The Martian Contingency

4 stars, Metaphorosis reviews

Summary
Elma York has reached Mars - living on the surface itself with her husband Nathaniel and a crew of others as the deputy administrator to prepare the way for colonists (or is the term offensive?) still in orbit. But there's something the administrator and many others aren't telling her - something that happened on the mission that built the first dome - and it's important.

Review
I enjoyed the first book in this series, The Calculating Stars, but somehow managed to miss the next two books. I had no trouble picking up the thread in this one, though.

As before, this is largely a well designed, well-written hard-ish SF book. There's more jargon than hard engineering or calculation, but those would in any event have been beyond my skills, and this came across as very credible on the technical front. Also as with the last book, I found the emotional elements appealing, but a little too soft-focus for my taste; the narrator in particular is just too sweet and thoughtful. There are some very welcome suggestions toward the end that she's not quite as wonderful as she believes herself to be, but they're somewhat undercut by the fact that the external view of her is presented as something of a good thing.

This is an alternate history, so of course there are differences from our timeline, and wish-fulfillment is a legitimate part of SFF. It does feel, though, as if Kowal is trying too hard to fit modern values to a less progressive time period – to write about a less enlightened past without offending any modern readers. I'm an idealist, but overall it feels awkward and not very credible, perhaps because I was around in the time period in question, and the attitudes in question just didn't fit with my experience. I'd note that the progressive viewpoints decidedly did not extend to animals, who are cruelly sacrificed to human desires. True to the period, but animals are clearly not part of the alternate timeline's enlightened worldview.

The treatment of religious ritual feels equally heavy-handed – not one goes by without an explanation of its historical context and meaning. Maybe that's meant to be part of the narrator's culture, or maybe it's just Kowal demonstrating how well she's done her background research. Either way, it feels very ... educational rather than organic.

Overall, a well-written story with a welcome women's perspective for the time, but undermined by the awkward insertion of anachronistic modern values.

I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review.

It's been a while since I read the last book in this series. Apparently that one was set on the moon and featured Nicole instead of Elma and the book I loved the most.

This book returns to Elma and Mars. I'm not sure how much was the return to Elma and how much was just the plot not being as strong, but this one wasn't as good as the last.

Don't get me wrong I still enjoyed it, and would read another one if she writes one, but at points of the book Elma was getting on my nerves and the interactions with some of the other characters did as well.

Once again Mary Robinette Kowal does an excellent job narrating her own book. The audio is a great option for this series.

This is the fourth in the Lady Astronaut series by Mary Robinette Kowal which began in 2018 with The Calculating Stars. I have enjoyed reading each with its blend of technical details of how in 1952

a meteorite strikes the eastern seaboard of the United States. Climate change from the disaster will make the Earth uninhabitable within decades and so the world begins to embark on a plan to build habitats off earth.

The previous books have seen lunar landings, a moon platform, a Mars landing and now in the 1970s the first steps of establishing a habitat on Mars.

The satisfactions of these novels for me is seeing how the technological achievements may exceed our own but catching up on the social issues which our world has worked through with the sexism faced by our protagonist Elma York, mathematician and pilot with attitudes I wish we could believe were left in the eras covered by the books. The racism so heightened as major plot driver in the previous novel with its repercussions a major factor in this book. One of the crucial points in this novel is trying to support scientists, engineers, etc from a coalitions dispart nations all while 43 minutes from communication of earth.

I look forward to reading more about this future.