Reading: The Fated Sky (143/365)
May. 23rd, 2021 06:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
white_hartThe Fated Sky is the second of Mary Robinette Kowal's "Lady Astronaut" novels, set in the same universe as her novelette The Lady Astronaut of Mars and following The Calculating Stars. Picking up a couple of years after the end of The Calculating Stars, this tells the story of the first mission to Mars in an alternative 1960s fraught with the same social problems as our 1960s, as well as the long-term repercussions of a devastating meteor strike which wiped out the east coast of the USA ten years earlier and triggered the runaway global warming which is projected to make the Earth uninhabitable, necessitating the acceleration of the space programme in order to find a new home for humanity.
Elma York, the "Lady Astronaut" of the first novel, isn't initially part of the Mars project, but as protests against spending on the space programme when the USA is still reeling from the physical and economic impacts of the Meteor grow, and the government threatens to cut funding, she is reassigned in the hope that her popularity will raise popular support for the mission. However, Elma faces animosity from her colleagues, as well as a steep learning curve to prepare; and once the mission is launched, the journey to Mars is far from straightforward.
Where the first book focused largely on women's struggle to be included in the space programme, this one is much more concerned with racism. Elma is a white Jewish woman, and a lot of the plot revolves around her learning to see the microaggressions her colleagues of colour face, and not to just try to use her considerable privilege and influence to fix them. This is (as far as I, a white person, can tell) handled with care and sensitivity, and much of it is just as relevant to modern white readers as it is to Elma in the novel. Meanwhile, the main plot kept me turning the pages, especially once Elma and her colleagues are on the way to Mars. I really enjoyed this, and am also looking forward to reading the third book in the series, which covers the events on Earth during the Mars mission, which are hinted in this book but not gone into in detail.
Elma York, the "Lady Astronaut" of the first novel, isn't initially part of the Mars project, but as protests against spending on the space programme when the USA is still reeling from the physical and economic impacts of the Meteor grow, and the government threatens to cut funding, she is reassigned in the hope that her popularity will raise popular support for the mission. However, Elma faces animosity from her colleagues, as well as a steep learning curve to prepare; and once the mission is launched, the journey to Mars is far from straightforward.
Where the first book focused largely on women's struggle to be included in the space programme, this one is much more concerned with racism. Elma is a white Jewish woman, and a lot of the plot revolves around her learning to see the microaggressions her colleagues of colour face, and not to just try to use her considerable privilege and influence to fix them. This is (as far as I, a white person, can tell) handled with care and sensitivity, and much of it is just as relevant to modern white readers as it is to Elma in the novel. Meanwhile, the main plot kept me turning the pages, especially once Elma and her colleagues are on the way to Mars. I really enjoyed this, and am also looking forward to reading the third book in the series, which covers the events on Earth during the Mars mission, which are hinted in this book but not gone into in detail.
