I was crying all morning before I filmed this but you almost cant tell
These books are so good though hello and welcome back to another episode of i haven’t been wearing this shirt for an entire week you’ve been wearing this shirt for an entire week today we’re talking about some books that i like it’s called the lady astronaut series by mary robinette cowell so the first book is called the calculating stars so it’s 1952 and a
Meteorite strikes the earth just off the coast of washington dc sending shockwaves around the world and sending a bunch of like steam and debris up into the atmosphere which effectively causes like all of the problems with climate change but on an extremely sped up timeline the book centers around elma york dr elma york who’s a mathematician and her husband who is
A rocket scientist and they’re actually like kind of the the whistleblowers they’re like the first people to realize that the meteorite is going to cause all these problems on a long-term scale so at first there’s going to be a mini ice age and then the world is going to start rapidly heating up we have to get off the planet and there is a coordinated effort by
A bunch of different countries to set up space colonies so the first book is about them sort of like building the space program from kind of the ground up emily york and the other women and their kind of fight to be included so most of the women in the like space program are kind of they’re like behind the scenes they’re mathematicians like elma york they’re not
You know going up into space the second book is called the faded sky and it is about elm york going to mars oh elma york she’s kind of known as like the lady astronaut she wasn’t actually the first woman in space but she was kind of like the the media face of women astronauts so she’s known as the lady astronaut so elma york and a bunch of other people from the
Moon colony are like returning to earth and their ship kind of crash lands not quite where it’s supposed to be this group of like three hunters find it and they break the door open and then they like take everyone inside hostage and they negotiate with the like rescue crew outside to basically let everyone else go and just keep elma york so she’s kind of stuck in
A hostage situation which kind of introduces you to like the earth first movement which is mentioned in the first book but it’s not as present so basically after the meteorite hit there’s been all of this effort and funding into the space program to get humanity off the planet but there hasn’t been a lot of funding for rebuilding so there are a lot of communities
Across you know not just the us but around the world that are still left without like power or without water and a lot of them feel like they’ve been abandoned feel like the space program is unnecessary especially because there’s that mini ice age support for the space program has been waning so in an attempt to like gain support for the space program they decide
To put alma york on the mars trip kind of last minute the other people on the mars trip are kind of upset because the person they’d been training with is now like off the trip they’re gonna go into space with somebody who doesn’t have as much training because there’s only a few months left until takeoff stetson parker who’s like the first man in space the first
Person in space is also like on the same ship as her and they have kind of a history not like a romantic history they just don’t like each other he’s like kind of an ass and they’ve worked together a lot in the past and they do not get along and so it’s very interesting to see how their relationship like kind of works when they’re trapped in a tin can on their
Way to mars for like three years now one of the best things about these books is the relationship between ellen york and her husband nathaniel which is just it’s so soft it’s so sweet like one thing that i was kind of a little bit worried about with reading these books set in like the 1950s and 60s was that i was gonna get a lot of that like um and men and women
Are different species but like the the the relationships and these stories are wonderful like elma york and her husband have like a very strong friendship with each other and also a romantic relationship the third book in the series which i don’t have because somebody else checked it out from the library it’s called the relentless moon and we get a point of view
Switch instead of alma york it’s from the perspective of nicole morgan who in the first two books is like one of elma’s friends she’s one of the other like lady astronauts they were both uh wasps women air force service pilots during world war ii except that nicole morgan was secretly a spy so she’s like publicly it’s known that she was a wasp but she was actually
Like a spy in in in europe during the war so she’s kind of like one of the first people on the moon colony her husband is a senator and she spends six months out of the year on earth with him and then six months out of the year living in the moon colony stuff keeps going wrong you know you’ve got that earth first movement that was set up in the other book and they
Think that somebody from earth first has like infiltrated the moon colony and is causing problems and nicole morgan is kind of tasked with figuring out what’s going on and it’s just so fun to read i accidentally read the third book first i read the relentless moon and i didn’t even look at the summary i just like picked it up off the shelf and i was like this looks
Cool the cover is very cool even though i had like the first two books basically completely spoiled for me there’s there’s one thing that comes up that’s just kind of offhandedly mentioned in in the relentless moon this is a spoiler but they just kind of mentioned like estevan terrazas is dead he’s kind of a side character in the relentless moon because he’s on
The mars trips nicole morgan knows him and they’ve like interacted and we kind of see him but for the most part he’s not even really in the book and then he’s just kind of mentioned that he’s dead but then you read the other book and honestly i honestly kind of like having it spoiled for me because i was like reading it and i was like at some point in this book
He’s gonna die nicole worgen is such a well-written character like elma york and nicole morgan on paper have a lot in common they were both involved in world war ii and they’re both like kind of women fighting for their place in the space program and they’re both they both have very sweet relationships with their husbands which i love in a book they they definitely
Read like they are very very different characters they also both have like kind of similar mental health problems elma york struggles with anxiety and nicole morgan struggles with anorexia and it’s just like really well done in a way where you really get a sense of like these characters and who they are as people and i uh please read these books honestly the world
Building is so detailed i figured i was gonna get to the back of the book and open it and see like mary robinette cowell was a retired scientist who used to work for nasa or something and then i got to the back of the book and it says that she’s a professional puppeteer which you know is extremely valid no shade one thing that i was pleasantly surprised by is that
The books don’t shy away from talking about like race and it’s not done in a way where it feels like super forced where the characters are just all good all the time in the first book alma york goes through quite a lot of like character development with her kind of realizing her own biases she’s not outwardly hateful towards black people but she definitely you know
Is a bit biased because it’s the 1950s and she kind of like grows through that over the course of the first two books and it’s not like in a sort of easy way where bad people are racist and good people are nice you get people who are you know very much like the space program should be all inclusive and we should have people of every race who you know will then
Turn around and go like do blackmail or something of course it is told through the perspective of two white women but i feel like that makes sense given that the author is a white woman anyway if you’re looking for some very like grounded realistic science fiction to read this book series is 100 for you it’s very good anyway i have been waiting for like a year and
A half to have somebody to talk to about these damn books so that’s the whole video it’s just me gushing about these damn books i hope you read them i hope you enjoy them if anyone has any good books to recommend to me especially like science fiction or fantasy because that’s kind of what i’m into right now um please recommend them to me please please subscribe to
My youtube channel please like this youtube video and please read the lady astronaut series by mary robinette cowell thank you have a good day another fun thing about these books is that i learned the difference between a meteor and a meteorite apparently a meteor burns up when it comes into contact with earth’s atmosphere but a meteorite will actually strike
Down on the surface kind of sounds like it should be the other way around and they addressed that in the books and i thought it was really interesting
Transcribed from video
Perhaps the best sci-fi series??? By Toy Owl