I almost missed out on Mary Robinette Kowal’s Lady Astronaut series. I passed on the first book, The Calculating Stars, when it came out in 2018 because I read the Lady Astronaut label as meaning that I’d be getting some anachronistic, patronising, retro-macho humour dressed as Science Fiction. I should have realised how wrong I was when, a year later, The Calculating Stars won the Nebula Award for Best Novel, the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, the Hugo Award for Best Novel, and the Sidewise Award for Alternate History but all of those slipped by me. Anyway, I eventually picked up the book because I’d had such a good time with Mary Robinette Kowal’s 2022 novel The Spare Man.

This alternative history opens in 1952 with an Extinction Event: a meteorite striking the Chesapeake Bay, obliterating most of the Eastern Seaboard and irrevocably changing the Earth’s atmosphere so that the planet will become uninhabitable within fifty years. What drew me in to the novel was that, instead of dumping this information, Star Wars style: “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…”, Mary Robinette Kowal brought the event down to a human scale by telling the story as a first-person recollection that sets the tone for the book. It starts:

“Do you remember where you were when the meteor hit? I’ve never understood why people phrase it as a question, because of course you remember. I was in the mountains with Nathaniel. He had inherited this cabin from his father and we used to go up there for stargazing. By which I mean: sex. Oh, don’t pretend that you’re shocked. Nathaniel and I were a healthy young married couple, so most of the stars I saw were painted across the inside of my eyelids.

If I’d known how long the stars were going to be hidden, I’d have spent a lot more time outside with the telescope.”

The person speaking is Elma York, a talented mathematician and former W.A.S.P. (Women’s Auxiliary Service Pilot). Her husband, Nathaniel, is the lead engineer at N.A.C.A. (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics) which is currently winning the space race with Russia. After a tense escape from the mountain, which includes Elma having to land her plane after its engine has failed, the couple become central to efforts firstly to convince the powers that be that there has been an Extinction Event and then to commit the resources needed to take humanity to the Moon and then on to Mars while there is still time.

This is a remarkable book. Yes, it covers a space program in an alternative history version of the 1950s, following an extinction event, and it does it well, but it does so much more than that. It’s not an ‘against the odds‘ struggle story, although the odds are stacked against Elma York and her desire to go into space. What makes it powerful is that It’s a personal story about loss, mental health, discrimination, family and friendship.

The storytelling made me laugh and cry but never dropped into melodrama. It stayed true to the science without force-feeding me endless technical information and it reflected the politics and prejudices of the time without becoming preachy or sanctimonious.

What kept me engaged was that the astronauts, the men as well as the women, felt like real people with weaknesses as well as strengths which stripped away the emotional distance that sometimes makes it hard to take in the human collaboration and discipline and courage that makes space travel possible. 

I also liked that Elma York was not a kick-ass heroine. She wasn’t even a perfect geek-made-good heroine. She was an exceptionally bright woman who suffered from spells of chronic crippling anxiety. She is sometimes blind to her own privilege and her prejudices. She makes mistakes. She’s also driven by her own ambition as much as by the desire to save humanity. All of which made me care about what happened to Elma York, to mourn her losses, regret her failures and celebrate her successes.

On top of all that, the plot is exciting, the pace keeps up the tension and Mary Robinette Kowal’s narration is pretty close to perfect.

I’ve already downloaded The Fated Sky, the second book in the series.