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Book Report: The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal
Book One of The Lady Astronaut
Synopsis
The Calculating Stars is the first book in Mary Robinette Kowal's The Lady Astronaut series, an alternate history science fiction story in which a huge meteor strikes the Earth in 1953, triggering an extinction event. In a bid for human survival, an infant space program is tasked with the impossible— establishing a human colony on the Moon.
Elma York, a NACA computer and World War II pilot, is heavily involved in both determining that the meteor strike will result in an extinction event and in the developing space program as an extremely talented mathematician. When women are excluded from astronaut candidacy program, Elma takes a stand. Elma and a group of diverse women band together to face the physical and intellectual challenges— not to mention misogyny and racism —to become the world's first lady astronauts.
Plot Summary - Spoilers!
Part One - 1952
Elma and her husband Nathaniel are in the Poconos Mountains on March 3, 1952 when the meteorite hits. They see the flash, and at first assume it's an atom bomb detonation, but the music on the radio is uninterrupted, implying that there wasn't an electromagnetic pulse— a symptom of atom bomb detonations. Minutes after they witness the flash, an earthquake hits and knocks their cabin flat. They manage to escape mostly unscathed and start driving their car down the mountain towards the airfield where their plane is located, and on the way find somewhere to shelter in anticipation of the coming air blast. Finally, new of the disaster comes in over the radio, and it's revealed that a meteorite struck the ocean near Maryland. All of Washington DC has been destroyed.
Elma and Nathaniel are talking about Elma's grandmother who lives in the area immediately affected by the strike when the air blast hits, shattering the windows of their car and rendering the vehicle useless. They have to walk the rest of the way to the airfield, past fallen trees and scattered debris. They encounter a severed arm along the way, which makes the whole situation very real to Elma. When they get to the airfield, they find that the barn containing their plane is crooked, but intact. However, they also find Mr Goldman— the owner of the airfield —dead in his truck, impaled by a tree.
With Elma piloting and Nathaniel on the radio, the two take off in their small plane, but can't get into contact with anyone over VHF. Eventually they try UHF, and reach Major Lindholm, who is flying above them in an F-86, and he escorts them to Wright-Patterson airbase to land. On their approach, they are struck by ejecta from the meteorite strike, and Elma has to make an emergency landing with no engines. They survive the landing thanks to Elma's flying skills, and are then taken to the airbase. When they finally have a moment to process what had happened, Elma realizes that her brother, Hershel, will think she is dead since she and Nathaniel live in DC and only survived because they were on vacation at the time. She borrows a phone to call him in California, but the lines are busy. She then runs into Stetson Parker, Elma's nemesis from the war, who is for the moment, in charge of the base. He summons Nathaniel to a defence meeting and intentionally excludes Elma. Major Lindholm invites Elma and Nathaniel to stay at his home instead of the temporary living facilities on base.
While Nathaniel is trapped in defence meetings with Parker, Major Lindholm— Eugene —takes Elma to his house where his wife, Myrtle, takes care of her by running her a bath and making her something to eat. Elma realizes that she has never been in a Black person's home before. Watching the news, she sees more reports of the destruction, and a death toll of seventy thousand people and counting. Myrtle lets Elma use her phone to try and call her brother, and this time she gets through. Hershel is ecstatic that she is alive, as the rest of their family is presumed dead.
Nathaniel doesn't return from the meetings until midnight, and he fills in Elma on what was discussed— mostly a bunch of military guys insisting that the meteorite was somehow a Soviet attack. The next day, Nathaniel goes back into meetings to keep Parker in line and continue to try and convince everyone that this disaster has nothing to do with the Soviets. By contrast, Elma is sent clothes shopping with Myrtle. Elma feels useless and strange buying clothes during this disaster, with so many dead and dying. She wants to do something to help and be useful. When she hears Myrtle mention to the cashier that she is going to volunteer at the hospital, Elma decides that that is what she will do too.
