The Calculating Stars

I spent a lot of this year reading non-fiction and historical fiction about women in WWI and WWII, resulting in a ridiculous amount of knowledge about the WASPs (and WAVEs and computers in Bletchley and...) So I was very into the concept of alt-fiction NACA recruiting WASPs as astronauts. The climate-based apocalypse hit quite close to home. I think one strength was how Kowal captures a lot of the energy at the time: focused, goal-directed, but still heavily hierarchical and sexist and really portrays a time in the US para-military well. I liked the exploration about how sexism affected white women and women of color differently. Kowal also had very good consultants for the meteorology and astrophysics. Unfortunately, the pacing was a bit off: the first third is compelling and fast, and the back two thirds definitely drags through the same problems, introducing more and more characters

Alternate history. What if a meteor had hit the Earth in 1952 and the space program was accelerated?
I loved that the story is told through the eyes of a woman: Elma York, ex-WASP pilot, mathematician, Phd and a computer. Yes, back in the 50's without the power of digital computers the calculation were made manually by women, called “computers”. So, men were engineers, women were computers. And also, men were astronauts. So the book has this cool feminist feel because women want to be astronauts too! Why not?

I was excited to share with Elma the fascination about science. In a sense the story could have been told today, when women in STEM are still a minority.
Elma and her husband (Nathaniel), a rocket engineer, form an amazing couple. They have their struggles and it was so nice to see this great “nerdy” relationship.
Also, I could completely relate to Elma's nerdiness and being completely out of place in public speaking situations:
Give me an unpowered landing and I was fine. Addressing a roomful of people? Thank you, but no.
This was the type of book that got me excited to research things like:
- Who were the WASPS during Second World War? I want to see pictures!
- What are the specs of T-33 and T-38 jets?
- What is a Dilbert Dunker? How does it work?
- What is the formula to calculate the amount of fuel needed to send a rocket to space?
- How was the Apollo mission to the Moon? Now I want to see a documentary.

And this book actually ends in an almost cliff hanger, ending like that on the way to the Moon? Did she made it? How did they land? I mean, I really do want to read the next one.

Probably somewhere around 3.5 to 3.75 stars. Overall, this was a book that had a refreshingly unique premise. There were some important issues in it that were just a bit touch-and-go and weren't explored as in-depth as I would wish, and I felt like the book could do with a bit more focus and impact, but overall this was not a bad read and while the 1950s misogyny in it has softened somewhat today (though perhaps not in certain fields of study), a lot about it is sadly all too relatable.

Our protagonist is Elma York, an ex-WASP pilot for the USA during WW2 and also mathematics genius. She and her husband Nathaniel York are taking a break in the outskirts of Washington when a meteorite impacts D.C., wiping everyone and everything within a large radius. Aside from the immediate devastation, climate scientists ring the alarm bells to state that the greenhouse effect from the meteorite impact will greatly accelerate and heat up the planet, making it uninhabitable for humans. Suddenly, the space race becomes imminently important, and no longer a race as much as a collaborative international effort - if humanity is going to survive at all, colonizing other more habitable planets in space may be the only way out.

This book is set during the early 50's and reimagines how human history may have turned out if such an extinction event had happened just then, right at the beginning of the space race. Most his-fic books merely use time periods as a pretty backdrop for characters who still sound and act and think very much like they're from 21st century, but this one - doesn't, and I have to give Kowal credit for that. This also means that we see some attitudes from pretty much every character in the book that would be pretty unpalatable to us today - misogyny, racism, sexism, anti-semitism, fanatic nationalism... the works. I liked that these attitudes weren't just attributed to the antagonists of the novel while the protagonist and the people allied to her are miraculously liberal-minded just so that they'd be more appealing to a 21st century readership. While Elma is certainly feminist for her time, and her husband Nathaniel is almost unrealistically supportive of her career in STEM, both of them still occasionally slip up with thoughts that are very much of that time period. Elma gets moments where she is racked with guilt for not being a proper wife, because she's not taking care of the bills or doing house chores. Nathaniel, while supportive, sometimes still struggles to balance his support for Elma with the pressures of the all-male and misogynist environment that he works in, being the lead engineer of the IAC (the book's fictional equivalent of NASA).

I did enjoy that we saw character growth and development in the book, especially for Elma since the whole book is from her perspective. At the beginning of the book, though not actively racist, she is still fairly sheltered. The first time she enters a bar frequented by Black people with Eugene Lindholm, a Black pilot who hosts Elma and Nathaniel after they escape the devastation of the meteorite impact, Elma realises that she has never been in a room with so many Black people before, and makes some faux pas along the way. She does advocate for diversity in the Lady Astronauts being hired by the IAC, championing for Helen, a Taiwanese pilot and “computer” (a name given to mathematicians in the IAC, I suppose?) and who gets frequently passed over because she isn't white.

