The Calculating Stars - December CC Book Club Selection

[bookworm]

It was like reading 2 separate books. The first was the cabin and the explosion. The second was women striving to be included as astronauts

[SouthJerseyChessMom]

^ agree. The beginning hooked me, but sorry to say I gave upnwhen the story took the turn into the astronaut plot.
The author was just too “ernest” in her many, many “agendas”.

[ignatius]

I expected to really like this book. I didn’t. @Marilyn says it well:

@Marilyn

I did think there were too many themes and the story seemed to dash off in a variety of directions then come back to the main plot. Some of those directions were interesting but too thin - I wanted to know more but the book just left them hanging. Between dystopian meteorite perhaps destroying humanity, the origin of space flight, the role of women in space flight development, WWII flying, the Holocaust, fashion, keeping kosher and Sabbath, anxiety disorders, sexism, racism, anti-Semitism…they didn’t really tie together well.

I felt as though Kowal didn’t quite know what she wanted to focus on - like she couldn’t choose, so just threw everything but the kitchen sink into the mix. It ended up being one of those books where I feel out of sync with reviewers/other readers. (Just how did it get those awards, etc?)

[Caraid]

I loved how the story started with the meteorite strike and Elma and Nathaniel’s trip out of the Poconos. I quickly told my husband he would probably want to read it. Then the story changed and I told him not to bother. Still, I enjoyed the story enough to read the sequel. The characters interested me and I wanted to learn what happened to them.

[Mary13]

7. Nathaniel and Elma don’t have children, although the there is a suggestion that they may want them at some future date. Several other of the potential “lady astronauts” do have children. In fact, one cannot continue in the training program because she’s pregnant. What are the ethics involved in bringing children into a world that is set to self-destruct? Would you choose to have children in the circumstances? Why or why not?

I wouldn’t want to bring children into a world that was set to self-destruct, but I’m not sure too many of the survivors believed that the meteorite was an extinction event. My sense is that the “climate denier” that Elma and Nathaniel ran into was fairly typical: “A couple years of bad weather and they’re telling us we have to go into space?” (p. 220)

Frankly, after reading The Lady Astronaut of Mars, I’m not sure I believe it either. In that story, the much older Elma mentions that Nathaniel’s “previous doctor had retired back to Earth.” Why would he do that if Earth was uninhabitable? Also, Elma and Nathaniel’s decision to not have children revolves around her career, with no mention of the ethics involved due to a dying Earth.

Really though, from everything I’ve read online, it seems like the Earth would be an absolute mess, with a quick domino effect of deterioration, if hit by a meteorite of the size in The Calculating Stars. Yet for the characters in the book, it’s pretty much business as usual, with total world collapse more of a concept than a lived experience.

Here’s a 2017 meteor from my neck of the woods – 'twas just a blip (in fact, I don’t even remember it), but it released energy that was equal to 10 tons of TNT: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/07/science/meteorite-fireball-lisle-lake-michigan.html

[Mary13]

Also, no worries folks, NASA is on top of things: https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/why-nasa-just-destroyed-simulated-new-york-city-huge-fake-ncna1002476

[SouthJerseyChessMom]

^ this is reassuring

Are there any asteroids that currently pose a threat to Earth?

There are no asteroids that we know of right now that have a very high chance of hitting Earth in the next 100 years. However, there are many asteroids we have simply not yet tracked, so we can’t say anything yet about those.

What would happen if we discovered a big asteroid on a collision course with our planet?

If an asteroid is approaching Earth, we will find it many, many years before it hits. So we have time to deploy a mission like the AIDA mission to run into it with small spacecraft. We should have time to do that years before it hits.

https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/stopping-armageddon-former-astronaut-mission-save-earth-deadly-asteroids-ncna889956

This is the real Armageddon !,

• no worries about asteroids this is the calamity we face,

We are confronted with a global climate crisis and the point of no return is no longer over the horizon, it is in sight and hurtling towards us," said United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on the eve of the two-week COP25 global climate summit in Madrid.

https://www.dw.com/en/un-chief-climate-change-near-point-of-no-return/a-51491766

[mathmom]

FWIW, the second book does explain why the extinction event did not happen. There’s also a story that explains why the asteroid wasn’t seen in time.

I think humans tend to be optimistic and would by and large continue to have children. I really don’t know if I would. I think I might.

I’m interested that people liked the first scene, but not the meat of the story!

[Mary13]

@mathmom

I’m interested that people liked the first scene, but not the meat of the story!

Me, too. And since I’m one of those people, I went looking for reviewers who might be able to better express how I felt. These three excerpts are from excellent reviews of the book–that is, the writers really loved the novel–but their minor complaints resonated with me:

There’s a bit of a bait-and-switch about 20 percent of the way through the novel, when there’s a four year time jump, and the conflict switches from “imminent survival” to “the political challenges of getting people to space…" One Giant Leap: The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal - Reactor

My major critique is that the beginning of the book is enthralling, capturing my imagination so much that I could not put it down. But as the characters and the country began to deal with the aftermath and work towards a space program, it lost some of its urgency and momentum. It did not become uninteresting—it is a still a good read—but seemed to slow down through to the end. This may be partially due to the fact that it is the first in a series. https://markusmcdowell.com/2019/10/10/review-calculating-stars/

Sometimes, however, the story feels too much like a performance that ticks all of the boxes it needs to in order to advance the plot, without putting any emotion behind the action. The Calculating Stars occasionally feels like a preflight checklist, where we have to make sure we know about, say, Elma’s experience learning about the structure of racism and bias, just so the theme is adequately explored. It can feel manipulative rather than organically motivated. Adrienne Martini reviews The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal – Locus Online

[silverlady]

I was really, really disappointed with this book. I was hoping for so much more. The book fell flat on several accounts.

