The Sword and Laser discussion

What fun historical differences have y'all noticed throughout this book (besides Dewey defeats Truman)


I noticed:
Artemis space program (book) versus Apollo space program (real)
Jupiter-class rocket (book) versus Saturn-class rocket (real)

I am sure I am missing tons of other subtle changes in the book...

Adrian wrote: "What fun historical differences have y'all noticed throughout this book (besides Dewey defeats Truman)


I noticed:
Artemis space program (book) versus Apollo space program (real)
Jupiter-class roc..."
The historical note did explain that she had Dewey defeat Truman (view spoiler)[to speed up the space program to match the timeline for Lady Astronaut of Mars (hide spoiler)].

There really were Jupiter rockets, though, and there was some use for them in the space program. And in this book or the sequel, "SIVB" is called out which could be a Saturn-type reference (or a reference to a Saturn stage).

I noticed an erroneous reference to Lockheed Martin. LMCO didn't become a thing until the 90's - before that it was Lockheed Corporation and Glenn L. Martin Company and American Marietta Corporation. Martin & Marietta merged in the early 60's I believe, and then Lockheed & MM merged in the 90's. I'm willing to chalk this up to an alt timeline... ;) :P

She also references actual astronauts in this book and the sequel, including Aldrin, Armstrong, and Grissom (those names stuck out to me, there may have been more).

I like that she referenced the WASPs. I first learned about them at the International Women's Air & Space Museum.

The resolution of the plot relies on the fact that the development of electronic computers is somewhat behind that of our timeline. This plus the shift in the space program of about a decade means that there are no onboard computers on the rockets.

(view spoiler)[Elma only makes it onto the lunar mission because they need a computer, and only women are trained to do this...

Take that "Math is hard" Barbie
(hide spoiler)]

terpkristin wrote: "She also references actual astronauts in this book and the sequel, including Aldrin, Armstrong, and Grissom (those names stuck out to me, there may have been more)."

I didn’t notice Grissom; I was more jarred that in a meeting the whole Apollo 11 crew got name-dropped in one swoop.

I did catch the references to Bessie Coleman and Helen Ling, but it was neat to discover that Sabiha Gökçen and Princess Shakhovaskaya were real people.

As for divergent history, I am so intrigued by the (view spoiler)[Soviet Union dissolving in the 1950s (hide spoiler)], and I really wish we had a more international/geopolitical perspective.

Collins is also mentioned. He's the astronaut who (in our timeline) piloted the Apollo 11 command module while Aldrin and Armstrong went down to the surface.

I live in Huntsville, Alabama, where all our schools are named after astronauts. I'm an alumnus of Virgil I. Grissom High School, and the other night I went to a play at Mae Jemison High School.

ETA: I just noticed that Julie mentioned the whole Apollo 11 crew just above. I didn't see that post before I wrote mine. Didn't mean to ignore you, Julie. :)

Julie (RadiantPages) wrote: " I was more jarred that in a meeting the whole Apollo 11 crew got name-dropped in one swoop."

To diverge from historical difference, the most jarring point for me was when the astronauts Tayler, Wells and Sanderson were namedropped; those being MRK's cohosts on the Writing Excuses podcast.

Erik wrote:

I live in Huntsville, Alabama, where a..."

Hello fellow Huntsvillian. 👋🏼

My kid goes to Challenger. We’re definitely very spacey around here.

I remember watching Mr Wizard’s World on Nick in the 80s so I really enjoyed him appearing in the novel.

I noticed in The Fated Sky there is a reference to (view spoiler)[ The robot from Lost in Space, the passage was in a chapter from 1961, I checked to be sure, but Lost in Space didn't appear until 1965 (hide spoiler)]
The reason this stuck out, I was 8 years old (1964) when the family got a television (2 channels), it was one of the shows i had to read chapters from the Bible before I could watch it. Mother didn't like us watching the "idiot tube", wrong message and all that.

I would recommend reading The Fated Sky, its as good if not better than The Calculating Stars.

terpkristin wrote: "There really were Jupiter rockets, though, and there was some use for them in the space program. And in this book or the sequel, "SIVB" is called out which could be a Saturn-type reference (or a re..."

I'm just glad we have our own Calculator/Astronaut of the lady variety on this thread. *waves at terpkristin*

Shad wrote: "I remember watching Mr Wizard’s World on Nick in the 80s so I really enjoyed him appearing in the novel."

Wait, that tv show is real? And Don Herbert is a real person? That’s so cool!

Ruth wrote: "Shad wrote: "I remember watching Mr Wizard’s World on Nick in the 80s so I really enjoyed him appearing in the novel."

Wait, that tv show is real? And Don Herbert is a real person? That’s so cool!"

The show of his mentioned in the book was before my time, but Don Herbert did have a show called Watch Mr Wizard on NBC in the 1950s and 1960s. Nickelodeon rebooted the show as Mr Wizard's World in the 1980s, but the description in the book sounded a lot like the show I remember.

Ruth wrote: "Shad wrote: "I remember watching Mr Wizard’s World on Nick in the 80s so I really enjoyed him appearing in the novel."

Wait, that tv show is real? And Don Herbert is a real person? That’s so cool!"

Yep. A lot of the things in the book come directly from the actual show. https://youtu.be/PfTaH13zAUA

I used to watch this show in the early 70s when I was a kid. There used to be so many great science shows back then, including Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom and Jacques Cousteau’s Undersea World.

Trike wrote: "Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom."

This was a favorite of mine as a kid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbJXz...

The appearance of Wernher von Braun irresistibly reminds me of this classic song by the great Tom Lehrer (who is himself a Jewish mathematician):
https://youtu.be/TjDEsGZLbio

“‘Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That’s not my department,’ says Wernher Von Braun” 😂

The Soviet Union just dissolving is definitely my top weird point. The only other superpower just had most of its most important cities wiped out or heavily damaged, most of Europe and much of East Asia is still in ruins from the war--surely the USSR should be in the position of rebuilding the rest of the world. How is it that they not only fall apart, they don't seem to make any contributions to the international space effort?

I can guess why MKR did this: it demilitarizes the space race and makes it a noble, global effort racing the clock against humanity's extinction instead of another arena of the Cold War. I can wave it aside since it's otherwise not central to the story. But it is rather neat and tidy.

I like the renaming of the lunar program to Artemis. It not only makes more mythological sense, it reminds me of the Warren Ellis/John Cassaday comic Planetary, where Artemis is the name of the secret space program run by the book's villains.

Don't forget that the USSR, arguably, came out of WW2 worse than any other country.

They suffered the worse loss of life of any country. Between 19 million (the west's estimate and 26 million people (The USSR's estimate) and spent 100s of billion of Roubles.

They had to rebuild almost the entire infrastructure in the Western part of the country and entire towns and cities destroyed by the germans.

Russia wasn't in a position to do anything outside its own borders in the timeline of TCS.

How about that it took until 2011 for a woman to be named flight director? Meet Holly Ridings.

https://www.npr.org/2018/09/30/653086...

Jenny (Reading Envy) wrote: "How about that it took until 2011 for a woman to be named flight director? Meet Holly Ridings.

https://www.npr.org/2018/09/30/653086..."

I didn't see this story when it came out, thanks for posting it! I remember a big-ish deal being made at a rocket test a few years ago that the Test Director was the first-ever female Test Director that program had. My only thought was "about time".