That being said, however, I felt that the book barely scratched the surface of these topics. A lot could have been done for a book set in the 50s, but ultimately Elma was still the white heroine of the story, set apart from her peers even though she acknowledges that they are just as deserving as her. I wouldn't usually have a problem with this because that's how most stories go, but if the topics were touched on in the book but then we still have an ending where we only have one white person winning out, the issue of racism and diversity feels like they were just shoehorned in to check mass appeal boxes. We did see Elma struggle massively against the weight of misogyny through the book, but then I think not enough was said about the privilege she had because she was 1) white and 2) married to a relatively influential engineer - both of which were briefly acknowledged but then never delved into.

Another huge part that didn't work for me in this book were the really awkward intimate scenes. I'm totally fine with sex scenes when they make sense for the plot but it just didn't really feel necessary at all in this book, and there were so many! Not only that, but they were all bogged down by really, really cringey maths and rocket-inspired sexual innuendo. E.g. ”I'll have to see how good you are at launching rockets.” Oh my god, I get it, Elma and Nathaniel are a very, unrealistically happily married couple whose sex drives are always on high. It just felt like very out of place, and also detracted from the other more important issues I'd have liked to see discussed more in the book, as I mentioned above.

We also have our primary antagonist for the book, Lt Parker, misogynist supreme and primary obstacle in Elma's way. I appreciate that Kowal tried to give him some depth instead of being a cartoon villain, but I also felt like he flip-flopped a lot between being weirdly tolerable and even giving Elma some opportunities, to downright blackmailing her and then actively trying to leak potentially damaging information about her to the press. It was all very confusing.

I also felt like the ending could've been more fully fleshed out - everything felt a bit too rushed and convenient to get the nice ending that we expected. In particular, I was very surprised that we didn't even get to see a last farewell scene between Elma and Nathaniel, considering how much intimacy we've been seeing from them through the book. However, I also really liked how we saw Elma's anxiety play out in the way she kept having thoughts about it could be the last time she talked to this person, or the last time she did this thing, in the days and moments leading up to her first space flight. It was incredibly relatable for me as someone who also has those anxious thoughts leading up to an event that I'm fearful and anxious about, so I appreciated the accuracy of that.

Ultimately, it was entertaining enough. I may pick up the next book but probably not so soon.

3.0 out of 5 stars

When a meteorite strikes the Eastern seaboard of the United States and obliterates Washington, D.C., Elma York knows that it's only a matter of time before the after effects of this impact make Earth uninhabitable. The race to outer space is kick-started by this incident, with an ultimate goal of resettling the human race on the moon before it's too late.

Elma's sharp, witty narration made this an enjoyable read. She's a likable character who is easy to root for, but I was hoping for a story that focused more on moon colonization than her origin story as the first female astronaut. The book starts with a bang and then quiets down a lot as the focus shifts to Elma fighting for respect in the male-dominated world of space travel. It's a well told tale, and seems to realistically portray what it would take for Elma to achieve her goal, but I was just waiting and waiting for some urgency to kick in and to see Elma make it to the moon. I think the second book in this duology is probably more in line with what I wanted this book to be, so I will have to check it out!

See this review and others at The Speculative Shelf.

Executive Summary: Less Sci-Fi and more Historical Fiction, but really enjoyable. I'd pitch it as a cross between [b:The Martian 18007564 The Martian Andy Weir https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1413706054s/18007564.jpg 21825181] and [b:Hidden Figures 30840370 Hidden Figures The Untold True Story of Four African-American Women Who Helped Launch Our Nation into Space Margot Lee Shetterly https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1474752658s/30840370.jpg 55627110]Audiobook: Normally I'm not a fan of authors reading their own work, but I've listened to Ms. Kowal as a narrator for other books before and she is good. She does a few voices and accents that add that little extra something to the audio version.Full ReviewI've been wanting to read a book by Ms. Kowal for a few years, but the blurbs for her previous books just never really appealed to me. This one however was right up my alley.I'm not sure how much research she did, but it seems like a lot. The fiction part of this book is mostly setting up a reason to accelerate the US space program by about a decade and then continue to push it forward from that point in a way we never really did. It sort of posits: “What would our space exploration look like if we made it the main focus and not just a Cold War arms race?”.I really like Elma. I can relate a lot to her and her social anxiety. I love the way she counts numbers in her head when she's feeling anxious. Maybe I should give that a try. All of the characters are pretty great though, even those I don't like at all (I'm looking at you Parker).I'm not really a fan of romance stories, which I think is one of the things that has kept me away from Ms. Kowal's previous works. There is definitely a romance subplot here, but it's not the focus. I will say there is A LOT of sexual innuendo/double entrades. I mostly found it funny, but if that kind of thing bothers you, you could get tired of it.Even though this book is set in the 1950s, there is a lot of commentary relevant today. I'm not sure how much of that is clever writing and how much is just the sad fact of how little progress has been made since that time. I thought it was well done without being heavy handed. It was important to the plot, but not the point of the plot if that makes any sense.Overall I really enjoyed this book a lot and immediately jumped right into the second one. I'm glad I was finally able to pick up a book by Ms. Kowal and that I liked it as much as I did.

