The Calculating Stars is an alternate history take on the space race, with the major world powers working in unison rather than against each other. It is centered around the life of Elma, a computer working for the NACA (the precursor of the NASA), and later for the International Space Coalition. She’s an ex WWII pilot who wants to be an astronaut, which proves difficult given the context of the 1950s in the USA.
Overall, I quite enjoyed the book, and only have a couple of nitpicky criticisms, which I’ll explain near the end.
My favorite part was the relationship between Elma and her husband. It was adult, mature and supportive rather than driven by drama and spectacle as most fictional relationships tend to be. The two people that formed it came across as genuinely in love with each other and there was the occasional barter and give-and-take.
Another aspect of the story I greatly enjoyed was the scientific aspects of it, which felt very plausible and much more science than fiction. I am actually studying aerospace engineering (though this is my first year) and nothing stood out to me as an error. The only aspect that was more farfetched (as the author herself explains at the end) was the plausibility of long-range space travel with a human computer instead of a mechanical one.
The other major strength of the story was character. Most of them felt like real people with complex and nuanced motivations and their actions didn’t come across as plot-driven or forced. The one exception to this would be Parker’s character, whose motivations I had a lot of trouble understanding. Sometimes he was plain sexist while others he was just in it to spite our main character. Maybe this was the direction the author wanted to go in, but it wasn’t my cup of tea.
My other complaints would be some of the unresolved plotlines, one of which I felt should have been resolved in this book, while the other I could see working in the sequel and the ending, which was maybe a little too optimistic for my particular taste (I really liked the ending of Pompeo, in which the character commits suicide, so take my opinion with a grain of salt). That said, the final scenes were really good and I enjoyed them a lot.
Mary Robinette Kowal’s prose is also solid, though not as lyrical as that of some of my favorite writers like Ray Bradbury or Andrea Pazienza. It was much simpler, yet not overly so, and accomplished its task perfectly well, as the story didn’t need and probably wouldn’t have benefitted from overly poetic or flowery prose.
The last thing I want to touch on before wrapping the review up, was the topics of sexism and racism that were quite significant to the story, especially the former. I was somewhat skeptic of these topics going in, mainly because I disagree with some of the author’s opinions with regards to “writing the other” (a big topic in the podcast she does with several other big names like Brandon Sanderson called Writing Excuses). I was expecting social commentary similar to that of the comic “Man Eaters”, which did such an over-the-top radical criticism of sexism (some of which was not even that well founded) that it totally ruined an otherwise interesting idea (making it the worst thing I’ve read in years, which is saying a lot). Anyway, returning to the topic at hand, I found her handling of these topics to be subtle enough that it wasn’t only about them but still present enough to promote thinking and reflection. In fact, this was some of the best handled criticism of sexism I’ve read in a long time, so kudos to her for that. As for the racism, I also felt it was handled well, even if it wasn’t as important a theme (mainly because it’s not directly affecting the main character).
Overall, I greatly enjoyed reading this for both its science and character elements and look forward to the sequel, which I hope with resolved some of the unresolved plotpoints.
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