Elma helps at the hospital for a while as planes of refugees come in one by one. Elma realizes that she might be able to help move refugees with her experience as a pilot, and talks to Parker to see if she can be assigned to fly refugees in, but Parker denies her. Later, Elma goes to synagogue, finally accepting that her family is dead. Nathaniel reports that he is frustrated with the meetings because he is just repeating himself over and over again. He asks Elma to calculate the size of the meteorite so he will have more evidence to show the military men, and she is glad to be doing something that puts her unique mathematical abilities to use. But when she runs the calculations, she is shocked. From the numbers, she has determined that this may be an extinction event. Nathaniel asks Elma to come to a meeting with General Eisenhower to explain her findings, but she skips out due to severe anxiety that she always feels when addressing groups of men. This stems from attending college for mathematics at age fourteen, and constantly being used as an example by her professors, which only drew the ire of her male classmates.
Elma puts on a brave face and goes with Nathaniel to a meeting with President Brennan— formerly the Secretary of Agriculture, becoming the de facto president since he was the only surviving member of the cabinet —and she shows Brennan and a UN representative the temperature predictions. For a few years it will be very cold, globally, but then the temperatures will start to rise, and they won't stop until after the oceans have boiled. The UN representative declares that it is time humanity colonized space.
Part Two - 1956
A lot has happened in the four years since the meteor strike. The International Aeronatics Committee has been formed, and Nathaniel is its lead engineer. The computing department has been desegregated. The first manned rocket is sent into orbit— Stetson Parker is the first man to go to space. There is still talk of cancelling the program because the public— and even the experts —don't believe that the warming is coming. After all, the past four years have been unusually cold.
Elma applies to the astronaut program, but doesn't even make the first cut. She finds out later that not a single woman was selected. She reports this to the 99s— a women's flight club established by WASPs after the war —and they make plans to shine a light on the issue of excluding women from the program by holding an all-women airshow, which will prove that women are just as capable as men.
In attempt to get women considered for the space program, Elma visits the director of the space program, Director Clemens. Unfortunately, she is shut down almost immediately. Later, when she is going through the mail, she finds that she and Nathaniel have been invited to a dinner party hosted by a senator and his wife, Nicole. Nicole happens to have flown in the war as a WASP with Elma. Parker gets taken down a notch by the senator's wife when he tries to discount Elma's story of escaping enemy aircraft during the war.
While out bowling with Eugene and Myrtle, the four start talking about the women's air show. Elma tells them that she doesn't think the airshow will work out— it won't be very impressive without military planes to fly, and none of the flying clubs would lend any to the 99s. Eugene tells her that none of the white flying clubs would lend her any planes, but his air club has six mustangs, and perhaps they would be able to lend them some planes and pilots.
After some awkward interactions, Elma convinces some of the Black women pilots from Eugene's air club— Ida and Imogene —to lend the mustangs to her for the airshow, as well as have the women fly with them. They perform the airshow successfully, except for the end where Elma experiences a bad bird strike and has to make a landing entirely blind with no engines and coming out of a tailspin. Her ability to land strikes up a lot of attention. The reporters all comment on how terrified she looks, but to Elma, landing the plane was nothing. It's talking to reporters that terrifies her.
Betty— a pilot and reporter who is friends with Elma and the 99s —writes an article about the airshow, which gets picked up by major papers, getting them the publicity they aimed to get with the airshow. The women decide what their next move is going to be after the success of the airshow. Betty suggests getting Elma an interview on TV, but Elma declines because she really doesn't want to go on TV because she gets far too anxious. However, a former air force captain turned TV host that she knew during the war invites her onto his show, a children's educational program called Watch Mr Wizard. Elma wants to decline because she is terrified of cameras, but eventually she convinces herself to accept.
