Title "We Interrupt this Broadcast" Author Mary Robinette Kowal Cover Art --- Publisher Tor - 2013 First Printing Tor - 2013
	Title The Calculating Stars Author Mary Robinette Kowal Cover Art --- Publisher Tor - 2018 First Printing Tor - 2018
	Title The Fated Sky Author Mary Robinette Kowal Cover Art --- Publisher --- First Printing ---
	Category Science Fiction Warnings None Main Characters Elma & Nathaniel York Main Elements Alternate History Website ---

The Calculating Stars

I'll be honest, when I started reading the first book I had in mind that I'd rather be reading a book about real women in science, rather than some made up ones. Because you see, you can make up whatever kind of woman you want, have her get over hurdles and make great achievements, but they would all be fake, whatever to make the point you want to make. While a real woman had real things to deal with and if you wanted a role model for girls, better have them see what a real person was able to achieve rather than what a fictional one could (since fictional one could even discover magic and fly under her own power after all).

But I tried to go in with an open mind, and if nothing else, Kowal is a good writer, she pulled me into the story right away. The time period helped too, since here we don't have women starship captains and whatnot, we're just barely figuring out how to fire an unmanned rocket. And I loved the fact this book isn't about "women rule and men drool", Elma and her husband Nathaniel make an amazing pair, and he supports her. She doesn't want to be better than him, he doesn't want her to be stuck in a rut, this is what feminism and equality should be about. Treating each other as people, not going out there to prove someone is better than someone else. And this is a book that could inspire both men and women, so many stories about strong women cast the males in such bad light I don't blame boys from avoiding reading them...I mean isn't that what women have complained about so long? So here we have Nathaniel as a role model (so easily could this author have created a wife beating husband on top of all the other challenges), something male readers can aspire to rather than cringe at and feel resentful towards.

And this book is about a lot more than just the place of women in 1950's USA. Our main character is Jewish, remember this takes place about 10 years after WWII. Which makes for an interesting awkward moment when we put Elma and her husband into the house of a black couple, both sides make goofs in what they say about each other. Race relations are an issue as well, though our protagonist is white, she finds herself embarassed by her own ignorance. Oh, and don't leave out the stigma of mental illness. This book is covering a lot of ground!

And I'm a female engineer (no, I can't do math in my head, I'm more Nathaniel than Elma in that regard...nor have I ever used a slide rule!) so I have to think about all the women that went before me that created the path I followed, especially since I've never felt my gender ever matter either at school or at work. Sure, I was well aware I was in the minority in my class, but not a single guy suggested I might not belong there, and maybe I'm not the most feminine girl out there, after all I inherited my uncle's/brother's toy cars, Hardy Boy books and I loved playing with dinosaurs more than Barbies (my absolute favorite were My Little Ponies so I guess I was still a girl at heart LOL) but I've been pretty lucky to have been judged by my brain and not my boobs. I take this for granted, but I really shouldn't, there's still so much to do, for women, for race, for religion, for mental illness. The story would only be slightly different today, where descrimination is not longer officially sanctioned (in most places) by our society but of course, is still rampant, and in some ways because of that, maybe even harder to deal with. Just like we keep eating junk food and smoking when we know it's bad for us, we know descrimination is wrong but people still do it.

I must admit it's frustating to read a book where you just want to smack some sense into the characters, where even when presented with evidence and logic their blind bias wins over. Frankly this is why I avoid the news even today, way too much stupid out there for the sake of stupid (not saying the people are stupid per-se but rather that people seem to be clinging to ideas just because it supports something they want to support, without looking around for different opinions, just to feel that they belong to this or that group they must also blindly believe this or that concept/view of the world).

And I just saw today that it won the Nebula Award for best novel, I'm not surprised, it is good and I'll be following up with the rest of the series (and hunting down the short stories)

Talking of short stories, "We Interrupt this Broadcast"...I had read this a couple years ago in The Mad Scientist's Guide to World Domination anthology (it is also free online HERE) and as I was reading Calculating Stars I was like "you know, it kinds of reminds me of this story I read somewhere, that meteor impact, the punch cards, the alternate history thing..." well, turns out that wasn't a coincidence!