THE CALCULATING STARS.

• Author: Mangu-Ward, Katherine
• Position: BOOK - Brief article - Book review

Who among us has not daydreamed about what life would be like if the nation's capital were wiped out by a meteor?

Novelist Mary Robinette Kowal launches a huge rock at Washington, D.C., in her plotty, readable alternate history, The Calculating Stars, and its sequel, The Fated Sky. Set in a slightly tweaked post-World War II United States, the story centers on the adventures of the implausibly accomplished Elma York, a former wartime pilot, top-notch "lady computer," and reluctant feminist firebrand.

After the entire Eastern seaboard is eliminated, the seat of...