Elma manages to get through the Mr Wizard filming, though she does throw up in the bathroom before hand. Later, fan-mail arrives at her apartment from little girls across the country who dub her 'the Lady Astronaut.' One of the astronauts going up on a manned mission asks Elma if she would pay a visit to his daughter's girl scout troupe— they had formed a Lady Astronaut fan-club. Elma agrees, and Betty tags along to report on the meeting. But when Elma and Betty get there, there are reporters and cameras everywhere. Betty invited them to report on the event to gain more publicity for the movement to include women in the space program. Elma is furious at Betty for both inviting all these reporters and TV crews, and also for springing this on her. Elma survives talking with the girl scouts, but she will avoid Betty and refuse to talk to her for a very long time after this.
Later, while Elma is at work in the computing department, Nathaniel summons her to his office to talk with her privately. He tells her that Director Clemons told him to "control your wife," and he is furious about it. Elma starts apologizing profusely and has a panic attack so bad she throws up. She is extremely distressed over getting Nathaniel into trouble and making him angry, but Nathaniel explains to her that he isn't mad at her, he's mad at Clemons. He wants Elma to keep doing what she is doing because what she is doing is working to put pressure on Clemons to include women in the space program. Later, when Elma has calmed down, Nathaniel asks her if she is pregnant, because he noticed she has been vomiting a lot recently. Elma explains that she suffers from anxiety, which is why she has been throwing up so much. Nathaniel takes her to a doctor to make sure she isn't pregnant anyways, and the doctor writes her a prescription for Miltown to treat her anxiety. Despite the doctor explaining to her that she shouldn't be feeling the way she does, and that mental health issues need treatment just as physical health issues do, Elma doesn't want to take any drugs. The doctor makes her take the prescription anyways, which she does, but she doesn't tell Nathaniel about it, and she doesn't intend to fill it.
There is an exciting new development in the program when they send a probe to get the first orbital images of the moon. For the first time, humanity gets to see what the moon's surface looks like.
Elma recieves another invitation to go on Mr Wizard, but she is reluctant to accept after all the distress it caused her the previous time. But when she thinks of all the little girls she would be letting down by declining, she accepts. She and Nathaniel go to Chicago a day early for the Mr Wizard shoot, deciding to take a bit of a vacation. There is a rocket launch scheduled for while they are gone, and Nathaniel— being the lead engineer —is anxious about being away during it, but figures it will go fine without him. Elma goes on Mr Wizard and experiences anxiety attacks beforehand. She considers what the doctor said about taking medications. After the show, Nathaniel gets news that the rocket that launched that day had exploded. It went off course after launch and landed on a farm, killing eleven people. They return to mission control, and see the smoke from the destroyed farm on their flight back.
Elma and Nathaniel were supposed to go to California for Elma's nephew's bar mitzvah, but with everything happening after the accident, Nathaniel can't go. Elma goes alone, and rides in a commercial plane for the first time. At the Bar Mitzvah, Hershel asks Elma about how she's been doing. She tells him that it was like that semester at Stanford. Hershel knows what this means, and we the audience learn that she tried to hang herself during that semester.
Congressional hearings on the accident begin, and Elma attends these as support to Nathaniel. She gives him the numbers and he does the talking. Nicole, the senator's wife, points out to Elma that she needs to testify in the hearing. She also convinces Elma to pay a visit to the doctor that she sees, who is a psychotherapist.
Elma testifies in the hearing, which moves the case along. She then meets with Clemons to make her case for including women in the astronaut program. She expects the meeting to be just her and Clemons, but there are two other men in Clemons' office: Parker, her nemesis, and Wernher von Braun, a Nazi. Being Jewish, Elma has a lot of feelings about being in a room with this man, but she powers past those fears to give her report.
There is a manned launch scheduled, but it gets delayed after all the astronauts are loaded into the rocket. Clemons and Parker claim that it is a delay due to weather, but Elma has a bad feeling about it. There seems to be too much tension in the people in charge for it to be a mere weather delay. Her suspicions are confirmed when Parker takes her aside and tells her that there is a bomb threat from some anti-space extremist who is out by the rocket with a bomb strapped to himself. Parker asks Elma to take the wives and children of the astronauts to the cafeteria and keep them distracted so they don't hear about what is happening. The situation is resolved safely, and Parker is actually nice to Elma for her help, but immediately turns around and tells her he will do anything in his power to keep her from going to space because she reported him during the war. Later, it comes out that women are being asked to apply for the astronaut program.
