The Fated Sky (Lady Astronaut #2) by Mary Robinette Kowal

 The Calculating Stars

The Fated Sky by Mary Robinette Kowal is the second in the Lady Astronaut series. In this installment, Elma is on the mission to Mars.  The vast majority of this novel is about the time spent in travel, the relationships among crew members, and how Elma deals with the sexism, racism, and lack of true communication with her husband who has remained on Earth.

It's a continuation of The Calculating Stars and you might remember that a huge meteorite hit the Earth in that book and the idea of the space program is to save humanity from a planet that is in environmental collapse.  I read this book after I finished The Overstory and I just kept thinking that all that humans would do is go to another planet and fuck it up, too.  

Then I saw this meme on Facebook about Elon Musk. Let's see if I can find it.

This is absolutely a parallel to another plotline in the book, which is that there are factions of "Earth First" people who think that the money spent funding Mars missions could be spent helping people on Earth who are suffering because of droughts, extreme weather events, and a lack of assistance.  Meanwhile, Elma is so caught up in her Mars mission that she doesn't even really understand where the Earth First people are coming from - why "save the future of humanity" if the current version of humanity is suffering so? 

I don't know any of the answers to this, but the book made me think about how all this would go down in reality and I'm pretty sure the space mission would never get funded and humanity would just die.  

So, the book is well-written and it's kind of unputdownable once you get started. If you're into science fiction, but you'd like authors to recognize that women exist, this series might be a good one for you.  I definitely put the next book in the series on my list.