Mary Robinette Kowal – Elma York

I decided to read The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal because I’ve been listening to her podcast for years and thought I would give it a try. 

I’m not a fan of alternative histories, because I like history. History is already full of interesting twists and turns and there’s enough of it for a lifetime’s exploration rather than imagining what could have been, in my opinion, anyway. Alternative history is a big section of the fantasy/science-fiction market so it obviously has an audience and people always enjoy asking “What if?”  

I was so surprised how much I enjoyed this book! Elma York, the main character, hooked me with her strong contributions to the space program and her desire to travel into space.  

In this alternate history, a meteor slams into Earth and brings about climate change on such a scale that humans have to seek out another planet. Yet, this is the 1950’s so they must speed up the space race. 

Elma is smart, very smart, so smart that she does calculations in her head faster than anyone can do with calculators. She works at NASA as a computer, since computers don’t exist yet,and supports those who are working to get rockets and men into space to colonize Mars. 

Notice I wrote men. I should have also written white men. This is the 1950’s so even though Emma flew in World War II (this still took place in this alternative history), she is not considered a suitable candidate to be an astronaut because she is a woman. 

Elma handles the judgement by pushing back against it, time and time again, applying for and demanding her place amongst the men who are going up. 

Fighting for something that should be merit based and isn’t, is exhausting. It shouldn’t be happening and Elma asks why it happens when she sees black men being excluded from the space program because of their skin colour, and when her and her colleagues are excluded or worse, paraded around as astronauts only if they show enough skin and do their make up to be a part of the game. 

In our own times, these are questions that should have been left in the 1950’s but they remain with us still.

Someone shrieked. That was me. I had jumped and thrown my hands into the air like I was some sort of gymnast…They were staring at me, and I didn’t care.

“They’re taking women astronauts!”

Those lines can very nearly be written for today. Thankfully, we have had and hopefully will continue to have women astronauts like Roberta Bondar, Christina Koch and Stephanie Wilson.

 Elma gives us an opportunity to re-examine whether or not our society is actually merit-based and if it isn’t, how can we make it merit-based. This is a complicated problem that requires us to ensure all have the potential to get the skills to participate in a merit-based society but if Elma and her fellow humans can get off the planet, then why can’t we demand that equality?

Lucas K. Law and Derwin Mak – Where the Stars Rise

At When Words Collide 2017, I heard about this book but I didn’t have much interest in buying it. However the thought of it must have percolated in my memories over the next year because at When Words Collide 2018, I bought it. The gorgeous cover, by Samantha Beiko, helped.

I’m so glad I did. The fantasy and science fiction in this book is good, really good. I feel for the characters in these stories and the imagery, one story after another,  was fresh and exciting (for me, anyway).

With so many characters to choose from, it was hard to pick only one. However,  the character’s voice that echoed the most for me was Paris Azarcon from Karin Lowachee’s story Meridian.

Being abandoned has a profound effect on us. We lose trust, our sense of security and love. Through no fault of their own, Paris Azarcon’s family abandons him when they are killed by raiders. He fights, literally and figuratively, through that loss, rejecting those around him before they can abandon him, until he finds himself in a place where they won’t let him reject them.

Once he regains this sense of family, security and belonging, he finds a measure of peace, until news comes that disrupts that peace.

He then has a choice; seek out the answer in that news and potentially invite abandonment or stay with the status quo.

I wonder how much influence our past hurts have on our present day decision making. That must be why young people are more willing to take risks. They’ve had less bad experiences to measure the risk against.

As a young man, Paris has the opportunity to take a risk or preserve the status quo. I cheered him on so read his story to find out what he did.

Al Onia – Victor Stromboli

How does a person who cannot forget anything associated with strong emotion move on? Maybe they don’t. At least, Victor Stromboli of Transient City has not when we meet him. He is a witness in a roving mining city, living alone in a temporary tent city, with few friends and no family. Because of his memory, he is able to, with a shock, reconstruct a crime just by being at the crime scene using the sights, sounds, and smells.

When a case comes along with a personal connection, he starts working it, with the possibility of moving up to a detective. The personal connection is a woman named Kathy Whittaker he was in love with when he was twelve years old. Her family moved to another city and she forgets him, but he never forgets her.

His memory from years ago is now a living entity in front of him and his adolescent feelings propel him to solve her husband’s disappearance. There is a problem with all of this though. Much has happened to both of them in the intervening years and she is no longer the girl he remembers. As Shoes, one of Victor’s only friends, says to him, “…You’ll find what you’re looking for. Make sure you look in the right place.”

If a person could not forget anything that ever happened in their life, how hard would it be for them to move on? Victor is a man stuck in time and the world around him is changing without him noticing. This has left him isolated and alone.

Throughout the book, Victor starts to seek out change by taking on new responsibilities and seeing the people around him for who they are.

If you stare hard enough and long enough at the past, you will stay there. Victor could choose to live exclusively in the past but finds a way to see the present. Al Onia’s biography says “His stories celebrate the potential hero in each of us.” In a world as busy as ours, being able to see what is in front of us is a hero’s skill.

Rogue Town is the next one from Al Onia and I can’t wait to read it.