappoint me that badly?
Well, it managed to disappoint me that badly. And I’ll tell you how.
Per usual I’ll start with writing style. The writing of this book isn’t bad per se, but I also wouldn’t call it good. It’s fairly mediocre. On top of that it’s written in first person which generally isn’t my cup of tea to begin with. I do understand why the first person choice was made though, so I’m not going to dock points for that. Anyway, the writing style never really shines anywhere, but it really flounders during the sex scenes between the main character and her husband. Like, those were so bad I had to pretty much skip over them because I wouldn’t have been able to keep going… luckily they were mostly short and fade to black.
Overall, it’s readable as a writing style, but in my opinion it borders on too simplistic. And that’s coming from someone who generally likes more straightforward styles over poetic and flowery ones.
I also had trouble connecting to the characters, including the main character which shouldn’t at all be an issue in a first person narrative. Writing in first person can often be a crutch for novice writers who don’t know how to portray a character’s thoughts or experiences without using the word ‘I’ but that wasn’t the issue here. The issue was that I straight-up didn’t like Elma. I couldn’t find her relatable- which, as a woman with a physics degree is probably the last thing the author was aiming for- and in fact I found her selfish, annoying, and too fucking perfect.
The least relatable thing about Elma is that she’s so smart that no one else can match her. She went to college at 14. She does math in her head. Oh, you have to solve differential equations with a piece of paper and a pencil? You’re actually a dumbass in comparison. This annoyed me to no end because even the smartest people I knew in my own physics program worked through the math on paper. Maybe there are people out there who can do linear algebra no problem in their head, but they’re few and far between, and they’re far from the average woman in physics, I’ll tell you that.
In fairness, I generally hate stories about exceptional main characters. I have this problem with fantasy novels, too, where the MC has to put in essentially no work to master things others have put years and years into practicing. I just find it really hard to root for characters who have it easy. Which, when we’re talking about a woman physicist in the 1950s, even a genius like Elma shouldn’t have it easy, right? I think Hidden Figures did a much better job of portraying this, and I actually liked all the main characters in that movie. This book, though, had me rolling my eyes.
The biggest obstacle that Elma faces throughout this novel has nothing to do with her gender at all. It’s her anxiety. Honestly the amount of time spent talking about how she has such bad anxiety in front of reporters and cameras and how it makes her throw up really came at the expense of the actual plot of the novel and the feminist narrative. Elma is a woman physicist in the 1950s and this is the biggest obstacle we could come up with for her to face?
Then there’s her husband Nathaniel. I was hoping we’d get a realistic look at marriage in the 1950s, but instead Nathaniel’s traits boil down to he’s an engineer and he’s Jewish. Other than that he has no personality, no motivations outside of supporting everything his wife does including when she forgets to pay the electric bill, and he has absolutely no agency. Their relationship is so unrealistic. Even the most supportive of couples will argue once in a while. Even the healthiest of couples don’t agree on everything. Yet, Elma forgets to pay the electric bill (which she always does because she can do math in her head and Nathaniel can’t) and Nathaniel barely bats an eyelash about it.
The other supporting characters honestly aren’t even worth mentioning, except for Parker. I found him genuinely interesting, but we’re supposed to hate him because he’s trying to keep Elma on the ground and out of outer-space. The only male character in the whole book with agency is, of course, the antagonist.
Writing a feminist book doesn’t mean that the only male characters with agency should be antagonists and that male significant others or romantic interests should be some robot-like unquestioning domestic servant following you around like a puppy-dog.
This is the second book I’ve picked up in less than a month where the feminism part of the story was something I was excited about and then disappointed me greatly. I am a feminist. This does not mean I think only female characters should have any type of agency, or that the only male characters with agency should be on the side of the patriarchy. Ideally, men and women characters should be equally well-developed. In my own experiences, sure men were the causes of some of my biggest problems in my undergrad career in physics. But there were other men who were some of my best friends, some of my biggest allies, and even one I considered to be a mentor. This lack of nuance in “feminist” stories is starting to get on my nerves. Granted, if you can’t develop your main female character, expecting a well-developed cast of supporting characters male and female is probably expecting too much.
