The Fated Sky, by Mary Robinette Kowal

I'm a fan of hard SF where the writers do research in order to tell the story properly. So this really hit the mark for me, there's a lot of great history. Including the social history, where she works in elements of the civil rights movement and how much of an object of suspicion it was for the country. It's a really interesting juxtaposition, how we could achieve so much technically with those old concepts of who belonged in power. Being under tremendous pressure helps, some. Kowal alludes to, but could perhaps be more clear about, how the United States of 1960 would get there through exploitation. She has sympathy for protesters, but their motives (the handling of Meteor refugee resettlement adding to existing inequities) only get a partial exploration. I'm hoping this gets sharpened in the third book.

There's a lot to like. The action really keeps the book moving, and the evolving relationship between Stetson Parker and Elma York holds one's interest. I had a hard time putting it down. What really clanked for me was the ending, so I have to put it in a spoiler.

Throughout the book Kowal builds racial tension as the FBI tries to connect Black astronauts to the terrorist incident that leads off the book, and Mission Control feeds the suspicion through their assignment of Black and Female astronauts to menial duties. Then a major terrorist incident (that the FBI seems to have missed) disrupts the mission and Earth. The astronauts overcome the obstacles, land on Mars and...everything is fine. The terrorists lose sympathy at home, a Black astronaut is the first man on Mars, and colonization proceeds apace. Quite a lot is missing here. The turnaround basically happens offstage, before the epilogue.

This has potential as a steampunk setting, just about 70 years later than classic steampunk. We are going to Mars with punch card computers. And we really could have done it--except for the colonization, we probably can't pull that off even now because we haven't figured out what to do about Moon and Mars dust--it's incredibly sharp and gets everywhere, the moon suits were leaking like sieves by the end of a mission of just a few days. I don't think that's the focus of the third book, but I'll look forward to reading it all the same. 

My Goodreads Review