Book Review: The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal

The Calculating Stars

by Mary Robinette Kowal

Gray Planet Commentary

• Frustrating
• Stuff I Don’t Believe
• Why is this Science Fiction?

Gray Planet Indices

• Good Book Index: 50/100
• Literature Index: 30/100
• Magic Factor: 10/100
• Sense of Wonder Index: 15/100

Warning: There are minor spoilers in this review.
The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal is the first novel in a trilogy. The trilogy is an expansion of the story “The Lady Astronaut of Mars” which won Kowal the Hugo Award for best novelette in 2014. The setting of the story is an alternate American history where Dewey beats Truman in the 1948 presidential election. In 1952. Washington and much of the eastern seaboard of the US is destroyed. Scientists predict that the coming climate catastrophe will make Earth uninhabitable in a few years. The response to this scientific prediction is to accelerate the space program in the United States with the goal of saving a portion of the human race by migrating to another planet.
Elma York and her husband, Nathaniel are in a remote cabin in the mountains away from Washington, DC when the meteor strikes. Elma York is a pilot, a scientist and a mathematician. Her husband, Nathaniel, is a rocket scientist. In this new world, with much of the military and scientific establishment and all of the political establishment destroyed by the asteroid, Nathaniel becomes the chief rocket scientist for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), and Elma becomes a “computer”—a human who does mathematical calculations, like orbital trajectories, for NACA rocket launches.
The Calculating Stars takes us through the recovery from the asteroid’s impact and the creation of the NACA space program. The subsequent history of NACA is very similar to that of NASA, but accelerated by the impending climate doom the asteroid has initiated.
Elma’s work at NACA and her desire to become an astronaut are the focal point in the story and a plot device to allow an examination of racial and sexual bias. The social setting is American in the 1950s and Kowal does a very good job of evoking the times including the expectations (or lack of expectations) for women and minorities.
Kowal doesn’t really deal with the effects of the asteroid. The Secretary of Agriculture survives because he is not in DC. He becomes president and things just sort of go on—there is no struggle for power and the America Kowal creates accepts that its political system and social structure will be unaffected by such a tragedy. The capitol is relocated to Kansas City as are the rocket launching facilities of NACA. Similarly, the idea (one of the proponents of which is Elma’s meteorologist brother) that an unsurvivable nuclear winter is coming is also just accepted and along with it, the necessity for putting massive resources into the fledgling space program, primarily run by the United States, to allow a few select people—mostly white, mostly American and all male to go into space. Kowal solves these massive problems with a few sentences of exposition. The asteroid disaster is only a means to an end—Kowal needs a reason to accelerate the space program in her alternate history.
Elma is an interesting strong female character and Kowal’s development of her is well-done and interesting. Her friendship with a handful of African American women provides the opportunity to develop the story of racial bias. Elma suffers from debilitating anxiety under some social circumstances as she becomes the “lady astronaut”. This severe anxiety disorder gives Kowal the opportunity to address the stigma of mental illness.
I believe in the character of Elma York as Kowal has created her, but I think Kowal has sabotaged the primary purpose of her novel by making Elma so much a part of her times. Elma doesn’t succeed by overcoming her weaknesses through the strength of her will and personality. I’m not sure how or why she succeeds and that is my biggest problem with the novel. To have Elma, with all of her weaknesses, become a lady astronaut and the pilot of the first Moon mission while taking anxiety medication (Miltown) is just simply not believable. I can believe a woman would be the best, but not Elma. Any person as affected as she is by stress related anxiety is simply not a suitable candidate for the job. We are looking for the intellectual, physical, and emotional elite for roles like this. Elma does not pass muster.
The primary science fictional element of the story, is the accelerated space program operating in the context of 1950s America following the asteroid disaster. But again, Kowal fails to deliver. The storyline she follows is too similar to the actual events of the Apollo program. She shows us no creative alternatives, but simply reiterates the primary events and technology of Apollo. All she is really showing us is the inclusion of women, but her choice of Elma as the chosen woman is not believable.
Although I respect and admire much of what Kowal has done in this novel, in presentation it is a failure, particularly as a science fiction novel. There is too much that doesn’t ring true, the detail is too skimpy to justify major portions of the action, and the primary theme of the book—that Elma is the woman for the job is not believable.