★★★★★ (of 5)

• Full Title: The Calculating Stars
• Author: Mary Robinette Kowal
• Year: 2018 (mine was trade paperback)
• Pages: 421*
• Genre: Science Fiction, Alternate History
• Publisher: Tor
• ISBN 978-0-7653-7838-5 (trade paperback)
• Wikipedia page
• Author’s Wikipedia page

(* not including acknowledgements, historical notes, bibliography, about the author)

 

Summary

Winner of three 2019 “Best Novel” awards (Hugo, Nebula, and Locus), The Calculating Stars is a prequel to a Kowal’s 2012 short story The Lady Astronaut Of Mars (my review).

Set in an alternate history in which Thomas Dewey was U.S. president (in real life, Dewey lost to Roosevelt in 1944 and then lost to Truman in 1948), the book begins in 1952 when a meteorite impact wipes out Washington, D.C., and much of the eastern seaboard. First-person narrator Elma York, a mathematician and military pilot, determines that the resulting climate change from the collision will make Earth uninhabitable within 50 years, prompting an international effort to colonize other worlds.

 

Commentary

The story moves quickly; the writing is deceptively light and easy to read — though on closer inspection, quite a bit of research and fact-checking was involved. Because the novel covers multiple years, there are sometimes time gaps between chapters (though not always).

I thought Kowal did well with placing the reader in the times (though what I know of the 1950s is limited to what I’ve seen in movies and books, and what I’ve heard from older people). The story wasn’t weighed down by this — just enough to occasionally remind the reader of when the story takes place.

The above necessarily must include racial and sex divisions in society, which were more stark then than now. Besides the story itself, this is the part I found most compelling — the main character is a woman (of Jewish descent; see below) and experiences the prejudices and obstacles a woman of the time would expect when trying to live in the “man’s world” of aviation and space exploration.

Post-content, the author includes a “historical note”, explaining parts of the process of writing an alternate history, and a bibliography of her sources (rare in fiction). In the “acknowledgements” section, Kowal lists a number of experts in various fields who helped her get certain parts right.

 

Representation

Thirty or so pages in, I saw the word “mishegas”, and then around the 40th page, “tchotchkes”. I don’t think I’ve ever seen either word in print before. I asked my wife if she knew those words; she did. A few pages later, the protagonist announced she’s Jewish. It struck me that Jewish protagonists are exceedingly rare in my experience reading fiction (major exceptions include Exodus, by Leon Uris, which I read in 2010, and the Bible). It’s possible I missed a few in other books, where a name or something else was meant to identify them and I didn’t get the clue.

It reminded me of how rare it is for people in certain demographics to see themselves or their groups (and relevant struggles) represented in fiction, especially sci-fi. And when they are included, readers are quick to refer to them as “tokens” or “diversity for diversity’s sake” (whether it’s true or not). I liked the way Kowal treated her diverse cast, including women, African-Americans, people with mental health issues, and more. Even the regressive misogynists were empathetically treated as real people with depth of motivation.

Note: I don’t know whether the author is Jewish — I didn’t see either her family background or religion mentioned in any of her bios.

 

Points Off For...

I found nothing jarring or disappointing enough to take off any points. Incredibly minor complaints include:

(1) Though her narrative is set in the 1950s, Kowal references a 1960s Chuck Yeager quote — “spam in a can” (page 325) — which is from the 1979 book (and 1983 movie) The Right Stuff.

(2) On page 400, she has the director of the space program say “the moon’s dark side” when he means the moon’s far side. While “dark side” is a mistake common among laypersons, I find it difficult to believe that the director of the space program would make it.

 

Conclusion

In a rare occurrence, this year I’ve read three of the six novels up for the 2019 Hugo award (the other two are Record Of A Spaceborn Few and Space Opera), and so far I entirely concur with the decision to give the award to The Calculating Stars.

 

 

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