Book Log 2019 #39: The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal

A meteor hits the US right by Washington DC, demolishing the capital and leaving the country more or less without a government. This would be bad enough, but it's not long after the strike that scientists realize that the planet will eventually become uninhabitable. This leads to a worldwide effort to colonize space in an effort to save humanity, an effort that requires all hands. Including those of Elma York, a former WASP pilot and mathematician who just may become the first American woman astronaut.

There's a lot here that reminded me of Neal Stephenson's Seveneves, from the climate implications of an astronomical event to the role that women could play in saving humanity. In that book, though, the current day setting allowed for a much for technology-focused story than this one, which focuses much more on the people involved and on issues such as gender, race, mental health, and family. I'm assuming there's an impulse to attribute this difference to the genders of the writers, but I tend to think it's at least as much due to the timing and the nature of the emergency in this book. 

Anyway, I did enjoy this book and definitely recommend it, if only for the chapter about using a toilet in space (the research for which turned into a memorable Twitter thread).