The Fated Sky is the second full novel in Kowal’s Lady Astronaut series (there are also a couple of shorts; one set before the first book and one after it). A small colony of mainly scientists and engineers has now been established on the moon and with the runaway climate, following the meteorite impact of the first book, getting steadily worse the space agency, on this alternate history sixties Earth, is now aiming for Mars. The goal being to spread humanity’s eggs around more baskets to avoid possible extinction.
This is really quite a remarkable series of very well researched hard science fiction, which is, admittedly, a slightly odd description of books set in the past! However, it is a very valid one; Kowal shows with great but not overwhelming detail how everything would have been possible with the technology available at that time and with the motivation of experiencing a devastating meteorite impact in the fifties. There is plenty of credible science and engineering detail giving a strong sense of plausibility which supports the story without taking over. This is generally handled very deftly and there is even a bibliography at the end of the book for anyone who wants to see what all that detail is founded upon.
Slightly less deft, in my view, is some of the characterisation. There is no getting away from the strong anti-discriminatory message running throughout these books, both of gender and race, and, for me at least, I sometimes found this a little heavy handed. Maybe that is a very realistic picture of the times, but would it have really played out quite so in-your-face on two spaceships with small crews crammed together for three years? I feel that the members of such crews would have been carefully picked to ensure their professionalism and compatibility which would have precluded that sort of friction and, regardless of the political and economic considerations, I simply don’t believe a South African with such deep levels of racism as Kowal presents the reader with would ever have been allowed on the expedition. Maybe I’m wrong about this but it just felt implausible to me, although it does, of course, provide for plenty of drama.
One other implausibility that grated with me was the depiction of the women on the crew. Yes, this was an era when the woman’s place was definitely considered to be in the kitchen, particularly within the sort of social class these women came from. But some women rise, or fight their way, above that, which is fair enough, but having done so would those women also maintain their fascination with crinoline, lipstick and fingernails one minute and battling the misogynists the next? This I struggled with; sure, it also makes for some great narrative drama, but it just didn’t feel as real as the science and engineering; it felt overplayed to me. Again, I may be wrong about this, I was after all only five years old at the time this book is set! And my mother, who has also read these books, does not feel quite as strongly as me about this aspect!
Despite these misgivings, Kowal has written a solid, engaging and generally believable piece of hard science fiction. And a very unusual one at that. I’m not normally a lover of alternate history but she has absolutely made it work for me in these books. I’m looking forward to the next one!
4/5 stars.
This is really quite a remarkable series of very well researched hard science fiction, which is, admittedly, a slightly odd description of books set in the past! However, it is a very valid one; Kowal shows with great but not overwhelming detail how everything would have been possible with the technology available at that time and with the motivation of experiencing a devastating meteorite impact in the fifties. There is plenty of credible science and engineering detail giving a strong sense of plausibility which supports the story without taking over. This is generally handled very deftly and there is even a bibliography at the end of the book for anyone who wants to see what all that detail is founded upon.
Slightly less deft, in my view, is some of the characterisation. There is no getting away from the strong anti-discriminatory message running throughout these books, both of gender and race, and, for me at least, I sometimes found this a little heavy handed. Maybe that is a very realistic picture of the times, but would it have really played out quite so in-your-face on two spaceships with small crews crammed together for three years? I feel that the members of such crews would have been carefully picked to ensure their professionalism and compatibility which would have precluded that sort of friction and, regardless of the political and economic considerations, I simply don’t believe a South African with such deep levels of racism as Kowal presents the reader with would ever have been allowed on the expedition. Maybe I’m wrong about this but it just felt implausible to me, although it does, of course, provide for plenty of drama.
One other implausibility that grated with me was the depiction of the women on the crew. Yes, this was an era when the woman’s place was definitely considered to be in the kitchen, particularly within the sort of social class these women came from. But some women rise, or fight their way, above that, which is fair enough, but having done so would those women also maintain their fascination with crinoline, lipstick and fingernails one minute and battling the misogynists the next? This I struggled with; sure, it also makes for some great narrative drama, but it just didn’t feel as real as the science and engineering; it felt overplayed to me. Again, I may be wrong about this, I was after all only five years old at the time this book is set! And my mother, who has also read these books, does not feel quite as strongly as me about this aspect!
Despite these misgivings, Kowal has written a solid, engaging and generally believable piece of hard science fiction. And a very unusual one at that. I’m not normally a lover of alternate history but she has absolutely made it work for me in these books. I’m looking forward to the next one!
4/5 stars.
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