Finally, after years of returning most books unfinished to the library, I've found a book that I actually made efforts to sit down and read, and dragged around in my purse for spur of the moment opportunities.

I love the space race of the 50s and 60s, the Mercury 13, stories of the beginning of rocket science (some very weird), and the beginnings of our technology advances. Although I don't ever remember there being anything in my home state of Kansas that remotely resembled something that could be mistaken for rocket creation, launch sites, and mission control centers... just the Triton missile silos and the traveling warheads.

Around this were alot of subjects for contemplation; discrimination of sex and race, some insight to being Jewish after World War 2, and an earth-changing catastrophe.

I'm crossing my fingers the sequel is just as appealing.

The Calculating Stars is more like historical fiction than sci-fi, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. It is very much a reimagining of the Apollo-era space program, if the need to go to space were due to global climate change, rather than a pissing match with the Soviet Union. The plot centers around the discrimination towards women entering into the space program—frustrating in the sense of “why does the world suck”, and relevant in today's political climate (still, unfortunately). I thought that the “romantic” subplot was unnecessary, though.

ezért a tweetért jöttem:
“Nathaniel York is too perfect to be realistic.”Dear reviewer, I am so sorry for the relationships you've had in your life. Nathaniel is based on my relationship with my husband.Neither are perfect, but both are supportive. Supportive is a real thing.Sincerely, Me
és az ötvenes évek masszív nőgyűlölő hozzáállásáért maradtam.
nem, de komolyan, rengetegszer robbanásveszélybe került a fejem, és érthetetlen, hogy bírtak nők ebben a visszataszító miliőben létezni.
amúgy meg nekem is borzasztóan tele van a mamuszom az életképtelen kapcsolatokkal képernyőn és könyvekben egyaránt. mr. gatwooddal már évek óta ezen hőzöngünk egymásnak, hogy miért nem képes senki sem normális, működő párkapcsolatokat írni. na és ehhez képest valóban üdítő változatosság ez a történet, meg egyébként is nagyon szuperül megírt az egész. az utóbbi időben nagy kedvencemmé vált az alternatív történelem mint műfaj és ez egy kis űrutazással, valamint nagyon klassz főszereplővel és elég jó mellékkarakterekkel megfűszerezve remek olvasmány volt.

valamint sűrűn ajánlom a tweet folytatását is: https://twitter.com/MaryRobinette/status/1171195473467772928

This is a remarkably well-researched book. Reading it, I was deeply impressed by how it remains a character-driven narrative with (to my layman's eyes at least) spot-on science that never breaks the flow of the narrative. I feel like occasionally the marginalization of women and people of color got a little heavy-handed, but never inaccurate. It might be because it was told through the lens of a white woman that sometimes issues of race feel a little less natural, but Kowal does a good job of having Elma check her privilege often in a way that does feel mostly natural. Elma is a good example of a character who is not racist, who genuinely believes people are equal, but was raised in such a way that she forgets to consider other perspectives regularly. It happens a lot, which I think is accurate, but I'm not used to reading it which is why it maybe felt preachy to me.

I would also add that Elma and Nathaniel are maybe one of the best couples I've every read. Smart, supportive, open and understanding. Relationships don't have to be the drama!

I will probably continue on in this series because it is such a dramatic balance of science and story-telling.

“Do you remember where you were when the Meteor hit? I've never understood why people phrase it as a question, because of course you remember.”

Oh, wow. I loved this book! The combination of space program and the 1950s was fascinating. I loved Elma and Nathaniel, and many of the other women computers, pilots and trainee astronauts. I really didn't like Parker.

Mary Robinette Kowal is one of my favourite authors and this is one of her best, in my opinion.

I listened to the audio-book of this, which is superbly narrated and without a doubt added to the experience. In any event, this is now confidently joins The Martian on my list “must-read fictional books about the space exploration”.

Although it is an alternative history novel, it mirrors the real-world closely enough to feel solidly grounded in reality. The trials and tribulations facing female astronauts in the 1950's, had circumstances created the opportunity to override society's expectations, is well-captured. My only concern is whether the sequel, which diverges further from historical reality, will feel as authentic, but the reviews lead me to be hopeful.

Strongly recommended (especially the audio-book!).

Quite frankly one of the best books I've read for some time. I was expecting this to be more sci fi than what it was. This was much more along the lines of historical fiction - which I really have absolutely NO interest in.
Says so much then that I struggled to put this book down. Not once was I disappointed hat this wasn't what I was expecting.
I don't think I've read a book where the characters have been so masterfully developed.
I felt physical sensations with the the characters that I have never felt before because they were written so descriptively - yet without ever looking like the author is trying to get me to understand something I couldn't possibly understand.

The beauty of the writing demonstrated wonderfully with the following quote:

The light of the rocket reflected off her bright eyes as if the fire of her soul were coming out to push the rocket into the sky.