Mary Robinette Kowal’s science fiction debut, 2019 Winner of the Hugo and Nebula Award for best novel, The Calculating Stars, explores the premise behind her award-winning “Lady Astronaut of Mars.” Winner 2018 Nebula Award for Best Novel Winner 2019 Locus Award for Best NovelWinner 2019 Hugo Award for Best NovelFinalist 2019 Campbell Memorial Award Finalist 2021 Hugo Award for Best Series Locus … Memorial Award
Finalist 2021 Hugo Award for Best Series
Locus Trade Paperback Bestseller List
Publishers Weekly Best Books of 2018–Science Fiction/Fantasy
Winner 2019 RUSA Reading List for Science Fiction—American Library Association
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Buzzfeed–17 Science-Fiction Novels By Women That Are Out Of This World
Locus Bestseller List
Chicago Review of Books–Top 10 Science Fiction Books of 2018
Goodreads–Most Popular Books Published in July 2018 (#66)
The Verge–12 fantastic science fiction and fantasy novels for July 2018
Unbound Worlds–Best SciFi and Fantasy Books of July 2018
Den of Geek–Best Science Fiction Books of June 2018
Publishers Weekly–Best SFF Books of 2018
Omnivoracious–15 Highly Anticipated SFF Reads for Summer 2018
Past Magazine–Best Novels of 2018
Bookriot–Best Science Fiction Books of 2018
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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.
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If you are looking for something a little different, Mary Robinette Kowal writes great stories about our world re-imagined and in The Calculating Stars gives the 1950s space race a wild twist and a female perspective. After a meteor hits the earth and unleashes catastrophic events, humanity’s future relies on the brains and ingenuity of female computers and a collective effort to colonize space. Witty, fast paced and delving into very relevant and timely issues, The Calculating Stars is the perfect summer adventure.
The premis of this story is that a metorite hit Earth in the 1950s. It asks the question ‘what happens next?’
It’s told from the POV of a well off, educated, married female pilot with wartime flying experience.
I found it fascinating. I was irritated on behalf of the MC by the intrangency of the male establishment in recognising the skills and experience women could bring to the operation to save the earth’s population. And I was cross about the assumptions made about their competence.
I was completely sucked in by the question of how a situation like this would have been dealt with given the tech of seventy years ago. I have always been told–and believe–that the perfect sci-fi story takes one or two aspects of life as we know it and asks ‘what if?’ And this book does it perfectly.
It’s probably the only historical science fiction story I’ve ever read and I recommend it!
I really enjoyed this book. It is set in an alternate history in the 1950’s. A meteor has fallen to earth and they accelerate the space program. The main character is a PhD woman pilot who is involved with the space program. I could relate to her because she loves math. Back then women were computers for the engineers.
There’s enough technical content to make it realistic and interesting. And there’s enough social challenges that had me rooting for her.
This is not a book I’d typically pick up, but I had a copy of the sequel and started reading that – then was so caught up I was compelled to go back to the first book. This is a fascinating alternate history that works on the supposition that a meteorite hit in the early 50s could’ve galvanized the space program. The heroine is a math genius and a terrific character who felt very real to me. There’s no real Romance, but her relationship with her husband is a wonderful take on what a loving and supportive marriage can be like. Set against the backdrop of the civil rights movement and the emerging quest for women’s equal rights, this is a stand out book. Highly recommend.
If you liked the book/movie Hidden Figures, you should definitely check out this alternate history sci-fi novel. A well-researched (hard sci-fi) and entertaining read with excellent characters.
I loved every moment of this book experience. Deep, engaging characters, a plot that feels both nostalgic, nouveau, and novel at the same time, and a scientific realism that adds both tension and hope at the same time. Stellar work by MRK.
An excellent “What If”, especially if you love stories about space and/or women in science.
I guess it’s always good to start with the protagonist! Not only does Elma York want to become an astronaut, she wants to help other women do the same. It’s spearheaded by the immediate need for humans to get the hell off the planet, but it eventually becomes a question of,
“Well, why shouldn’t we?”
Of course, there’s no good answer to that question as they’re all extremely qualified, but they have to fight against the prejudices of their male colleagues and the traditional society in which they live. This is what I liked most about the book—seeing Elma and her cohort defy expectations simply by showing their excellence, forcing everyone to acknowledge their capabilities. They don’t have to learn to be good at what they do because they’re already great at it!