Additionally, there’s such a heavy-handed attempt to show Elma off as super woke. This would be fine if it felt natural, but it doesn’t. It’s forced and it’s a weird insertion of our current climate of progressive social values being projected onto a character living in the 1950s. Either way, it should have certainly been executed in a way that didn’t just amount to Dr. Martin Luther King’s name being dropped every other page. It was just as heavy-handed and lacking in nuance as the attempt at feminism.
Frankly, the author’s mediocre writing ability was just not good enough to pull off taking on these important topics.
Now there’s the plot. The plot, in this case, comes as less important than the heavy-handed feminism and Elma’s severe anxiety. Which is interesting, seeing as the plot is that’s it the end of the world and they have a limited amount of time to colonize other planets before the ocean starts to literally boil.
After the first section of the book when the meteorite strikes, which is high-action and actually intriguing, there’s a time-skip. After the time-skip it’s back to business as usual. There’s no sense of urgency, really, and that made it really hard for me to continue turning the pages. The pacing was so uncomfortably slow, but by the time I realized just how bad it was I only had 100 pages left in the damn book so I pushed through it.
We spend so much time on Elma’s anxiety and her problems with Stetson Parker that it’s almost like the fact that the habitable world is literally ending has been all but forgotten by the author. Which is unfortunate, because that’s the book I signed up to read, not a book about a woman with crippling stage-fright (but who also happens to be a natural on camera?)
I’ll save you some time. We don’t get to space until the last line of the book. What was the point of the 300-ish pages between that and the beginning of the time-skip? We don’t even spend a lot of time focusing on preparing for colonization of space in those pages.
I was going to give this book a generous 2 stars. But after writing all this I just realize that I’m so disappointed that I can’t bring myself to do it. This is a one-star read for me, and I wish it were the 5-stars I was expecting. If you’re looking for a story that empowers women in STEM and has important themes of equality, just watch Hidden Figures. If you’re looking for a story about going to space or the end of the world, find some other sci-fi novel.
This ain’t it.
This book did a great job representing a lot of things. The MC had anxiety, and I think the author did a good job approaching it, and the stigma
I really enjoyed the parallels this had with Hidden Figures, and how we are really getting to see who the women behind the space race were. The whole story is inspiring and I can't wait to read the next one!
The first part of the book, is the best disaster movie, that i never watched. Unlike so many disaster movies, this was actually tense and really interesting.
I loved the characters - especially Elma and Nathaniel's relationship was amazing. All the
Kowal managed to show a period typical work environment full of sexism and racism that made you angry for everyone's struggles. At the same time The Calculating Stars is a really hopeful book - in many ways it reminded me of The Martian. Unlike The Martian though not all of the problems are nature, some of the problems are created by humans - but for the most part I as the reader understod why those humans made the choices they did - even when I didn't agree with them (yeah).
Elma is really super competent, but she is by no means perfect. She has real problems and real struggles - like all humans. Some of those problems are of her own making, but she never at any point holds the stupid ball. We get enough of her background to understand why she has the problems she has, without being bugged down with flash backs.
If you find space explorations the least bit interesting, then you should read this - you will like it!
If you've read Kowal before, you'll know her reputation for exquisite research and her knack for fitting the fantastic -- or, in this case, the futuristic -- neatly into a time period without disturbing its nature. This book once again showcases her gift. Our main character, Dr. Elma York, encounters the same challenges and characteristics of the 1950s that happened in the real world -- post-war prejudice is alive and well in the novel, for example. Dr. York, a human calculator at the novel's version of NASA, struggles with sexism, cultural ignorance toward her own Jewish heritage, and other such issues still common today. She also struggles with her own personal prejudices and puts her foot in it more than once as the novel progresses, eventually having to face her own mistakes and assumptions even as she takes steps toward breaking the glass ceiling that prevents women from becoming astronauts.
In a move becoming -- thank goodness -- more and more common in literature today, Kowal has given her main character another struggle: mental illness. In this case, Elma has severe anxiety -- and the portrayal of both her outward symptoms and her inner struggle feel authentic and exceptionally human, a well-handled and sympathetic portrayal that may ring bells for readers. (Kowal kindly puts a note at the end of the book, encouraging those readers for whom the descriptions ring particularly true, to seek help and know they aren't alone.) And, lest you think our main character's life is all struggle, we are also treated to a wonderful depiction of a healthy -- very healthy, in fact -- marriage between Dr. York and her husband, Dr. York. Kowal brings out the humanity and the genuine love of their relationship with the same deftness she brings to all her characters.
