The Fated Sky (Lady Astronaut Series #2)

by Mary Robinette Kowal, Mary Robinette Kowal (Read by)

Overview

Mary Robinette Kowal continues the grand sweep of alternate history begun in The Calculating Stars.The Fated Sky looks forward to 1961, when mankind is well established on the moon and looking forward to its next step: journeying to, and eventually colonizing, Mars. 

Of course the noted Lady Astronaut Elma York would like to go, but there's a lot riding on whoever the International Aerospace Coalition decides to send on this historic - but potentially very dangerous - mission. Could Elma really leave behind her husband and the chance to start a family to spend several years traveling to Mars? And with the civil rights movement taking hold all over Earth, will the astronaut pool ever be allowed to catch up, and will these brave men and women of all races be treated equitably when they get there? 

This gripping look at the real conflicts behind a fantastical space race will put a new spin on our visions of what might have been.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781721364435
Publisher:	Brilliance Audio
Publication date:	11/13/2018
Series:	Lady Astronaut Series , #2
Edition description:	Unabridged
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 6.75(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Mary Robinette Kowal is the author of the historical fantasy novels Ghost Talkers and the five books in The Glamourist Histories series. She is also a multiple Hugo Award winner. Her short fiction has appeared in Uncanny, Tor.com, and Asimov’s. Mary, a professional puppeteer, lives in Chicago with her husband Robert and over a dozen manual typewriters.

Editorial Reviews

★ 07/02/2018
Kowal continues her exquisite exploration of race and gender relations in an alternate 1961 that is still shockingly close to our own. The stunning second part of Kowal’s duology picks up 10 years after a meteor strikes Earth (depicted in The Calculating Stars) with series heroine Elma now serving as a pilot to the lunar colony. After she survives being taken hostage by a terrorist organization opposed to space travel, Elma is asked to join the first Mars mission, replacing a close friend and incurring the resentment of the existing crew. For Elma and her colleagues on both ships, contained in close quarters for three years far from family and friends, the journey is filled with tension, joy, terror, and sorrow, including the deaths of crew members and an anxious period when contact with Earth is cut off. The clever details of life in space—from baking challah in zero gravity to finding tricks for communicating privately, as well as the more horrifying practicalities of how to deal with illness and corpses—create an immersive world that will stay with the reader well past the final page. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for The Fated Sky

“An immersive world that will stay with the reader well past the final page.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review

“The Lady Astronaut series might be set in an alternate past, but they’re cutting-edge SF novels that speak volumes about the present.”—The Verge

“Tantalizing.”–Locus

“An alternative look at the midcentury space race led by an intelligent, well-meaning, but flawed heroine.”—Booklist

“From dangers on Earth from wild protestors, to the dangers of a three-year trip to Mars, the tale is an exciting, yet well-researched tale. Excellent.”—Philadelphia Weekly

“This is by no means just for Sci Fi lovers.”—Caroline Bookbinder

“This was a fabulous sequel.”—Marzie Reads

Praise for The Calculating Stars

“This is what NASA never had, a heroine with attitude.”—The Wall Street Journal

“In The Calculating Stars, Mary Robinette Kowal imagines an alternate history of spaceflight that reminds me of everything I loved about Hidden Figures.”—Cady Coleman, Astronaut

“Readers will thrill to the story of this “lady astronaut” and eagerly anticipate the promised sequels.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Kowal’s book was revelatory for me, because here is a version of history where men eventually, finally, listen to women.”—Tor.com

“A fine balance of integrating historical accuracy—including mid-twentieth-century sexism, racism, and technology—with speculative storytelling.”—Booklist

“Readers will be hooked.”—Library Journal

“An engrossing alternate history with a unique point of view, The Fated Sky dramatically demonstrates the technical problems with going to Mars—but the technical problems are the not the only ones. Never backing down from vital issues of race and gender, The Fated Sky confronts the human issues of space travel in a United States made increasingly desperate by a massive meteor strike. Plausible, convincing, and ultimately moving.”—Nancy Kress, author of the Hugo Award-winning "Yesterday's Kin"

From the Publisher

2018-05-29
A female physicist journeys further into space in Kowal's (The Calculating Stars, 2018, etc.) sequel, set in an alternate version of the 1960s.In 1961, Dr. Elma York is about to finish her three-month stint on the moon. In Kowal's last book, set a decade earlier, a meteor smashed into the East Coast, destroying many cities, including Washington, D.C. The U.S. government believed that this was the beginning of the end for our planet, so an international effort to colonize space began with pilot and physicist Elma at the forefront. Now, having reached the moon, the space program sets its sights on Mars. Elma desperately wants to go there, but the round trip will take three years, taking her away from her infallibly supportive husband, Nathaniel, and any possibility of starting a family. The story is loaded with historically accurate science, and while Kowal is striving toward hard sci-fi, the analytical readers that this genre attracts are likely to have questions. For example, would an international coalition really need South Africa's support so desperately they would agree to include a virulent racist on a racially integrated mission? Why is there not even a single mention of the Soviet Union or its cosmonauts? And the biggest question: Are we supposed to like Elma York? She's irritatingly quirky, repeatedly using rocket metaphors as euphemisms for sex ("I slid my hand down to his trousers to see if launch conditions had been met"). She's also morally reprehensible in one key scene. FBI agents ask her about two of her colleagues, and she realizes that they're doing so because those fellow astronauts are black. She's about to do the right thing and walk out—but when the feds threaten her program's funding, she sits right back down and tells them everything they want to know. Later, when Elma is finally castigated for her racial cluelessness by an astronaut of color ("For the love of God, stop talking….I cannot take the protestations of a well-meaning white woman"), readers will find themselves nodding in agreement.The worst tendencies of white feminism—in space.

Kirkus Reviews