Of course the story isn’t perfect. There are only so many pages and so many storylines it can successfully resolve. One storyline that didn’t see as much attention as I would have liked is the fight for women of color’s involvement in the space program. If it weren’t mentioned at all, it might not have been a noticeable slight, but there are several key scenes in first third of the book with Elma’s black pilot friends that just… kinda got put on the back burner? It felt overlooked, though I think there were good intentions in including it initially.
There is also an unresolved aspect to the main antagonist’s story, though this is nitpicking on my end and, to be fair, I think context clues are enough to give me peace of mind. To be even more fair, there are several other books in the series where any one of these storylines might be resolved.
Overall, as a stand-alone book, I was really happy to have read it and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys this type of speculative fiction. In the face of very real, very non-fictitious climate change and social reform, the themes explored will probably resonate with others as well.
Fascinating combination of historical fiction and fantasy, setting a breakneck pace from the beginning (a meteor crash that wipes out DC!) and doesn’t let up. My first read from this author, definitely won’t be my last.
Mary Robinette Kowal’s The Calculating Stars begins as a disaster story and ends as a space race. Both tales are compelling in their own right, but I’m not sure they fit together as cleanly as they could have.
The book opens in 1952 with a meteor strike that obliterates much of the United States’ east coast. Elma York, the protagonist and a former member of WASP (Women Airforce Service Pilots, an organization of female aviators who crewed mostly non-combat missions during World War II), navigates the destruction by flying her husband out of the danger zone. Elma can do more than just handle a plane, though. She’s an ace mathematician employed as a “computer” by NACA, the predecessor to NASA. Her husband works at NACA as an engineer. Shortly after the strike, Elma helps him calculate the size of the meteor and the resulting consequences. Her conclusion: the impact set off a runaway greenhouse effect that will eventually boil the oceans.
The rest of The Calculating Stars becomes an accelerated push to get humans into space so they can colonize new worlds in time to save the species. Much of the history is real: Kowal begins many chapters with an actual New York Times headline and then tweaks the copy to fit her divergent timeline. She also consulted a long list of experts (see the afterword) to get the science right and make her pilot and NACA jargon sound authentic. Sadly, the climate-change skepticism—despite an undeniable trigger event, which our current reality lacks—rings true as well. So does the blatant sexism and racism: even staring down the barrel of an existential crisis, would 1950s America start treating women and people of color respectfully? (Probably not!)
But while good, the majority of the book felt like it belonged to a different genre than the (equally good) start. I don’t mind mixing and match; in fact, I often love it. Yet the gripping survival story at the outset made me assume the rest of the novel would progress in a similar vein. Instead, I got Elma’s incremental quest to make sure women are among the first people to see (her alternate) Earth from orbit. I grew to like that story too, but it took a while, in large part because Kowal set my expectations in a different direction.
Maybe this should have been two books: one about the aftereffects of the meteor and the struggle to comprehend the bigger catastrophe to come (at the moment, Elma figures things out extremely quickly), and one about her battles against chauvinism in NACA. But the Lady Astronaut series is already a trilogy, so splitting the initial installment might have been overkill. And it won awards as is. I’m obviously in the minority with this opinion.
In any case, I genuinely enjoyed The Calculating Stars. Both parts of it. I just had to be patient with the transition.
(For more reviews like this one, see http://www.nickwisseman.com)
This book came to me as a freebie by the publisher…being right in the middle of the COVID pandemic, it’s a little extra real, but you can’t help but be interested in how true the portrayals of responses are.
HIGHLY recommend to anyone. (I started to clarify, but that’s really it. Everyone.)
Fantastic book, exquisitely researched, with a wonderfully relatable main character.
Being a space case, er, someone who was always amazed by the Space Race and all things NASA, this is a unique and fun alternate history. The characters all feel like real people and the story is told at a good pace and with just the right amount of detail. (I wish it had been a chapter or two longer, but for a cliffhanger ending, it was just right.)
I have recently read a bunch of books I have given 3 or 4 stars to and was thinking that maybe I was being too harsh. Then a friend told me to read this one and WOW! Maybe I was actually going a bit easy on those other books.
