In 1953, a meteor impacts near Washington DC, annihilating much of the eastern seaboard and threatening the slow but inevitable extinction of life on Earth. Mary Robinette Kowal’s The Calculating Stars (and its follow-up, The Fated Sky) chronicles the subsequent acceleration of the space race through mathematician and pilot Elma York, who joins the nascent space program as a computer, performing the labyrinthine calculations required for orbital trajectories faster and more reliably than the limited technology of the time. Humanity must establish itself on other worlds, lest our planet become our grave.

In the shadow of apocalypse, Elma’s ambition is utopic. She believes that humanity can overcome the technological, mathematical and logistical complexities of space travel, through close collaboration of experts in every field, a global collaborative effort.

The Calculating Stars isn’t afraid of venerating expertise, but nor is it blind to the petty bigotry which stifles such efforts, nor Elma’s well-meaning naivete; when she realises she will never be satisfied merely watching other people go into space, her desire to become an astronaut leads her into conflict with the sexism (and sexists) standing in her way, and the racism and xenophobia her fellow pilots and computers face in every aspect of their lives.

Elma can’t solve the problems of 1950s America, but where The Calculating Stars succeeds is in imagining a world in which men and women of all races and nationalities can reach for greatness despite systemic inequality and their personal differences, without resorting to easy answers or magical thinking. When faced with a dire enough threat, and with enough people willing to work together for the greater good, maybe humankind can put aside our differences long enough to save our species.