Title: The Calculating Stars Pdf A Lady Astronaut Novel
Mary Robinette Kowal's science fiction debut, The Calculating Stars, explores the premise behind her award-winning "Lady Astronaut of Mars."
Nebula Finalist for Best Novel
Locus Trade Paperback Bestseller List
Publishers Weekly Best Books of 2018—Science Fiction/Fantasy
Winner 2019 RUSA Reading List for Science Fiction—American Library Association
Locus 2018 Recommended Reading List
Locus Bestseller List
Chicago Review of Books—Top 10 Science Fiction Books of 2018
Goodreads—Most Popular Books Published in July 2018 (#66)
The Verge—12 fantastic science fiction and fantasy novels for July 2018
Unbound Worlds—Best SciFi and Fantasy Books of July 2018
Den of Geek—Best Science Fiction Books of June 2018
Publishers Weekly—Best SFF Books of 2018
Omnivoracious—15 Highly Anticipated SFF Reads for Summer 2018
Past Magazine—Best Novels of 2018
Bookriot—Best Science Fiction Books of 2018
The Library Thing—Top Five Books of 2018
On a cold spring night in 1952, a huge meteorite fell to earth and obliterated much of the east coast of the United States, including Washington D.C. The ensuing climate cataclysm will soon render the earth inhospitable for humanity, as the last such meteorite did for the dinosaurs. This looming threat calls for a radically accelerated effort to colonize space, and requires a much larger share of humanity to take part in the process.
Elma York’s experience as a WASP pilot and mathematician earns her a place in the International Aerospace Coalition’s attempts to put man on the moon, as a calculator. But with so many skilled and experienced women pilots and scientists involved with the program, it doesn’t take long before Elma begins to wonder why they can’t go into space, too.
Elma’s drive to become the first Lady Astronaut is so strong that even the most dearly held conventions of society may not stand a chance against her.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Starts great, fizzles out What a start! Giant meteorite, east coast wiped out, the world doomed by coming nuclear summer - the oceans will boil! Whoa! I was all in. Then we follow all of that with...well, the the domestic life of the protagonist and her gal pal pilot friends. Huh? Will she get to be an astronaut?? (You want to take a guess?)It's really not a badly written exploration of life in the 50's, and the struggles women and people of color had just to be taken seriously, but that novel could have been written just as well without the world threatening opening. It just seemed light and trivial. Antisemitism even pops up later in the book - for about a page - but then, "Oops, never mind, I didn't mean to be antisemitic. Sorry!." "Oh, you were just being a grump. We forgive you! Group hug!"It just came across as too light in general. I doubt I'd bother with any other books in the series.Well written but based on a very flawed premise. The novel is well written but it is based on a flawed premise. A large meteor strike hits the Washington DC and Chesapeake Bay area and ejects enough water vapor into the atmosphere to cause a runaway greenhouse effect and eventually ‘boil the oceans’. While water vapor is a greenhouse gas per se, it is not capable of forcing a runaway effect as described because its presence in the atmosphere is self limiting via precipitation. The author recognizes that there would be initially be a global winter effect, dropping the global temperature by over 2 degrees prior to the supposed runaway effect and ignores the consequence that the water vapor ejected into the atmosphere would precipitate as snow and rain. Ordinarily, I can suspend disbelief when reading sci-fi but this is such a whopper that I could not recommend the book.Can't wait for the sequel! I recently finished reading Mary Robinette Kowal's wonderful new novel The Calculating Stars. It's set in an alternate 1952 in which the US has launched the first space satellite, opening the space race. Then, Washington DC and most of the East Coast of the US gets obliterated by a meteorite. The climate changes from that impact threaten to render Earth uninhabitable, making getting to Mars a priority.The novel is written in first person, and our narrator is Elma York, mathematician and wife of Nathaniel York. She is a computer - AKA a human mathematician hired to compute stuff, in this case space launch trajectories. She's also a former WASP, a group of women hired to ferry military airplanes around in WWII. This comes in handy, as her piloting skills allow her and her husband to survive the impact.She eventually decides that she wants to be am astronaut, and that's where the conflict is. This is the 1950s, and women are supposed to be in the kitchen, not in space. Oh, and Elma suffers from anxiety, for which she is eventually proscribed Miltown.This set of circumstances makes for a fascinating read. Mary gets to explore sexism, racism (blacks were computers too) and mental health while writing a gripping and entertaining book. It's very eye-opening for me, a straight white dude, to see the problems facing people like Elma - people who can and do contribute greatly.Mary takes a few liberties with history, notably having Dewey defeat Truman in 1948. (Well, that and the asteroid.) However, one thing she is true to - most of the math that got men into orbit was done by hand, mostly by women. It's a fascinating detail. Overall, I highly recommend this book.
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