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The Fated Sky A Lady Astronaut Novel Mary Robinette Kowal 9780765398949 Books

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The Fated Sky A Lady Astronaut Novel Mary Robinette Kowal 9780765398949 Books

Mary Robinette Kowal pulls off some amazing feats in this, the second half of The Lady Astronaut. For one thing, she's created an enormously sympathetic character who manages to unwittingly alienate most of her acquaintenances through simple and human mistakes. She has also created an alternate history in which, plausibly, humans have established a lunar colony and are launching an expedition to Mars--in 1961. Remarkably, she does this without any hand waving or magical new technology. The members of the Mars expedition are calculating maneuvers by hand!

As someone who lived through 1961 (well before Koval was born) I was constantly amazed at her attention to detail, whether it's in Elma York's kitchen, the painfully difficult math, or racial and social tension. It's all seamlessly woven into the story and never trips up the narrative. There were a couple of things that brought me up short, thinking "not in '61" but, yes, you could have a copy of Stranger in a Strange Land on board your ship to Mars.

As long-time SF readers, some of us may have become jaded by countless tales of interstellar empires, but The Fated Sky is a reminder that getting into space is hard and it's magical.


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The Fated Sky A Lady Astronaut Novel Mary Robinette Kowal 9780765398949 Books Reviews

This is the continuation of THE CALCULATING STARS. This alternate history space adventure begins in in 1961. Elma is returning from the moon where a small colony has been established when the return ship goes off course and lands in Alabama instead of Kansas. They are invaded by six armed men who hold them hostage because they are angry that scarce resources are being devoted to the space program instead of dealing with problems on Earth that have been caused by the meteor strike some years earlier.

Elma is rescued but the incident has long-lasting consequences. Some of the men who hijacked the ship were Black which just highlighted the racial divide that existed in the United States at the time. The racial divide is also apparent in the space program where there are very few who aren't White and those are often given lesser jobs.

The main focus of this story is the plan to colonize Mars. Because good publicity is needed and Elma is famous as the Lady Astronaut, she is asked to join this Mars expedition. This is a hard decision for her and her husband Nathaniel in many ways. It will mean another separation and putting off starting a family. The trip will take at least three years. Nathaniel's job as an engineer in the space program means that he will have to remain on Earth. Additionally, adding Elma to the mission one year in means that another astronaut - her friend Helen Carmouche, nee Liu - is being bumped from the mission. Helen is from Taiwan which causes more conflict as the switch makes the mission even less ethnically diverse. Elma faces resentment from her fellow crewmates because she bumped Helen and because she is so far behind in the training. It doesn't help that Stetson Parker is the mission commander. He and Elma have been at odds since they met during World War II.

The mission begins and many problems are faced including clogged toilets, an E Coli outbreak on the other ship which kills the ship's doctor, an ammonium leak that forces the crew of Elma's ship to move to the other ship until it is repaired. One of the most enduring problems is that the co-pilot of the second ship is from South Africa and really believes in Apartheid which makes it even more difficult for the Black members of the mission. Then, the mission loses contact with Mission Control on Earth which makes them all feel abandoned and concerned about their loved ones left behind.

This was a book that I couldn't put down. Each scene was so suspenseful that I had to keep reading to find out what happened next. The politics on Earth and within the space program had enough detail to make the story very realistic. In fact, many of the newspaper articles the began many chapters were actual articles from papers of the day.
I really wanted to like this two-book set, but it's...just...weird.

The setup is promising Imagine a universe in which Dewey does defeat Truman, helping accelerate the fledgling space program; and a good thing too, because a meteor hits the Eastern Seaboard and wipes out virtually all of the government, creating a massive greenhouse effect that will render the planet uninhabitable within decades. Time to colonize space!

...but that's about it with the setup, because the series quickly devolves into an Ozzie-and-Harriet "housewife in space" first-person narrative. The author doesn't seem to know what to do with the main character, so she loads the character with all sorts of "character" She's a WASP pilot from WWII (though none of that expertise really shows up once she's in space); oh, and she's Jewish; oh, and a specific Jewish sect; and her husband is absolutely perfect; and they have PG sex virtually every chapter; and she suffers from debilitating anxiety for which the cure is incessant recitation of prime numbers. Bless her heart!

Even in alternate-universe world, this character wouldn't be qualified for space. But oh, she make a killer Chocolate Chess Pie when she's in the kitchen of the rocket headed off to Mars!

Even this nonsense might warrant a complete read-through if the alternate universe concept wasn't simply abandoned for the Peyton Place narrative. Just one example The book mentions Eisenhower as a rare survivor after the meteor wipes out millions, including virtually all of the government, in 1952. So, he's alive and kicking. Within three chapters, he's forgotten and never brought up again, even though in our universe, he was a two-term president and with his military chops, he most certainly would have been at the apex of power in the alternate universe. The author was apparently too busy giving us yaw/pitch/roll coordinates every other chapter.

Some of the narrative moves the plot forward, and the two-book series ends with the heroine on Mars. And that's it. Lots of blissful ignorance once the author establishes that Earth is doomed; there is no way even in this alternate universe that tiny footholds on the moon and Mars are going to save humanity.

Instead, it's mostly a series about how wonderful it would have been if women had been allowed into NASA in the 50s. Kind of a vanity "what if" thought exercise committed to paper in a fiction form. You may find it mildly interesting.
Mary Robinette Kowal pulls off some amazing feats in this, the second half of The Lady Astronaut. For one thing, she's created an enormously sympathetic character who manages to unwittingly alienate most of her acquaintenances through simple and human mistakes. She has also created an alternate history in which, plausibly, humans have established a lunar colony and are launching an expedition to Mars--in 1961. Remarkably, she does this without any hand waving or magical new technology. The members of the Mars expedition are calculating maneuvers by hand!

As someone who lived through 1961 (well before Koval was born) I was constantly amazed at her attention to detail, whether it's in Elma York's kitchen, the painfully difficult math, or racial and social tension. It's all seamlessly woven into the story and never trips up the narrative. There were a couple of things that brought me up short, thinking "not in '61" but, yes, you could have a copy of Stranger in a Strange Land on board your ship to Mars.

As long-time SF readers, some of us may have become jaded by countless tales of interstellar empires, but The Fated Sky is a reminder that getting into space is hard and it's magical.