The opening salvo of the novel is breathless, intense, and so engaging you won't want to stop reading. It's a well-crafted first act, so much so that the slower pace of the rest of the novel sometimes fails to compare. That and its occasional over-earnestness, though, are the only complaints I can muster, and it's hardly a flaw to have an opening so extraordinary that it makes the rest of the book look merely very good by comparison. And that earnest tone is perfectly appropriate for a novel that makes use of its time period both factually and by reputation. Kowal masterfully combines frankness with nostalgia in her setting and does right by the era by including the many different voices that were active in the space program at the time.
Overall, this is a wonderful book, full of very real references and yet soaring with imagination when it comes to what might have been. An enjoyable read, even in the moments where one is breathless with the shock of large-scale destruction or cringing at the familiar flaws of the characters. An excellent read all around.
What a "WOKE" mess!
Do not waste your time reading this nothing-burger.
Elma York is such an inspiration. She's smart, savvy in a disaster, and also fights crippling social anxiety. The entire cast exemplifies representation and diversity. This is a book that shows how the "good old 1950s" were for all sides (non-spoiler alert: the decade was not so pleasant if you weren't a white dude), even in the aftermath of a cataclysm. As if the doom of Earth wasn't enough, there's the antagonist Stetson Parker who needs to die in some terribly painful way that doesn't make him a hero. Honestly, the realism of the book is what got me. Everything felt terrible and plausible, from the science and math (vetted by astronauts!) to the adorably affectionate relationship between the Yorks to the complexity of Stetson Parker.
Needless to say, I bought the sequel straight away. I can't wait to find out what happens next.
Besides the expectations of the men around her, York must overcome her own extreme shyness, which is always tempting her to pass opportunities by. She draws strength from her husband, the community of other women pilots who also aim for space missions, and her Jewish faith. Kowal does a good job of bringing the concerns of Black and Asian women, who face greater difficulties than York does, into the picture.
This novel is first in a series. I liked it only so well, having some difficulty in staying interested. York's experience did not feel lived, somehow. But I am in the minority there, since the book won the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards.
In response, the nascent U.S. space program is ramped up and combined with the efforts of other national space programs in an effort to colonize the moon and Mars before life on Earth becomes impossible. Of course, this is 1952, with all that entails. In this work of fiction, it entails rampant sexism, racism and anti-Semitism. Granted, those features of 1950s American life are undeniable, but the author suffuses virtually every page of this work with these topics. Page after page of being smacked in the face with the same issues becomes tiresome after a while.
The chief protagonist of the story is a female pilot that served in WWII as a WASP, then joined the space program as a “computer” (i.e. one who computes) while her husband serves as lead engineer. She desperately wants to become an astronaut, but of course, this is a pipe dream because she is a woman. For 400 pages, she encounters road block after road block that she continuously surmounts. Of course, she has many African-American friends who actually have it worse than her. To top it all off, she happens to be Jewish, not a major asset for career advancement.
The premise is intriguing, however the execution is marred by mind numbingly repetitious accounts of harassment, sexism, racism and religious persecution. In addition, she suffers from severe anxiety, and we get to hear about that over and over and over again. Apparently, this is the first in a series. I’ll pass on the sequels, as I’m pretty sure I know how they develop.
I love how she takes the
But The Calculating Stars may be my favourite of her books so far.
At first I thought it would simply be a book about a woman heading into space. The series is titled Lady Astronaut after all.
But it is so much more than that.
What happens if a meteorite crashes onto Earth and obliterates much of Eastern US? Besides the many deaths and immediate problems (DC is gone for instance), it eventually becomes clear to scientists that this is an extinction event and the climate consequences that are to follow will likely spell doom for humankind. It is 1952 though and space travel is still merely an idea. But this event immediately propels countries like the US to start space programs.
Elma York is a mathematician and a pilot. But those who run the space program do not think women – or as a matter of fact, anyone who’s not white – can make it in space.