Elma goes to the 99s to pass out applications. It is the first time she has gone to the air club since Betty surprised her with all those reporters during her meeting with the girl scouts. By looking at the applications, it quickly becomes apparent that the qualifications are designed to exclude women of colour. Many of the qualifications are things that only former WASPs meet, like having hours in jet planes, but women of colour weren't allowed to be WASPs during the war, meaning they are systematically disqualified from the astronaut program.
Betty gives Elma a letter she has been holding onto for months. It was sent to Betty from Life magazine, but addressed to Elma. When Elma reads it, she finds out that her Aunt Esther is alive— she saw Elma on Mr Wizard and recognized her, and one of the nurses at the nursing home Aunt Esther has been living at for the past few years had done her best to reach Elma through this letter. Elma calls the nursing home and gets to talk to her aunt, and she finds out that her grandmother and aunt survived the meteor, but her grandma died fairly recently. After some discussion with her brother, they decide that Aunt Esther is going to move in with Hershel and his family.
Elma makes the first cut for the astronaut program. At the 99s, it is clear that only white women made the cut. Helen, Elma's Vietnamese co-worker, brings a bunch of textbooks on jet engines and a list of airfields with jet planes and declares that they can all be ready for the next round of applications. They urge Betty to report on the discrimination.
Elma goes to Clemons' office to request the candidate list. She doesn't say that she wants it specifically to give to Betty to provide evidence of discrimination in the candidate selection. Unfortunately, Clemons has already sent the list to Parker. Not wanting to deal with Parker, Elma decides to get the names when she goes for the initial tests. When she goes to the testing, she notes that every single candidate is white except for one Chinese woman. That women just "happens" to have a previously undiagnosed heart murmur and is disqualified from the program. Elma makes it through the first round of tests and interviews.
While at work, Elma stumbles across a conversation in a stairwell between Parker and one of the other astronauts. Something is wrong with Parker, but he doesn't want to see the flight surgeon because he will be grounded. He begs Elma not to tell anyone, and she agrees.
Parker summons Elma while she is working, and she is brought into a room full of reporters and cameras. Clemons introduces her to the reporters as the program's newest astronaut, springing the news on her in front of the cameras, which Elma thinks Parker did on purpose. In private, Parker tells her that the other women earned their place as astronauts, but she was just a publicity stunt.
The new women astronauts find out very quickly that they aren't astronauts, they are Astronaut Candidates— shortened to AsCans —which was conveniently a distinction not made until women joined the program. Elma sees that some of the AsCans shouldn't even be there, like Violette, an astonaut's wife who didn't have the qualifications, and Betty, who cut a deal with Life magazine to get into the program.
The AsCans are scheduled to do the Dilbert Dunker— a test where they are loaded into a mock cockpit on a track that shoots them into a freezing pool of water, where they have to escape to the surface while blindfolded. Only, there are reporters and cameras there to observe them, and instead of wearing flight suits, the women are made to wear bikinis. When it's Elma's turn to go through the Dilbert Dunker, she finds out that the marines running the test were told to just go through the motions of the test— send the women down, then rescue them. Elma asks to do it for real, getting blindfolded and everything. When she surfaces, there is a lot of excitement, with people asking if she had made a record.
During assignments, Elma is assigned to train on the T-38 with Parker. She finds this a little suspicious, but is too excited to fly the T-38 to think about it too much. When they get into the air, though, Parker asks her to be a cover for him so he can go to a doctor without anyone else knowing. Elma turns him down. Parker was selected to go to the moon, and she wasn't going to cover up a major health issue when such an important mission was at stake. But when Parker tells her he knows about her taking Miltown, she has to agree, and they go to the clinic for Parker's appointment.
