The Calculating Stars

by Mary Robinette Kowal

Other authorsGregory Manchess (Figures), Jammie Stafford-Hill (Cover designer)
Paperback, 2018-07

Status

Available

Call number

PS3611 .O74948

Publication

Tor (New York, 2018). 1st edition, 1st printing. 432 pages. $18.99.

Description

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

LibraryThing member yvonnekins
Normally, I don’t like having to defend my opinions on books. After all, there’s no accounting for personal taste. But, I do feel like I have to defend my position here a little bit. First, there’s a couple things you should know about me before reading my review of this book. First, I’m a
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feminist. Second, I have a degree in physics. Also, Hidden Figures is one of my favorite movies of all time.

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.
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LibraryThing member jdifelice
This was such a good book! I loved the idea of a meteorite hitting Earth and causing the space race into jump starting early and I love Lady Astronauts!

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
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against anxiety. I liked that the main character questioned her assumptions about race, and checked herself every time she didn't notice racial diversity.

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!
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LibraryThing member rivkat
In a slightly alternate 1950s (Dewey beats Truman), Elma York is a computer for the young satellite program when the meteorite hits, destroying a huge chunk of the Eastern US and plunging the earth first into a long, starving winter and then probably into extinction-level warming. The space program
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is the only way out, but the sexists (and racists) running the program don’t want female astronauts, even though Elma is a genius mathematician as well as a great pilot from her time in the WASPs. Bureaucratic wrangling and struggles with Elma’s anxiety (and her sexist nemesis, the handsome hero pilot running a lot of the program) ensue. She's also Jewish, though anti-Semitism provides relatively few of the problems she faces. I absolutely understand why people like this, but I had a very similar reaction as I did to Mad Men: it seemed like a retreat into a kind of nostalgia, where the bad guys were overt about their prejudices because they could be. We’re not so far away from that, and yet the bad guys are far more likely to disclaim their true biases—and people believe them. So I don’t take much comfort from celebrations of the grit required to prove the overt bigots wrong. But if you like badass women overcoming internal and external obstacles in an overtly sexist environment that they themselves are just learning to contest, this does definitely deliver.
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LibraryThing member iansales
I had sort of avoided reading this as I’d covered similar material myself, although with a considerably lower profile and less commercial success. But then it was nominated for the Hugo, and so was made available in the Hugo Voter Pack, and a quick look persuaded me that there’s actual very
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little overlap between The Calculating Stars and Then Will The Great Ocean Wash Deep Above. In Kowal’s novel, a large meteorite strikes the earth in the early 1950s, crashing down somewhere in the north Atlantic and so kicking off an accelerated greenhouse effect. Elma York is a gifted mathematician and a pilot. She and her husband, a rocket engineer at NACA, survive the meteorite and are instrumental in the creation of an international space agency to lead the quest to settle another world so humanity survives once the earth as become uninhabitable. So this is the very early days of the Space Race, more Hidden Figures than The Right Stuff. But Elma also wants to be an astronaut, so there’s also a lot of the Mercury 13 in the story (and several names familiar to me from my research; but, strangely, not Jerrie Cobb). There’s much to like in the novel: the swing about halfway through to a Mercury 13 narrative (although Kowal characterises Jackie Cochran as a much nicer person than she was – it was Cochran who famously said that women shouldn’t be taking jobs from men but should “follow after and pick up the slack”). I liked Kowal’s stand-in for Al Shepard, Stetson Parker, although the narrative seemed curiously ambivalent about him, feeling like at times it was trying to make him sympathetic. I thought the anxiety aspect overdone, but I’ve been told by sufferers they thought it accurate and found it welcome. On the other hand, I’ve heard there has been grumbling about the presentation of Judaism in the novel (York and her husband are Jews). In hindsight, The Calculating Stars is a novel that wants to tell a story about a space programme created in response to an extinction-level meteorite strike, but it also wants to be Hidden Figures and feature women computers… Which gives it a slightly anachronistic feel despite the very good period detail. In the real world, women went on to become programmers, too, but were then supplanted by men – in many cases, the female programmers were moved to assistant positions despite being better qualified and more experienced. That, I think, might have made for a more interesting story, and would not have meant pulling the start of the space programme back to the early 1950s. (On the other hand, having it when Kowal set it meant there were lots of ex-WASP female pilots around, as well as the women computers.) The Calculating Stars won the Hugo last weekend. Should it have done? I’m told Naomi Novik’s Spinning Silver is the better novel, although I’ve not read it yet, but The Calculating Stars was certainly my choice to take the award.
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LibraryThing member quondame
Really, this should be a ★★★★, but I am so tired of gender politics now that having the level tension based on that is not something I find enjoyable these days. The smooth, deceptively swift pace works well, the characters are, except for the jerks fulfilling their rolls to prevent women -
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and minorities - from being astronauts, are really ever so nice and to good to be true, but saved from plastic by some wickedly funny humor.
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LibraryThing member macthekat82
Wonderful, just wonderful. Squeee Squeee Squeee
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
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supporting characters felt like humans, which was wonderful. They are a happily married couple! The sock and horror! And they are interesting as a couple, even though their relationship is never ever in trouble! We need functional couples in fiction so much!

