The Calculating Stars (Mary Robinette Kowal)

The Calculating Stars
The Lady Astronaut series, Book 1
Mary Robinette Kowal
Tor
Fiction, Sci-Fi
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: The meteorite struck the east coast of America in 1952, taking with it huge swaths of land, uncounted lives... and, in a matter of years, the future habitability of Earth. With survival on the line, the fledgling NACA space program becomes an international effort, a push to colonize space before a runaway greenhouse effect leads to mass extinctions.
Computer Elma York and her husband, rocket engineer Nathaniel, become key parts of the new push for space. As a WASP pilot who had to outfox enemy planes without even being allowed ammunition, Elma hopes to become an astronaut herself... but it soon becomes clear that white men only need apply. But why? She wrote several of the equations that make orbital flight possible, and she's a better pilot than some of the men selected, plus if the goal really is to colonize space women will have to go up at some point. Despite stubborn politicians and condescending superiors, Elma is determined to get into space, no matter what it takes.

REVIEW: Kowal takes a few minor liberties, but this alternate-history space story relies entirely on real-world physics and possibilities, positing a hastened space program that must prioritize interplanetary colonization over developments like Martian rovers, the space shuttle, or microcomputers. The extinction-level strike moves up the global warming timeline and urgency; even in Kowal's world, there are many who deny the impending cataclysm, even as the climate irrevocably shifts and prediction after prediction plays out true. As the space program fights budget cuts and skeptical politicians and even anti-space terrorists (with justifications ranging from religious fervency to conspiracy theories about corporations and governments inventing a climate crisis), Elma must fight the misogyny of the 1950's and her own crippling anxiety (not to mention anxiety about anxiety; even with doctorates under her belt and a fully supportive husband, she still hears her late mother whispering "What will people think?" whenever she defies gender expectations), a fight that extends to include racial bigotry as she realizes that gender isn't the only basis for discrimination among her colleagues. Surrounding her are friends and allies and enemies, not always clear distinctions, as she inadvertently becomes the face for the movement to create a "lady astronaut" program. Even her worst enemy, the arrogant pilot/astronaut Stetson Parker, becomes more than just a plot enabler. It starts fairly quickly and moves at a decent pace, establishing a strong sense of time and place in both the altered 1950's world and the Apollo-era space program, with the main flaw being that it's clearly just part of a larger story that will (theoretically) conclude with the second novel, The Fated Stars... which I suppose I'll have to add to my holiday wish list at this point. Dang it.
(This book also reminded me that I really need to see and/or read Hidden Figures sooner rather than later; Kowal includes that book in her bibliography at the end, and claims the movie as partial incitement to finish this story, which touches on similar themes, if in a fictional timeline.)

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