The Calculating Stars (Lady Astronaut #1) by Mary Robinette Kowal

 

The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal is an alternate history story. What if Dewey had defeated Truman, a meteorite had destroyed a good chunk of the eastern seaboard, including Washington, DC, and a climate crisis on Earth precipitated a huge effort to jumpstart US efforts to get to space? We follow Elma York, a former WASP pilot and mathematician extraordinaire, as she tries to become an astronaut.  Along the way, we deal with mental health issues, racism, climate change denials, and so much sexism that it fairly dripped off the page.

Pros:

1) Elma and her husband Nathaniel are a great example of a married couple. They have their ups and downs, but in the end they always communicate with one another (eventually) and their relationship is strong. It's actually pretty rare to find examples of legitimately real, but happy couples in fiction, at least when the relationship isn't still in the newlywed phase. It is a reason I am a fan of the absolutely ridiculous and yet somehow real-to-life vampire series The Black Dagger Brotherhood - the ongoing portrayals of married life feel lived in and yet are hopeful about marriage, honesty, and how hard life can be even if you have a supportive partner.

2) Kowal's accurate portrayal of ongoing sexism permeates the novel. This gets critiqued a fair amount, actually, because it's never-ending. But, that's how it is, isn't it? I feel like a lot of those critiques are coming from men who've never had to deal with people looking at their chests all the time, let alone double-thinking about every decision you make from whether to wear a dress or lipstick to what message the curl of your hair is sending or from incredibly privileged women who are oblivious to how they are regularly treated.  It's incredibly frustrating to read about Elma's experiences and see the same low-level microaggressions over and over again, of course, but that's the point. 

3) Kowal's writing is not fantastic. I didn't underline a single sentence as something standing out to me. But it's imminently readable and, considering that this book talks about mathematics and space travel, that's an incredible achievement. Kowal is also a master at using scenes to represent many things all at once, not just as plot devices. Elma and Nathaniel take a day to do touristy things in Chicago and they run into someone that Elma knew when she was a child.  In this scene, Kowal shows how Elma and Nathaniel are workaholics and they are struggling being away from the office, that they're very sheltered in their lives from what others in the country believe, and we also learn what the pulse of the country is like outside of the sheltered world of rocket launches. 

This book won the 2019 Hugo and Nebula Award for best novel, so I don't think I'm sharing anything that is giant news or anything, but Kowal's work(wo)manlike writing is probably the best type of writing for this type of book.  She tackling weighty issues, but she's just doing so in a simple way, allowing readers to do what they will with them.  If her writing had been more flowery or extravagant, I think it might have distracted from the world she was building.

4) Despite the fact that this book is about some incredibly weighty issues, it comes off as hopeful and joyful in the end. I won't go so far as to say it's a happy ending - the Earth is still in crisis and the planet will not be able to sustain life for much longer - but it didn't leave me feeling like there was never going to be an end to the suffering. I immediately put the next book in the series on hold at the library.

Cons:

1) There are some absolutely spot-on critiques that this book is preachy. It's true. While Kowal doesn't come right out and say "sexism is bad - racism is bad - climate change is destroying the planet," the transparency of the parallels with how life is right now are glaringly obvious.  So while I wrote earlier that her writing allows readers to do what they will with what's on the page, it's not as if the readers have to stretch themselves to think about what that might be, either. I think this is a legitimate complaint, but I liked The Book Thief and you can't get much more moralizing than that, can you?

2) The book has odd pacing. The first bit is absolutely gripping because we're almost immediately thrown into the action of the meteorite hitting and how Elma and Nathaniel deal with it, but then there's a just a bit where not a lot happens and then everything happens, and then nothing and it kind of goes like that. If you thought we were going to make it to Mars by the end of this book, I have to admit that you're going to be sadly disappointed. I kind of liked the slow parts, though, because they were all about world building. Sometimes those slow parts, like the example of Elma and Nathaniel hanging out in Chicago for a day, were necessary to allow the more gripping parts to happen. The pacing is an issue, but I don't think it excludes the novel from being quite good.

Overall, I liked this book. I understand that it might not be for everyone, but I went ahead and ordered the next book from the library and I'm excited to see where Kowal takes in this journey.