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!
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LibraryThing member ablachly
In an alternate history where a meteorite strikes DC in 1952, bringing on the kind of climate change that could make earth uninhabitable, Elma is a mathematician and former WWII pilot who becomes involved in the space program. I cannot even begin to say how much I loved this book.
LibraryThing member beserene
The first full novel in the Lady Astronaut series, which began with the wonderful novellette "The Lady Astronaut of Mars", this book is a thoughtful alternate history of the space program, one which imagines what might have happened in the mid-twentieth century if North America had been struck by
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an extinction-level meteorite. Would we, perhaps, have saved humanity by taking them to the stars? Kowal imagines that moment, accelerating the space program and imagining the latter half of the 1900s as a wholly different kind of space race, all while maintaining the character of the period.

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.
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LibraryThing member Tower_Bob
I really enjoyed the first chapter and I was certain I would enjoy the entire book. I WAS WRONG!

What a "WOKE" mess!

Do not waste your time reading this nothing-burger.
LibraryThing member bibliovermis
This book had the absolute corniest sex scenes I have ever suffered through—and they were frequent, the corny nerds in this book have a very active sex life—and I am still rating it four stars. That's how good the rest of this book is!
LibraryThing member BillieBook
Kowal is a great storyteller, but what brings me back again and again is the way in which she writes relationships. Elma and Nathaniel are the heart and soul of this novel and their relationship is so perfectly rendered on the page. It's not a perfect relationship—they argue and keep things from
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each other—but it's perfect in the ways in which they work through their problems and support each other. This is an alternate history novel about women in the space program, but it's the relationships—not just that between Elma and Nathaniel, but Elma's friendships and familial relationships and work relationships—that breathe life into the pages and elevate this novel to something more than just a "what if?" about women in space in the '50s.
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LibraryThing member ladycato
This book is full of science and feels. It's intense from the start, with a meteorite impact right off the eastern coast of the United States. Elma and her husband survive thanks to their science know-how--she's a WWII WASP and a computer for the rocket program, and he's a lead engineer--but as
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they assist the rebirth of the government, they stumble upon the awful truth that this is an extinction-level event. Humankind will need to depart the planet to survive.

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.
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LibraryThing member dukedom_enough
A giant meteorite impact off the eastern US coastline kills millions. Moreover, it dooms the planet to eventual runaway global warming. In this alternate year 1952, American astronauts have already orbited the Earth, so setting up off-world settlements offers hope. Elma York is a computer, vital to
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figuring the trajectories of space expeditions, but she knows she can do more - by actually flying to space. She has the experience: ferrying military aircraft, in hazardous situations, during World War II. But she's, well, a woman, and this 1952 is as sexist as ours was. Can she and her fellow women pilots overcome the prejudices of the age and save the human species?

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.
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LibraryThing member sleahey
When a huge meteorite lands of the east coast of the United States in 1952, the world as we know it changes. The climate change that is predicted by scientists causes the beginning space program to be escalated drastically, since the earth will become uninhabitable. Elma and her husband Nathaniel
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narrowly escape the utter devastation of the east coast, and are able to join up with the space program in Kansas, now the nation's capital. Elma is a brilliant mathematician and pilot, with aspirations to become an astronaut, but the prejudices against women (and her friends of color) are an obstacle she is determined to overcome.
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LibraryThing member nkmunn
Possibly the best, funniest sex scenes ever penned, along with a sheer delight in aviation and flight which are like a balm that remedies some of the other impossibly frustrating ways the inequities of this speculative alternate history play out in its characters and their foibles .
LibraryThing member santhony
This is an interesting alternative history, in which a large meteorite strikes the mid-Atlantic United States in 1952 (Chesapeake Bay) and essentially vaporizes everything within a 100 mile radius of Washington, D.C. Analysis of ejecta and atmospheric water vapor identifies this as a likely
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“extinction event” due to the nuclear winter and then greenhouse warming period that is projected to ensue.

