The Martian Contingency by Mary Robinette Kowal

I have been eagerly awaiting this book for years! I have loved Mary Robinette Kowal ever since I devoured the Calculating Stars. (Actually, I fell in love with her writing before that - she wrote a blog post on tor dot com before that book came out about her visit to NASA’s Neutral Buoyancy Lab that was just amazing and has stuck with me for years.) I loved the Fated Sky even more than the Calculating Stars, and I was a little frustrated when the book ended when they reached Mars and we didn’t get anything of the trip home. I loved the Relentless Moon and I was so excited to get an eARC from Tor and NetGalley of this newest book in the Lady Astronaut series.

I really enjoy this world Kowal has created and her world building skills and this book did NOT disappoint. It was everything I was hoping for! It advanced Elma’s story and the story of the settlement of Mars, inching closer to the future seen in the story that started it all. Her descriptions of the habitat and spacewalks and Mars walks make it all feel so real!

However, the character of Elma sometimes grates a little. She’s not nearly as irritating as Tesla Crane from the Spare Man, but she’s blinded by privilege and little too often. Also, while I appreciate the author making Elma and her husband Jewish, the author is not Jewish herself and some of her characterization felt off to me. Kowal seems to have missed the fact that Jews do not remove mezzuzahs when they move but instead leave it in place and get a new one. Also, I feel like Elma faces far less antisemitism than was common in her time period. She would not have nearly as easy a time as the books portray. I’m glad she didn’t, but it felt lacking in verisimilitude. These are minor quibbles, however. I loved this book. I devoured it in under a week and cannot wait to purchase the audiobook of it when it comes out.

The form would not take the link https://bsky.app/profile/didididit.bsky.social/post/3law3ilrxbs2u. I also posted it on FaceBook.


I'm not big on reading series. I'm always on the lookout for great new books, great new authors, and fresh stories. That said I'll often dip into a series just so I will have a reference point when talking with those who have read it. I'll often grab a book because it looks interesting and later realize it is part of a series.

I did just that with the Mary Robinette Kowal's forthcoming (March 18, 2025) "The Martian Contingency" which is definitely worth reading. Turns out it is 4th! in her Lady Astronauts series, set in the mid twentieth century. I have not read any of the previous books in the series. It stands on its own. Enough of the backstory shows up organically throughout that I never felt anything was missing that I needed to know. I love it when a book in a series can stand on its own. I had picked it up because I loved her locked room mystery in space "The Spare Man".

I want to like these books more than I actually like them, but I will keep reading the series as long as Kowal writes them!

The Martian Contingency is an easy 5 stars, no question. You might call me biased because Kowal has been a favorite ever since I read her Glamourist Histories (which, if you like historical fantasy romance, are a must-read). I’d assert it’s not bias – I just have great taste in books. ;)

The Lady Astronaut series is a scientifically accurate alternate history; in 1952 a meteorite strikes Earth and causes widespread devastation. Humanity is going to have to find a new home or risk extinction as the climate is irreparably altered. Enter Dr. Elma York, calculator and pilot, who becomes “The Lady Astronaut” - the reluctant face of the space program as women become an integral part of the effort.

In the Martian Contingency we join Elma and her husband as they arrive at the Martian colony. Things SEEM to be going well, but there are troubling signs that something bad happened during the first Martian settlement, and everyone is hiding it from her. Was it sabotage? Was it something worse? (Oh, it was so much worse.)

Elma’s a perfect protagonist because she’s so far from perfect, and this book has a great plot with a quiet, building tension set against political and human drama. Kowal has a real talent for balancing hard science with societal issues and deeply human stories.

There IS a lot of jargon, I’m a fan of this and it’s obvious she did extensive research and spent time with real life astronauts to get everything correct. But even if technobabble isn’t your thing, I think the plot and the characters are engaging enough to hold your interest and you really need this series in your life.

So, yeah. Do you like hard scifi or alternate history? Do you like stories of kickass women changing the world together? The Martian Contingency is out on March 18, so you’ve got time to pick up the other 3 books (and several short stories!) starting with The Calculating Stars.

