The Gravity of us by Phil Stamper (book review)

My next book review is on this fantastic debut novel by Phil Stamper - The Gravity of Us.

 

(source)

But first, to put this review into a little bit of context (who knows for how long this blog will be read), at the moment there is a huge amount of Worldwide press and interest on Civil Rights and the Black Lives Matter movement. So as this book is based on Nasa's current mission to Mars I wanted to point you towards the awesome book and movie titled Hidden Figures. This is a book and movie charting the lives of a group of awesome black women - Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, and Katherine Johnson - who were Nasa's human calculators without whom the mission to the moon probably wouldn't have happened. I previously did a blog review here: Hidden Figures, movie review.

And to neatly go full circle, as most of you know we are heading into the last few days of Pride which of course didn't really happen because of our Covid19 lockdown - or as some like to call it a Queerantine - this will probably be the last LGBT title I'll get to review for Pride month.  

In this book we follow the life of Calvin, or Cal for short as his dad is also called Calvin. He has his whole life planned out, college, journalism studies, an internship with Buzzfeed and has been building his social media profile and polishing his journalism skills. He currently has 500,000 followers and does a weekly walk through of New York and what's happening. In the past he has covered local and national stories, politics and elections. He even broadcasts about the hugely popular Orpheus Project - NASA's mission to Mars. 

But then overnight his life is uprooted. His dad is chosen to be the 20th and last member of the Orpheus project and they have to pack up and move immediately. He has to abondon his plans, friends and worst of all his journalism ambitions as StarWatch the company that owns the rights to interviews and publicity for the Orpheus project has a gagging order in place. After a three day drive to their new home they land in the town that has been bought-up for the Astro-families the name given to the families of the Astronauts. Cal, in a moment of last defiance figuring his dad has only arrived and hasn't yet signed the papers and gagging order makes a final broadcast to his fans breaking the news who the final 20th member of the Orpheus Project is. All hell breaks loose as the press & StarWatch descend even before they have unpacked their car. 

Shortly after this mess Cal finds out everything isn't as cosy as StarWatch likes to portray, the other Astrofamiles and Astrokids are not perfect and StarWatch experiencing dropping ratings tries to create drama and excitement - they have full access to the houses of the Astrofamalies and with Cal's exposé they aren't very happy. Cal also meets Leon, one of the only other teen Astorkids in the area and they hit it off. What ensues is a sweet teen romance with enough intrigue and drama to keep you turning the pages.

Before I like to cover the pro's of a book I like to mention the negatives, but, honestly in this debut novel I found none. There is no mature content - the most that happens is two teens kissing so nothing unsuitable for a mature chilld or 12+ reader. One person does loose their life, so I suppose that is a trigger warning but there is not too much detail and the family affected leaves the story very quickly. The only one negative I have is the premise of the book is based on the lives of the family members of the astronauts so I would have liked to learn a little more about them, but that's really it.

The book is really well written and paced. The language is perfectly aimed at a teen market but also an adult that likes NASA, geeky, LGBT stories will also enjoy. It delves into the World of a teenager and their interaction with Social Media and the press. Cal's dad doesnt understand what Cal is messing about with online - it's not a proper thing/job is it? ... the mechanics of social media, online press, modern journalism and followers, I imagine this reflects exactly how today's parents think and misunderstand about the digital World today. As mentioned before the book has enough tension and drama that makes you want to continue reading. It's a throughly enjoyable read. There are two moments I love in the book;

Cal considers himself a fixer of broken things (part of his obsession with planning) but he is reminded that he cannot fix ever broken thing but he can makes things a little better.

Also in the early stages of Cal and Leon's relationship Leon is starting to talk a little about his depression and he realises that Cal wants to kiss him. He asks Cal not to kiss him to make him feel better but to instead kiss him showing affection at a later stage. 

I really enjoyed this book and give it a solid 9 out of 10 stars. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

 

John The Captain Ryan

 

Hidden Figures (movie review)

Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, and Katherine Johnson crossed all gender, race, and professional lines while their brilliance and desire to dream big, beyond anything ever accomplished before by the human race, firmly cemented them in U.S. history as true American heroes” (20th Century Fox) 

(image source /IMDB)

Based on a book by the same name by Margot Lee Shetterly, this is a must see. I have the book on my desk to read next week.

This is a fantastic movie, one of my favourites so far this year. There are two stories, the compelling story about a group of African American women who were the human computers at Langley. These ladies, as part of a huge team of scientists, manually did all the calculations for America’s space race. This of course was before computers. The secondary story is of course the space race. This movie is a character led adventure, with fantastic acting, with 5 main characters; 

(image source HERE)

Dorothy Vaughan (played by Octavia Spencer) was a supervisor of the “Coloureds”; an office full of female African American human computers although she wasn’t getting paid a supervisors salary. When she realised that the new IBM computers would eventually do them all out of a job she taught herself FORTRAN computer programming and prepared all the ladies in her office for the new jobs. When NASA made the decision to move over to the IBM machines, Vaughan and her army were the only people who could do the job. I love when she steals a book from the “Whites” section of the library on computer coding because the “Coloureds” area didn’t have any. It was a lovely dignified moment of defiance and one fighting for equality. In reality she actually headed the programming section of the Analysis and Computation Division (ACD) at Langley

(image source HERE)

Mary Jackson (played by Janelle Monáe) was a human computer and later an aerospace engineer. She took advanced engineering classes and in 1958 became NASA's first black female engineer. I really loved her story, quietly defying the regime, went to court to win the right to take evening classes and become an engineer. Whilst there was a lot of violence on both sides during the Civil Rights Movement, again, I love how her story was one of quiet perseverance and a peaceful victory,(again), that’s how it’s portrayed in the film, in reality it was probably a little bit different.

