Reviews with content warning for Panic attacks/disorders - The Calculating Stars

Alternate history can do many things, and this is a light, hopeful story with a complex but positive hetero relationship that you rarely get to see with strong women, along with some discussion of anxiety, prescriptions, and racism. It was clearly written by and for white women in a way that I found somewhat boring, but the sarcastic tone and fierceness of some of the ladies kept me reading.

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internationalreads's review against another edition

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adventurous informative inspiring fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated

4.0

Immensely readable but some issues with characters. Can’t wait to discuss at book club.

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angelbabe_cj's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional inspiring tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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jlye's review against another edition

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adventurous lighthearted medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

I really wanted to like this book and had high expectations based on the plot summary. Unfortunately I found Elma to be annoying and hard to relate to. She is hyper aware of the discrimination she faces as a Jewish woman, yet seems superficially concerned with racial discrimination towards people of colour. While racial discrimination is referenced a few times throughout the book, it only ever seems to be something on the periphery of Elma’s mind. She believes women can go to space… but mostly she wants that woman to be her. Elma’s status and accomplishments seem less the result of her brilliance, and largely the result of her connections to prominent men, namely her husband and her “daddy”. The sex scenes were cheesy and having a grown women refer to her father as “daddy” made me cringe. I gave this book 2.5 stars because I appreciated the research required to achieve scientific accuracy, however this dedication is not enough to make me want to read other books in the series. I would recommend Hidden Figures over this.

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agent_friday's review against another edition

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adventurous funny inspiring medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

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iono's review against another edition

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adventurous hopeful inspiring fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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schnaucl's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging hopeful medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.75

I really enjoyed this novel.

I liked the characters and the world, though I think perhaps it wasn't cynical enough. (I think a lot of books written pre Covid that deal with apocalyptic conditions probably weren't cynical enough). But I think it did a good job of showing how insulated people in bubbles (of whatever kind) can be. If you're surrounded by people who understand the danger it's a shock to find out that people outside your world don't see or understand the same danger. (And really, that should have been a wake up call that the message maybe isn't getting as through the way it needs to. Assuming it can get through. There's no doubt part of the problem with communicating the looming economic crisis is the time frame. But here the time frame is condensed and you're still getting people who say global warming can't be a thing because we had snow).

I also wonder if there would be more despair if people really thought about what it would mean if the planet only had fifty years before it become uninhabitable for humans. And that's not even accounting for the devastation of the meteor and the disruption in the lives of the survivors to say nothing of fatigue from the second world war and the abruptly ended Korean War.

I also think if nearly the entire US government got wiped out there would be a stronger sense of hopelessness and despair. And these days, violence in the streets. Here there's no move to consolidate political power on a national scale, no suggestion the military should take over the government, there are refugees but they're swiftly dealt with outside of the occasional mention. There's mention of a food riot but otherwise people just seem to accept that sacrifices need to be made. There's no real mention of how the refugees get back on their feet. The main characters lost everything including their financial assets when the meteor hit and aside from the first few days after the impact that's all glossed over with a time jump. Was there some kind of allotment made? Not to mention the huge part of the country that's just gone. What about the goods and services they produced? The more I think about it, the more weirdly hopeful it is. And maybe that's because the time jump skipped some of the early problems that would need to be solved and some of it will turn up as things on earth get increasingly dire.

So far there's been no suggestion at all that the people in charge would even think about using the opportunity to keep those they deem unworthy or undesirable from escaping an uninhabitable earth. Why is no one worried about this? Given that they didn't bother to evacuate Black people for weeks after the meteorite hit, why is no one concerned that they wouldn't get around to evacuating Black people from the planet until it's too late? There hasn't even really been a discussion about how many people might be evacuated. It's true the technology to do it doesn't exist yet, but it seems like that should be a discussion the space program is part of even if they aren't directly responsible for it.

Hershel talks about his daughter Rachel not remembering the stars, but there's no discussion of the fact that if the earth is uninhabitable within the next fifty years if Rachel has children they may not survive. What does that do to a kid growing up? Or her parents? It's hard to tell how much of this is supposed to be common knowledge and whether people have really thought about the ramifications.

I would assume there would be an increase in religion (not unlike Elma's own turn to observing the Sabbath. Surely there would be people all too eager to claim the US government was wiped out due to their sins (whatever those might be).

For a world with this much cataclysmic change that's already happened and that will happen in the future it's very calm and peaceful. Yeah, there was a bomb attempt, but only one and it came as a surprise.

I do like how race is handled. Elma genuinely means well and tries to help but I think her continual not noticing at first when Black people are left out or not considered is pretty realistic. I also like that some of the same civil rights struggles are clearly happening even though conditions are drastically different. Though here, too, it's more peaceful than the actual struggles (or at least, there's been no mention of state violence against civil rights protestors. But it's also earlier).

I also think it's interesting that in the alternate space histories I've read or watched recently there's a suggestion that we need something to push America to keep going in space. In For All Mankind it's the Russians reaching the moon first, here it's the threat of the end of humanity. In the absence of some external motivation the general public just kind of lost interest.

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