We never got a sense of just how big the meteor was. I do understand why it wasn’t seen in time. It totally destroyed DC, but where the aunt was made it through. Wouldn’t Elma even have tried to find out about the rest of her family?

I think that the author tried to be too Politically Correct. Just trying to tick off all of the problems of the times with one book was annoying. Well, Elma and the other women were annoying with all of the whining about not being picked to be an astronaut. I wanted to just slap them silly.

I was very annoyed about her not mentioning her medication. What happens if she needs it in space and she doesn’t have it? (My husband was a Navy Pilot, so I know about flying and medications.)

I think one of the big problems with the book was that it was a prequel of an already written book. The author had to tap dance around too much to make everything fit.

While it isn’t the worst book that I have ever read, it was one of the worst I have read since joining this book club. I don’t really care about any of the characters, and I certainly will not read the sequel.

[Mary13]

Well, our opinions certainly run the gamut, so that keeps things interesting. Some of my favorite books in this club were greatly disliked by other members (waving to NJTheatreMOM in heaven)…I really enjoying reading all the different perspectives.

@silverlady

Wouldn’t Elma even have tried to find out about the rest of her family?

I thought this was a terrible omission on Elma’s part, especially as a Jewish woman who had lived through the Holocaust. It seems to me that seeking out surviving family members–no matter how slim the chances–would have taken priority over everything else. I know that the novel is set pre cell phone and internet, but still, she could–and should–have made an effort. I think I was more upset than she was that she’d missed those years with her Grandma.

And as long as I’m ripping on Elma, my other beef with her was that she apologized too much. I read the book on my kindle and started underlining every “I’m sorry” that she uttered. I began to wonder if this was deliberate on Kowal’s part, some sort of sociological statement ala: https://www.livescience.com/8698-study-reveals-women-apologize.html

[Mary13]

@mathmom

FWIW, the second book does explain why the extinction event did not happen.

Ah, thanks.

Sort of related to that…Do you think if we were facing an extinction event, that we would be able to colonize Mars in 30 years, as was done in this series? 30 years seems optimistic, but I really have no idea how long such a project would actually take.

[stradmom]

Just read the short story and…speechless. So much more powerful than the books, and yet the books align with it perfectly.

[Mary13]

@stradmom, I handed my college daughter the story to read this weekend. She was looking for something not-too-long and not-too-short to read in a bubble bath, and that filled the bill :). She really liked it. She’s a sci-fi fan, but felt it was much more of a universal human story than a sci-fi one – a reflection on the loss of youth and the tough choices that we all face at some point in our lives.

[ignatius]

@silverlady

While it isn’t the worst book that I have ever read, it was one of the worst I have read since joining this book club.

Umm, The Glass Room or Reading Lolita in Tehran?

I had trouble with the characters - neither Elma nor Nathaniel came across as real to me. (Really had trouble with the sex scenes between the two - just no. I actually felt embarrassed for the author.) But I never could remember the who’s who with most of the other characters: Eugene and Myrtle start the book and appear at the finish but I couldn’t recall who they were. Helen, Ida, and so on lost their identities, though Betty (female antagonist) and Parker (male antagonist) stuck.

Actually The Calculating Stars reminds me of Reading Lolita in Tehran in that neither of them were as expected re - as @mathmom put it - “the meat of the story”.

[silverlady]

I missed those two books. Maybe I was lucky.

[Mary13]

@ignatius

I had trouble with the characters - neither Elma nor Nathaniel came across as real to me. (Really had trouble with the sex scenes between the two - just no. I actually felt embarrassed for the author.) But I never could remember the who’s who with most of the other characters…

I think the characters blended together because they weren’t complex or distinctive enough. Again, I believe that is a result of trying to fit too much into one novel. From Kirkus Reviews:

She advocates for feminism and for women of color with admirable…admirableness, but Elma never really addresses her own privilege. (Nathaniel is even more exemplary—understanding, supportive, hot, and perfectly progressive.) With the exception of a misogynist antagonist, the supporting cast is never too deeply developed—a shame, given their supposed diversity. THE CALCULATING STARS | Kirkus Reviews

As for the sex scenes, I agree with @ignatius – too much cheesy rocket launching. However, I am grateful beyond words that the scenes weren’t graphic. Sex scenes in books alway come off as awkward to me…less is more, baby.

Re Nathaniel’s perfection, I’m going to give the author a pass on that one. It was nice–a relief, in a way–to know that Elma had solid, loving support and I wasn’t going to turn the next page to find her husband berating her for her choices or cheating on her in some sort of “Mad Men” scenario. Also, I have to say that my own parents, who married in 1953, were very much equals. I think one of the things that attracted my dad to my mom was her independence and her commitment to her career long after her peers were married. So I’m just saying…it’s not common for the 1950’s, but it’s possible.

[mathmom]

It was difficult for my mother to have a career since my father was a diplomat, but she did a lot of teaching - both ESL and in international schools where her lack of official credentials was not a problem. When I was 12 she finally got her teaching degree. And at least when she started women married to Foreign Service officers were very much expected to be hosting dinner parties and being otherwise supportive of their husband’s careers. I watched the first episode of Mad Men recently and thought about this book. For all the issues in how women are still treated, it really has gotten better.

I did think it was interesting how Elma was able to figure out how to sell the necessity of involving women in the project from an early stage.

[Mary13]

@mathmom

I did think it was interesting how Elma was able to figure out how to sell the necessity of involving women in the project from an early stage.

Hurray for our ability to withstand higher G-forces (and procreate)!

[Marilyn]

Women having a career seemed normal to me. My aunt was a mathematician with the military during WWII (my mom didn’t know what she did). And my mom went to graduate school when I was little, got a doctorate in statistics in 1960, then taught at the university. And kept a kosher house.