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.
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LibraryThing member Mooose
Anyone else annoyed when you read Meteor when the main character says it? In the beginning she made it so clear that it was a meteorite that I grr every time she calls it a meteor. Why did the author do that?
LibraryThing member jnwelch
In this alternate history sci-fi novel, brilliant and pilot-experienced Elma wants to be an astronaut, but is up against the 1950s patriarchy. Black female pilots are up against more than that. And we need to get off the planet, which has been hit by a meteorite. I had a great time with this one
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(thank you Mamie and other Librarythingers for recommending it), and plan to read its sequel, The Fated Sky, soon.
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LibraryThing member Shrike58
Though I'm giving this novel four stars three-and-three-quarters might be my rating if that was an option. For one, the critical comments on the science of Kowal's global-warming catastrophe did have some impact (heh, heh) on me and I would have liked to seen a little more about what the
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international politics of the emergency might be; this is not to mention that some dramatic tension is lost since we already know that lead character Elma York does win through in her drive to achieve. Still, Kowal does achieve her main aim which is to take the stories of women such as the WASPs and support staff in the early days of NASA and put them right forward in precedence. While Kowal describes this series as "punch-card punk" you could also argue that what she has basically done is create a Campbellian golden-age space opera without ol' John W.'s cranky hang-ups; small caveats aside I anticipate continuing with this series.
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LibraryThing member RealLifeReading
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
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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 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.
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LibraryThing member LisCarey
Elma York was a WASP pilot during the Second World War, ferrying planes of all sorts to where the US military needed them to be. When in 1952 a meteorite hits off the east coast of North America, wiping out Washington DC and other major cities, she and her husband Nicholas are on vacation in the
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Poconos, far enough north and inland that they escape the worst effects.

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.
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LibraryThing member lavaturtle
I liked the complex main character and her relationships with the various supporting characters. The book did a good job with the context of not just sexism in the 1950s, but racism and ableism and the aftermath of World War II. It was great how Elma learned and grew over the course of the story,
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while still staying true to herself.
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LibraryThing member Gwendydd
Elma York is a math genius and former WASP. In this alternate history, a meteorite strikes Earth in the early 1950s, and sets of an extinction event like the one that wiped out the dinosaurs. Humans realize that they need to colonize space to survive, so Elma and her rocket engineer husband are a
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part of the space program. Elma desperately wants to go into space, but has to deal with a lot of sexism.

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.
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LibraryThing member cindywho
In an alternate timeline in 1950s USA where a meteorite makes getting off the planet within 50 years necessary - a brilliant computer sets her sights on being an astronaut. It's an engaging twist on Hidden Figures. Good stuff.
LibraryThing member wyvernfriend
What if a meteorite landed on the earth (and I'm probably saying that wrong, it did get mentioned a few times the difference between meteors and meteorites and my brain didn't retain it, sadly) in the 50s and it wiped a good chunk of the US out, including Washington and most of the government.
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However the mathematics, performed by Elma York, tells her that it's an extinction event and there's nothing to be done other than leave the earth and find a safer place to live. And then she has to fight the innate sexism and unthinking macho thinking that is ignoring the fact that without women they are nothing, and have no future. Sigh.

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.
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Awards

Hugo Award (Nominee — Novel — 2019)
Nebula Award (Nominee — Novel — 2018)
Locus Award (Finalist — Science Fiction Novel — 2019)
RUSA CODES Reading List (Winner — Science Fiction — 2019)
Otherwise Award (Honor List — 2019)
Sidewise Award (Winner — 2018)
Dragon Award (Finalist — 2019)

Language

Original language

English

Original publication date

2018-07-03

Physical description

384 p.; 5.48 inches

ISBN

9780765378385
Page: 2.8313 seconds