The Calculating Stars

Did You Know?

• The Calculating Stars won the 2018 Sidewise Award for Alternate History.
• Publishers Weekly considered the novel 'outstanding,' with Elma's personal life providing 'a captivating human center to the apocalyptic background.'
• James Nicoll praised Kowal for being willing to include historically accurate racial and gender issues.

Plot

On March 3, 1952, a meteorite strikes the East Coast of the United States, killing most US government officials including President Thomas Dewey; Secretary of Agriculture Charles F. Brannan becomes president. Elma York, a mathematician and former WASP pilot, and her husband Nathaniel, a scientist who worked on the Manhattan Project and later NACA, survive the catastrophe, though many of Elma's family are killed by the meteor and resulting tsunamis.

Elma calculates that climate change from the disaster will make Earth uninhabitable within decades, with a miniature Ice Age followed by a sharp temperature increase due to the greenhouse effect, ending in boiling oceans and extinction. Elma and Nathaniel present the issue to President Brannan, leading the UN and USA to begin a space colony program; the UN forms the International Aerospace Coalition (IAC), and Nathaniel becomes its lead engineer.

Elma applies to the space program but no women are selected, so she begins working as a computer. She organizes an air show for female pilots and appears on a science television program to drum up public support for allowing women into the space program, inspiring many young women as the 'Lady Astronaut.' She is opposed by astronaut Stetson Parker and Director Norman Clemons, who believe women do not belong in space. After a rocket crash threatens funding, Elma testifies before Congress, confronting her anxiety disorder and beginning treatment.

The IAC eventually accepts applications for women astronauts; Elma is allowed to apply, but almost all candidates of color are rejected. In 1957, Elma is accepted as one of the first female astronauts, lying about taking Miltown for her anxiety to pass the physical exam. Parker and Elma form an uneasy truce; he threatens to reveal her use of Miltown if she does not help him hide a leg injury. Parker eventually has surgery, grounding him, and Elma is assigned to replace him on the lunar mission. Parker attempts to have her grounded but fails, and the novel ends as Elma launches into space.