A huge thank you to NetGalley and Tor Books for an early copy of this book for my honest opinion.

Mary Robinette Kowal has created another treasure with her latest book in the Lady Astronaut series. This time Elma York is the Deputy Administrator of the second expedition to colonize Mars. Although she has certainly earned this position on the expedition, she is facing a continual uphill battle. In addition to the usual issues of survival in space and on Mars, she is faced with mysterious potentially fatal facility failures, lack of vital information, and a variety of medical issues. Yet, she continues to push through and continue to earn the trust of her fellow colonists.

I really enjoyed reading this book, and can't wait for Kowal's next publication.

I thank Mary Robinette Kowal and Tor Publishing Group for kindly providing an electronic review copy of this excellent work.

Review copy provided by the publisher. Also I know the author a bit from cons and things.

This is the latest Lady Astronaut book, alternate histories of a 20th century international space program developed in a panic when Earth's atmosphere is catastrophically changed by a meteor strike. The series uses its premise to illuminate challenges of our past and present, and of course future. This is not a good place to start with it, I will say right up front. The characters are well-established with their foibles, strengths, and relationships, and this is not a book that wants to spend a lot of time reminding you who's who and why you care.

But if you're someone who *does* care, if you've already read the series, Elma York and her husband and colleagues are back for an adventure on the surface of Mars and in Mars orbit. While some of the same themes carry through from previous books, they've had more of a chance to ramify, with the characters allowed to make different mistakes at different points in their lives--and with some skills and assumptions picked up from space stations and the Moon not applying to their new Martian home.

Kowal has worked with actual astronauts to try to make this series as lived-in as possible, and it shows. Some details are just--"just"--texture to make the book feel more real, but some turn out to be plot points in ways that amuse and delight--and occasionally horrify.

Mary Robinette Kowal does it again in the Lady Astronaunt world with this novel. I really enjoyed going back to this world. It uses the science correctly and enjoyed that it was historically right and had that element of what if. The story worked with this world and with the characters and was glad I got to read this.

While I always enjoy Kowal's books, this one was a little too heavy on the let-me-show-you-my-research side. I found myself skimming the pages dedicated to how a shuttle lands and so on. The parts about life on Mars and on the big ship were good -- probably people who like reading hard SF/technical stuff will like this one better than I did.

I love this series, but I came away from it feeling like this volume was the weakest so far in the series. An alternate history sci-fi where a huge meteor impact in DC prompted a need to get off the planet and accelerated the space programs progress, this series follows Elma York, a pilot turned astronaut as she breaks barriors and spurrs humanity progress to th stars. This book focuses on a return trip to Mars after rhe success of the first expedition in an attempt to create a permanent colony. As in all things, there are mysteries abound and pressure from inside the space program and it's disscentors that cause trouble for the astronauts. I felt like while the plot was fine, the way things worked out were not nearly as realistic as the rest of the books have been and thaf there was an overfocus on societal issues which, while never a bad thing to include, did come across as heavy handed and clumsily done. However I love this series and look forward to more exploits from the Lady Astronauts.

Mary Robinette has extended the Lady Astronaut series so beautifully with its latest installment, The Martian Contingency. With her trademark combination of hardcore science and deep humanism, Kowal presents a very believable 1970s Mars habitat. She approaches the era's (and realistically our own) racism and sexism with care and intention - breaking them down into their components and asking the reader to question their own biases. For instance, I loved the conversation about shifting the language away from 'colony' and colonist.' I also loved all the various holidays that made an appearance as the astronauts found new ways to celebrate together in their new home. Some of them even left my mouth watering.

Told in a somewhat episodic manner, the book doesn't feel overly tense, even amidst the sense that any one of the many small problems could be life and death, because it very well could be. This is a hopeful treasure of a book for all the adventurers who ever found themselves wishing to explore beyond our own atmosphere, and maybe learn a thing or two about our current world in the process.