When Elma gets home, she tells Nathaniel about Parker's doctor's appointment and his issues, and how he looked really ill when he came out of his doctor's appointment. She didn't ask what the doctor told him, and Parker didn't tell. She asks Nathaniel not to tell anyone what she told him, because Parker was blackmailing her.
Elma and a couple other AsCans meet up at Nicole's to study. Elma mentions that Ida— one of the Black women pilots —should be in the astronaut program instead of Violette and Betty, who aren't qualified and are just there for politics. Nicole tells her that they are all there for politics. She is a senator's wife, Jacira is a beauty queen from Brazil, where they intend to move their base of operations, and Elma is Mr Wizard's Lady Astronaut.
During another training session with reporters in attendance, Parker is asked by the press about rumours that is is being replaced on the moon mission. He tells them that he has an old war injury that needs to be taken care of, and abruptly leaves the room. Elma chases after him to tell him that she didn't tell anyone, it wasn't her. He tells her that he is the one who told. He has bone spurs in his spine and without surgery he would be paralyzed.
During assignments, it is revealed that one of the women has been chosen to go to space. Each of the women hopes she was chosen. Jacira is the one who will be going into space on the next mission.
Elma is shadowing CapCom when two of the men are doing a spacewalk. When they can't get the hatch shut afterwards and have to retreat to the space station, Elma is quick to point out a deadly burn problem, and send them on the right course and saves their lives, which earns her respect in the control room. After the incident Clemons decides to do some reassignments and decides to switch out who is going to be the CM on the moon mission. He announces that the new CM is going to be Elma. Parker attempts to ground her by attempting to reveal her secret, but Elma admits to using Miltown before he can say it, and the other astronauts back her up.
The women AsCans (sans Violette and Betty) quickly meet up in the bathroom. They speculate that Betty is going to run to Life magazine with an article about Elma taking Miltown. While the professionals don't see anything wrong with her taking Miltown, the public might, and public perception might get her grounded. Elma says that she needs to talk to Betty, and the others go find her and drag Betty into the bathroom with them. Elma apologizes to Betty for being so standoffish towards her for months, and asks for a favour. She offers to teach Betty math in exchange for not running the article, but she realizes that by offering this exchange, she is doing exactly what Parker did to her. So she tells Betty to do what she wants, and Elma will still teach her math if she wants the help. Betty tells her she won't do the article, and the two become friends again.
In the lead up to the moon mission, before Elma has to go into quarantine, she and Nathaniel host a party. There, they find out that Eugene, Ida, Helen, and Imogene were all accepted to take the astronaut tests, marking another victory.
The book ends with Elma going to space.
Thoughts - Spoilers!
The first book of the Lady Astronaut series never has a dull moment and takes the opportunity to tackle a whole slew of issues. It's a page turning story that has you rooting for Elma and the other women the whole way through, and cheering along with them at every victory.
Elma is a great protagonist in this story. She's a genius mathematician, able to do calculations in her head that most people can't do on paper, and she went to an Ivy League university at age fourteen. But make no mistake, she is no Mary Sue. She has many flaws that balance her out as a character. The most obvious is her anxiety disorder, which makes it very hard for her to address groups of people, talk to reporters, or be on TV. But it's the flaws she can do something about that are really what makes her interesting. Her stigmatic view on mental illness and anti-anxiety medication, her racial ignorance, and the grudge she holds against Betty for months are all flaws that she works to correct in herself, adding more layers of character development.
I found Parker to be a really interesting antagonist. He gets in Elma's way at every step, doing all he can to keep her from becoming an astronaut because of a personal grudge. When he isn't actively trying to block her progress, he's just being plain mean. But we also get to see a different side of Parker. It isn't a lot, and it's often immediately undercut by Parker being an asshole to Elma, but it's enough to make Parker more than just the diabolical villain of the story. It makes him believable as a character living in the world of the story. The absence of his wife at parties and launches is at first attributed to him being a bad person— the women comment on it assuming that it's because even his wife can't stand him. But when Elma asks how his wife is doing as a dig at him, she doesn't quite get the response she thought, and she realizes that his wife is actually very sick, and this is a struggle Parker has to endure in the background. The other obvious example is Parker's medical issues, which Elma first learns about when she walks in on Parker and another astronaut in a stairwell talking about it. Later Elma has to go with Parker to a doctor's office as a cover. True, he is blackmailing her into keeping quiet, but his desperation proves something about his character and his struggles. I'm looking forward to the following books in this series to see how Parker and Elma's relationship develops. I sense a cathartic enemies to friends development in the future!
