The Martian Contingency, by Mary Robinette Kowal
While getting ready to write about The Martian Contingency I listened to the Hugo, Girl pod on Red Mars, obviously, that’s a very different novel published some thirty plus years ago, and the only real point of comparison between the two novels is that they are generally about the colonization of Mars. Kim Stanley Robinson’s novel is intensely detailed (painfully so, at many times) and Mary Robinette Kowal is focused on the space science, some politics and conspiracy, and handles it all with a light and gentle touch. I bring it up because the pod made me think about the differences in how stories are told about settling Mars and what different writers choose to focus on.
The Martian Contingency is a VERY Lady Astronaut novel, which is probably a dumb thing to say given that this is the fourth Lady Astronaut novel and the third one focusing on Elma York but this is a *very* Lady Astronaut novel.
What that means is that if you’re all the way in on this series like I am, you’ll find a lot to love here. It’s familiar and comforting. If The Calculating Stars or The Fated Sky did not land for you, though, The Martian Contingency won’t change your mind. It’s more of the same as far as how Kowal tells her story and does her characterization. If you liked the first two books but struggled a bit more with The Relentless Moon because of the protagonist shift to Nicole Wargin, The Martian Contingency is right back to Elma York for everything that entails.
The plotting aspect of The Martian Contingency’s narrative is the second mission of Martian settlement and the challenges that it faces to accomplish that mission, from technical challenges to identifying and addressing an unspoken issue from the First Mars Expedition to dealing with political obstacles back on Earth despite being millions of miles away. I dig how Mary Robinette Kowal tells her stories with easy, breezy prose so this book like so many of her previous books is borderline comfort food. She’s dealing with big ideas, but because the lens she uses is with characters who could be our friends, the big ideas don’t overwhelm the book.
The Martian Contingency is aspirational science fiction and despite being set in the early 1970’s as alternate history (and even more so the farther away they get from The Meteor in The Calculating Stars) the novel very much feels like a response to America and the world today. Some aspects are handled very quietly, like Nicole Wargin being the first woman President of the United States (after her Presidential Candidate husband was killed in The Relentless Moon, which makes me wonder about the rest of *that* story), the perpetual issues with “lady” astronauts and the inherent sexism the women face, and abortion issues much more overtly in this novel. This is along with Elma York’s working her way through understanding and misunderstanding of cultural differences.
This is a generally standalone novel and I think it works as such. The only Lady Astronaut novel that isn’t is The Fated Sky and that’s because it follows immediately after The Calculating Stars and reads more of a duology as a distinct work on its own. To that point, I’d recommend starting with the Hugo Award winning The Calculating Stars. I adored that novel and it really sets everything up for this alternate history, but The Margian Contingency works without that base. This is fairly accessible science fiction for non science fiction readers and there’s a lot to like here for everyone.
Tidal Creatures, by Seanan McGuire
The third volume of Seanan McGuire’s Alchemical Journeys and quite possibly her most ambitious. Middlegame was a true showcase for what McGuire can do as a storyteller and blended more ideas together than one could reasonably expect to form into a successful and satisfying melange of awesomeness. Middlegame also set a standard for what we can expect from this series, and if Seasonal Fears didn’t quite level up to those incredible heights it was still a very good novel.
Tidal Creatures is doing something more, if potentially less successfully. It is taking those major elements from the first two books, bringing in the ideas of A. Deborah Baker’s Up and Under series a little bit more concretely, and *then* working with the idea of a murder mystery where aspects of moon gods are being killed and how that impacts the larger conflict of alchemists vs everyone and the culmination of the plans of Asphodel Baker.
I should digress for a moment. Asphodel Baker was a background character in Middlegame who wrote four Up and Under children’s books that was able to form the core magical / alchemical system that underpinned the events of Middlegame. Seanan McGuire then took that idea and *wrote* the four Up and Under novels under the pen name of A. Deborah Baker, which then referenced later events and ideas in the Alchemical Journeys series - but now McGuire is making those connections yet more explicit. Confused? It’s a lot. I don’t think you *need* all of those books and connections to appreciate Tidal Creatures, but it helps to build resonance.
The problem is that this is where it does all begin to feel like too much and it’s takes at least a third of the novel to even begin to bring it all together because that first section of Tidal Creatures is a wholly new introduction to characters and a setting that is generally unfamiliar. Hey, this is fantasy, that’s what we do but it’s a little jarring in the third book in a series where readers are once again figuring it all out AND trying to make those connections to how this relates to what has come before.
McGuire does eventually bring all of those elements together and Tidal Creatures becomes more familiar and more satisfying than readers might have expected earlier in the novel. Tidal Creatures is still a lot, but it’s a lot in a way that Seanan McGuire’s readers will appreciate. I like that I have no idea where any of this is going in the next book or two of the series (which may conclude it), not even the bare shape of it beyond the conflict with the alchemists.
Strong recommendation to NOT start here. Read Middlegame, love it, and then continue in order.
Joe Sherry - Senior Editor of Nerds of a Feather, Hugo and Ignyte Award Winner. Minnesotan.
