The Calculating Stars

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book is filled with the power of other people’s brains. Let me tell you about some of them.

Very early on, Brandon Sanderson talked me through plot problems when I realized that I had not one book, but two. Stetson Parker’s existence is directly his fault.

Liz Gorinsky, my editor, and Jennifer Jackson, my agent, both rolled with it when I came to them and said, “Um … two books?”

Many thanks to Diana Rowland. She and I were both on tight deadlines and she’s an amazing cheerleader.

My father-in-law, Glenn Kowal, was a Vietnam-era fighter pilot and also a test pilot during the Apollo days. Thanks to him for the spectacular bird strike details and the snow landing.

Derek “Wizard” Benkoski—yes, that Benkoski. In real life, he is an actual Air Force pilot and also knows his aviation history. He helped me with a lot of the pilot jargon, and by “helped” I mean actually wrote some of it. It’s like playing Mad Libs. I would have square brackets like, “[More pilot jargon here]” and he would turn them into, “Wright-Patterson Tower, this is Cessna Four One Six Baker at eight thousand five hundred, direct to the field.”

Speaking of Mad Libs, I had two actual astronauts filling in the blanks for me as well. Because, seriously, NASA jargon is … really jargony.

Kjell Lindgren, astronaut, flight surgeon, CAPCOM, and a willing beta reader. Not only did he supply lines like, “Today I ‘simmed’ terminal docking maneuvers and tried to fine-tune RHC inputs through an overly generous deadband.” He read the whole thing and saved me from having shuttle-era acronyms in an Apollo-era story. He also took me to Ellison Airfield and let me see the T-38s and let me try on some of his flight gear. I wound up rewriting stuff because of that visit and added a ton of sensory details.

Another astronaut, Cady Coleman, was also amazing about filling in my blanks. She saved me from ginormous errors during the spacewalk-gone-wrong scene, when the hatch wouldn’t shut. That scene got totally rewritten because of her input. Whew.

Stephen Granade, rocket scientist, was just amazing. He read the entire novel and supplied pretty much every calculation that Elma spews. I understand none of them.

Jessica Marquez supplied me with a ton of resources about human spaceflight and was a very smart beta reader.

Stacey Berg is another writer and also a medical researcher. Having her on the team was fantastic.

Sheyna Gifford, flight surgeon and virtual Martian, helped me with some of the medical stuff here, but you’ll really see her shine in the next book. All I’ll say about that is mwahahaha!

Andrew Chaikin—read his book A Man on the Moon—came in as a last-minute pinch hitter and helped me rework some of that shuttle-era stuff.

Chanie Beckman guided me on the Judaism aspects of Elma’s life, helped by David Wohlreich, who is from a Charleston family. More on that in the historical section.

Lucianne Walkowicz is an astronomer at Adler Planetarium and is the one who turned the disaster into a water strike, when she explained how very bad that would be. Without coffee with her, the runaway greenhouse effect would not be part of this novel. Many thanks to Vicky Hsu and Yung-Chiu Wang, who helped me with various Taiwanese expressions. I just have to trust that they haven’t snuck a dirty joke in. Yung-Chiu and I met at NASA social when we roomed together for a launch at the Kennedy Space Center. She was very patient about listening to me gush about sensory details.

My assistants, Beth Pratt and Alyshondra Meacham, kept me sane and my calendar clear so I could work on this.

Then there are my wonderful beta readers, with specific thanks to those who stuck it out to the end of the novel: Chanie Beckman, Hilary Brenum, Nicholas Conte, Peter Hentges, Amy Padgett, Julia Rios, Branson Roskelly, and Eva VonAllmen.

And of course, my family, but I need to call out two of them: My husband, Rob, is very good about letting me ramble about the story at random moments; and my brother, Stephen K. Harrison, who is a historian and helped me with the way the world altered after the Meteor.

Thank them for the stuff that is right in the book. Email me about the stuff that is wrong: anachronisms@maryrobinettekowal.com.

BUT before you do … read the Historical Note section, because there are some places where I know I cheated.