#94 in Science fiction
The Calculating Stars
- 432
- Pages
- about 8 h
- Reading time
- Hugo Award for Best Novel
- Nebula Award for Best Novel
- Sidewise Award for Alternate History
- Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel
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Our view
“The Calculating Stars” reads like the memoir of a woman fighting her way into the astronaut corps of an alternate 1950s. After a meteorite strike, its mathematician-pilot heroine faces the sexism and racism of the era, and her anxiety is written with unusual care; the mathematics is dosed so that everything feels authentic. Some readers wish the wider world, its politics and the other nations in the programme, had been followed as closely.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
The Calculating Stars is a science fiction novel by American writer Mary Robinette Kowal. The book was published by Tor Books on July 3, 2018. It is the first book in the Lady Astronaut series and is a prequel to the 2012 short story "The Lady Astronaut of Mars".
Reading order · Lady Astronaut
Full order & progress →- The Calculating StarsThis book
8.28.2 / 10 - The Fated Sky
8.38.3 / 10 - The Relentless Moon
–Not ranked yet
Where the score comes from
The sources average 8.1 across 460 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 76% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Science fiction average of 7.8. That is how 8.2 comes out. A further +0.20 comes from the small bonus for major awards.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 7.6 | 9 | 2% |
| Hardcover | 8.1 | 451 | 98% |
Frequently asked
How long is The Calculating Stars?
It has 432 pages — shorter than 54% of the ranked books in Science fiction.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Science fiction — with scores between 8.2 and 8.3, closest to this book.