The administration says space is too dangerous for women and the women are relegated to computer jobs. But Elma doesn’t give up. She starts a campaign to show that women are as capable as the men going into space, putting publicity to work for her by going on a kids’ TV show, setting up an all-women airshow – all while desperately battling crippling anxiety.
I love how Elma is so determined to fight for her place on the team. And I appreciate how Kowal writes Elma as being ignorant (and eventually realizing her ignorance) about how other ethnicities are being treated. If it’s difficult for her to get on the program, it is many times more so for the women of color aspiring to be astronauts.
“Around us, women circulated in a susurration of crinoline and starched cotton. Not a single one was black. And the longer I stood there, the clearer it became that Maggie was the only person who wasn’t white.”
Eventually she does get chosen (I’m hoping this isn’t a spoiler) and one of the first things the women have to do is work with a stylist to select wardrobe and hair for the announcement event.
And it is incredibly infuriating for her when they have to do advanced pilot training…in little blue bikinis and in front of the press.
“After spinning in the pool, I turned to face the photographers and waved at them. A record? No. Even if I’d been fast, it was because the variables weren’t the same as under normal test conditions.
But that was science and science wasn’t what they wanted from me.”
What an absolute stunner of a book. I read it not long before I learnt of the news that the first-ever all-female spacewalk had to be canceled because the spacesuit didn’t fit and it would take too long to get a different size ready. According to an article I read, a 2003 study already had found that 8 of the 25 women astronauts at the time couldn’t fit into the available space suits (while of course all the men could). It’s taken many steps for humans to get into space and even more leaps for women to get there. And I love that there’s a book like this that imagines an alternate history yet also reflects the current state of the world today.
Nicholas is recruited as an engineer in the project to respond to the disaster. It takes longer for Elma, because it's the 1950s, but her PhDs in physics and mathematics land her a job in the project, too, as a computer.
The meteorite is an extinction event--large enough that its consequences will first cool the planet for years, and then cause a runaway greenhouse effect. Elma and Nicholas on what fairly quickly becomes an international effort to colonize the Moon and Mars. Viable human colonies must be established off Earth.
It would be easier if more people understood that the warming at the end of the meteorite winter isn't a good thing. Or if so many weren't so resistant to exposing women to the dangers of space. If they didn't, after they finally accepted some women astronauts, they didn't continue to resist the idea of non-white astronauts.
The meteorite has changed the world, and it hasn't. Elma, Nicholas, their friends, and their colleagues, are confronting many of the same social forces we confronted on our timeline. Kowal does a lovely job of making this real and believable, trying, and yet hopeful. Elma has all the right impulses and intentions, and yet is every bit a product of her time, and makes mistakes with the best of intentions. She learns, she grows--and so do many of those around her.
Yet neither is that the sole focus of the story, and there's a lot of fun, adventure, challenge, and progress. I just really, really enjoyed it.
Highly recommended.
I bought this audiobook.
That description is pretty dry, but this is a really engaging book. It's full of nerdy math and space stuff, as well as some nerdy rocket and plane stuff. It also deftly and gracefully handles issues of sexism, racism, Jewish identity, and anxiety.
There are some parts of the book that feel anachronistic - some of these are just some words or phrases that get used (like mentioning that her husband should use a standing desk), and some of them are bigger - some of the battle about sexism feels very post women's lib. But that's a pretty minor quibble - the book is engaging, full of science, sometimes downright funny, and very enjoyable.
I listened to the audiobook, read by the author, and found it very enjoyable.
I started it and it didn't catch within the first few chapters but once I got to about chapter 4 I could barely put the tablet I was reading it off down. I kept reading snippets for my husband and now I want to buy a copy of the book for him to read and possibly for me to re-read. I loved how Nathaniel kept her sanity by making her do maths. How she got a sympathetic doctor for her anxiety and had the period panic about taking the drugs that could help and the stigma. Nathaniel uses crutches because of Polio, there's a diverse cast (and our heroine is Jewish and occasionally has to compromise her ideals but it's dealt with well. The climate change denial is handled well and you can see how people are wilfully hoping against hope.
This one was worth ploughing through the first few chapters to get to the story and I really enjoyed the read. I recommend it.