The Sword and Laser discussion

So if you like this book you might also like....

I'll start with some non-fiction picks

The Cassandra by Sharma Shields - set in the 1940s, when women are hired to work at Hanford on an unknown project. Mildred Groves doesn't have anxiety but she does have visions and sleepwalks into the Columbia River on a regular basis. It felt similar to the world of this book.

The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II by Denise Kiernan - about women who worked at Oak Ridge, a secret city built in the Tennessee Mountains to work on the elements of atomic energy.

So I guess I picture Elma's work history being similar to some of these women, it's not exactly the same era as the novel of course, but good female-power true stories!

I’m assuming this somehow is related to this month‘s book pick?

Argh, never mind, I was using the Goodreads app and it looked like it was sorted in the General folder.

Don’t forget Hidden Figures: The Untold True Story of Four African-American Women Who Helped Launch Our Nation into Space, including the superb movie based on it.

Trike wrote: "Don’t forget Hidden Figures: The Untold True Story of Four African-American Women Who Helped Launch Our Nation into Space, including the superb movie based on it."
Oh yes, that's on my tbr so I couldn't speak to it yet.

I've this one in my TBR The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars

I recently read The Psychology of Time Travel by Kate Mascarenhas and although I haven't yet read TCS I would guess that it fits the category.

It's about a group of women who invented time travel in the 1967, the repercussions of one of their first test flights and a mysterious murder in 2017. I guess it would classify as sci-fi, although some fantasy and murder mystery elements sneak in as well.

The librarians (at the American Library Association) who picked it as sci-fi book of the year included some read-alikes in their press release:

“The Atomic City Girls” by Janet Beard.
“Doomsday Book” by Connie Willis.
“Hidden Figures” by Margot Lee Shetterly.

So, a historical fiction pick to go along with the history mentioned above (Girls of Atomic City). Hidden Figures was already mentioned, and makes perfect sense. The Connie Willis book caught me a bit off guard because it's a very different sort of speculative fiction in a much different period (time travel to the middle ages). The both do have a female POV character and both have some pretty emotional notes in there too - so maybe it's a valid read-alike.

Silvana wrote: "I've this one in my TBR The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars"

I read an article about them a few years ago and thought it was really interesting. Amazing breakthroughs from such tedious work.

Try Sally Ride: America's First Woman in Space.

I've been enjoying Rise of the Rocket Girls: The Women Who Propelled Us, from Missiles to the Moon to Mars about some of the women computers at JPL.

Reading about all these women and how they can run all those calculations make me remember the days when I was fresh out of college and I could still do a fair amount of calculations accurately without a spreadsheet or program (I was never as good as these women though). Excel has ruined my ability to run numbers on my own.

Shad wrote: "Excel has ruined my ability to run numbers on my own."

http://pearlsofrawnerdism.com/life-an...

Also some faves from the ever-brilliant xkcd...
Up-Goer Five (I have this one in poster form): https://xkcd.com/1133/
Progress: https://xkcd.com/1906/
James Webb delays: https://xkcd.com/2014/
"Typical" rocket launch: https://xkcd.com/2087/

And...laws of spacecraft design: https://spacecraft.ssl.umd.edu/akins_...

terpkristin wrote: "Shad wrote: "Excel has ruined my ability to run numbers on my own."

http://pearlsofrawnerdism.com/life-an..."

Ooh, I love that comic. So true!

Sheila Jean wrote: "terpkristin wrote: "Shad wrote: "Excel has ruined my ability to run numbers on my own."

http://pearlsofrawnerdism.com/life-an..."

Ooh, I love that comic. So true!"

True, But it makes life so much easier ;-)

Though you do still need to understand the maths to set up your own spreadsheets. I use Numbers (Mac), not Excel though

Tassie Dave wrote: "Sheila Jean wrote: "terpkristin wrote: "Shad wrote: "Excel has ruined my ability to run numbers on my own."

http://pearlsofrawnerdism.com/life-an..."

Ooh, I love that comic. So true!"

True,..."

Only if you deal with small numbers... I prefer Python :-)

NumPy, SciPy... (In any case that's what mathematicians and theorists are for)