The story is about Elma York in the 1950s, a WASP (female pilot primarily ferrying planes in non-combat situations) in WWII. The book opens with a meteor strike in the Chesapeake bay that wiped out a good portion of the East coast. The push is on to make habitable places to live before the earth oceans start to boil off in a few decades and Elma’s adventures to become “The Lady Astronaut”.
I’ll leave it at that rather than go for a spoiler laden rundown of all the minor characters and plot points. The style and story telling, although completely fictional instead of documentary, remind me a lot of the movie Hidden Figures, which I also thought was excellent.
“The Calculating Stars” was published in 2018 and won many awards including the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus. Mary Robbinette Kowal wrote it after penning a short story titled “The Lady Astronaut of Mars” which won the Hugo for Best Novelette in 2014. She has since written three more full length books in the “Lady Astronaut” series and at least five or six short stories or novelette in the series. “The Lady Astronaut of Mars” can be read for free on Tor.com if you want to get a feel for the series.
I haven’t read much alternate history sci-fi, but I was excited to explore this retelling of the United States in the 1950’s. Imagine an America where sexism and racism are commonplace – oh wait, that already exists. Ok, imagine a world where mental health issues are misunderstood and brushed under the rug, oh wait that already exists too! How about a world where rampant global warming is just around the corner, dang it! Let’s try one more time – imagine an America where a massive meteorite destroys much of America’s east coast – now we’re getting somewhere! In all seriousness, this book works, partly because it doesn’t depart too much from the America we all love (and hate). It’s fun to notice the relatively minor differences that occur due to the meteorite strike.
An overriding observation for me is that the novel felt a little calculated (pun intended). I felt like it could have used a little more grit and grime. Yes, there is racism and sexism and the impending doom of global warming, but it’s all pretty softly presented. I’m not sure if part of that was the authors intention of capturing the reserved, innocent, and restrained feel of the 1950’s or if it’s a part of her writing (I guess I’ll need to read more to discover). One example is that the main character’s husband is nearly perfect. Maybe he’s a workaholic, but he couldn’t be more supportive, understanding, and patient with our MC. Yes, there is a bigoted, sexist character, but he’s almost a cardboard trope of an insensitive 1950’s misogynist. Another example is the author’s tendency to get a corny around romance scenes. The husband and wife tend to use rocketry puns when things get sexy and while that might work once, I was rolling my eyes as it was re-used multiple times. Anyway, this is a minor complaint and might even be intentional, as I stated.
On the positive side, the start of this book is intense (with lots of grit and grime!) with the meteorite strike. The rest of the story slows down a bit, but is a nice blend of science, math, and rich character development. The science fiction seems mostly ‘hard.’ There might be a few stretches with rocket engine breakthroughs (which doesn’t bother me), but I think the author did her research and involved amazing resources including former astronauts in support for strong realism. I really enjoyed the final five percent of this story and it’s a bit of nifty writing. From my limited background, the pilot and NASA jargon seems spot on.
Anyway, I enjoyed this alternate history. The prose is clean and well-written. I appreciated the exploration of severe anxiety from a mental illness standpoint, and what a challenge that can be to manage, especially other’s negative stigmatism around it. I also appreciate the continued exposure of racism and sexism and how that impacts and shapes lives. A well-written imagination of an alternative history where a series of events leads to a slightly different result in the first voyage to the moon.
I LOVED this book and did not want it to end! It’s a page turning alternate history of mankind’s quest for space.
I loved this well-researched alternate history of the space program showing the struggles of women in the astronaut corps. It reminds me of what I loved about “Hidden Figures”. The characters are memorable, and the struggle of women to secure an equal place at the table rings true. I was so sorry when I finished the book; I wanted more.
If you’re into a bit of space exploration/history and enjoyed Hidden Figures, pick this up! It’s a great series!
As a Southern woman engineer, this book resonated with my life on so many levels.
Great alternate reality.
Read through this with absolutely bated breath. I feel Elma on a personal level and as a woman who was once a little girl absolutely enamored by space, this speaks to me in every way. Elma’s anxiety is real, palpable. Her husband’s care is precious and reminds me of my own husband. There are three scenes in this book that will live within the corridors of my mind forever. There are passages that made me cry and some that made me grin so hard my face hurt. And I definitely sacrificed some sleep along the way to get in a few more pages.