I was pleasantly surprised with how the issue of mental health was presented in this book. While this book is written in modern times, it is set in the fifties, and it somehow manages to represent both the affirming views of mental health treatment of the modern age and the stigma around mental disorders and medications of the past. Elma is the 1950s stigma representative. She doesn't believe her anxiety disorder is a real illness, she thinks it's all in her head. She also thinks it's shameful and doesn't want anyone— including her husband —to know about it. When a doctor prescribes her a medication, she is immediately adverse to it. She thinks that the medication will change who she is, which is a common misunderstanding about medications. While our protagonist believes in the stigma around mental illness and medications, everyone else (well, aside from Parker) in the story has a more modern view on it. The way Elma's doctor explains that she shouldn't be feeling the way she is, and should be treated for it just as she would be treated for a physical illness is really important. It's still a message that needs to be pressed hard today. Nicole being open with Elma about her own use of Miltown helps normalize it for Elma, and start breaking down the mental barriers preventing her from taking medication. Her biggest issue with taking Miltown is that it might disqualify her from the astronaut program if the knowledge goes public. But even when Parker tries to reveal her secret, prompting her to admit to the other astronauts that she is taking drugs to manage her anxiety, all the other astronauts back her up, further normalizing it. And finally, when Elma starts taking the Miltown, she discovers that it doesn't have an effect on her math skills or who she is as a person, which was another of her fears. Mental health is treated in a very sympathetic manner in this book, and provides another character development journey for Elma to embark on.
This book is set in the fifties. So at the beginning of the story, when Elma is working as a computer for NACA, the computing department is still segregated. As a white person during this time, she has lived quite separately from Black people (and other POC), and her ignorance is brought to her attention many times during the book. Her first real interactions with Black people are when the Lindholms invite her and Nathaniel to stay in their home. Being in the company of Myrtle and Eugene opens her eyes to the systematic racism Black people face that she never really thought about before, like how none of the people being brought in on refugee planes were Black, or how they might get kicked out of a bowling alley for being Black. Elma frequently reflects on how if she hadn't befriended the Lindholms she probably wouldn't notice the absence of Black people in the room. She even makes the same mistake twice of only calling white mechanics and white air clubs when looking for someone to fix her plane and when looking to borrow military jets, respectively. She treats the call for women to apply as astronauts as a victory, not realizing until after she hands out applications at the 99s that people of colour have been systematically disqualified right from the get-go. Elma screws up a lot when it comes to interacting with people of colour, and is very ignorant about the issues they face and the lives they live. But she learns. It says a lot about Elma that she does her best and doesn't get defensive when she proves ignorant or accidentally offends someone. Elma befriending people like Helen, Ida, and Imogene makes Elma less ignorant of their plights, and makes her want to use her status as a white woman to fight for them to have the same opportunities as her.
I have been rambling on about this for a while, so I have just one more thing to talk about. Everyone, get yourself a man like Nathaniel. Nathaniel is awesome. Even though he is the lead engineer and a big important person in the space program, his most important job in the story is being Elma's number one supporter. Even when Elma's actions are getting him into trouble, he is constantly encouraging her and supporting her through all her trials and tribulations.
This is an awesome book. The depictions of sexism and racial discrimination can be hard to read at times, but it's a triumphant and inspiring story about hardworking and talented women. Even if you don't like science fiction, you could still enjoy this book. It's a blend between historical fiction, alternate history, and just a little science fiction. I'd recommend this to anyone, especially those inspired by Hidden Figures and with their eyes on the stars.