“The Calculating Stars” by Mary Robinette Kowal, 2018 What if a meteorite—the size of the one that brought about the extinction of the dinosaurs—struck the Earth in 1952? Kowal answers that with an accelerated space race, in which the world unites to build a colony on Mars. First, they must put a man into space. But what about the first woman in space? And, keeping in mind that this is the 1950s, will the government include anyone of color? Those themes are the foci of this e