(image source HERE)

Katherine Johnson, a mother of three children who lost her husband & had to find work to support her family. She was a gifted child and her father moved the family 120 miles to facilitate her education. She was a teacher and then whilst working with NASA was known for accuracy in computerized celestial navigation. A magical moment in the movie was when John Glenn was only happy to go into space when Katherine had double checked the calculations the computers had made.  She calculated the trajectories, launch windows, and emergency back-up return paths for many flights from Project Mercury, including the early NASA missions and the 1969 Apollo 11 flight to the Moon.

A very funny moment in the movie – her running across the campus to use a segregated toilet – never actually happened but it did represent the racism and segregation at Langley. It also of course gives Al the opportunity to demolish a segregation sign over the toilets and gave him the magical line “we all pee the same colour”.

(image courtesy 20th Century Fox)

Al Harrison is a fictional composite character of three different directors at NASA Langley. I really like his character, developed for both the movie & book and shaped by Kevin Costner himself. There is only one problem, the character is a little bit disnified, by that I mean it seems a little too easy to have a character - an intelligent scientist - that is ignorant of segregation and the Civil Rights Movement going on around him because the “science” transcended it all. In the movie his goal of getting to the moon was all that mattered and everything else was ignored – although Katherine Johnson does back-up this idea, she said they were given a project to work on and that was their sole focus. 

(image courtesy 20th Century Fox)

And finally, Paul Stafford another fictional character created to represent certain racist and sexist attitudes that existed during the 1950’s. Stafford’s character is very interesting but quite one dimensional. He represents the type of man working in America during the Civil Rights movement. He didn’t value the input that either women or African Americans could make. There was a great moment in the movie when Katherine wants to attend a meeting and he tells her there is “no protocol for women attending”. Whilst the character of Stafford is fictitious, this actually happened but as there was no law to stop her, she was allowed to attend. This represents the dismissive attitude that men had to women. The other moments in the movie when Stafford thwarts Katherine Johnson are also mainly fictional but I really liked the end of the movie when he does start respecting her. In reality, Katherine was well respected at Langley and most of the male scientists viewed her as a peer (and some probably realised she was far better than them). 

However, it’s not white men like Harrison or Stafford that changed things.  It’s still amazing people like Mary Jackson who become a manager of both the Federal Women’s Program, in the NASA Office of Equal Opportunity Programs, and of the Affirmative Action Program that really paved the way. In this role, she worked to influence both the hiring and promotion of women in NASA's science, engineering, and mathematics careers.

As with any movie that has been made based on real life events, some editing and fictionalisation must occur. In real-time the timescale is over 30 years with 300 staff. This would make a very long film with many boring sequences of boring characters. That’s why we get composite characters and snap-shots of particular events.

Whist the movie is most certainly aimed at the family market (PG Cert) and has a Disnified happy ending we know of course that it was a happy ending. John Glen got home safely. There were some magical moments of defiance against the natural order of racisms. Al Harrison bashing down the segregation sign for the ladies toilets, Dorothy Vaughan stealing a book from the library and Mary Jackson winning her case in court allowing her to attend college and qualify as NASA’s first black female engineer.

In reality of course we know the Civil Rights movement had many violent episodes with much hate and vitriol but I like to think that even though some people were fighting for their rights in that way, I hope there were also people breaking down barriers (and signs) in their own way, quietly, intelligently and showing dignity and strength. Perhaps that’s just the Disney feel from the movie clouding my judgement but I hope not. Because, this film is in stark contrast to the reality of the violence and hatred experienced during the Civil Rights Movement, (the next night I watched Detroit) it loses a planet for this. However, it’s still a great movie so I give it 9 out of 10 planets.

Live Long and Prosper

John The Captain Ryan.

Declaration of the Rights of Boys & Girls – Book Review

I just came across this awesome book by Élisabeth Brami & Estelle Billon-Spagnol. Straight away it’s getting 10 out of 10 planets so you really have no need to read any further, but for those who are curious read on. I’m proud to say that Wexford Libraries have this title on their shelves.

(image from Little island)

Title: Declaration of the Rights of Boys and Girls

Authors: Élisabeth Brami & Estelle Billon-Spagnol

Publisher: Little Island Books

Ages: 3-100

ISBN: 9781910411278

Website: http://littleisland.ie/books/declaration-rights-boys-girls/

It’s a delightful book challenging stereotypes of what boys and girls should do, their feelings, who they should love and how they should act.  It has funny descriptions of what jobs, hobbies and what they can wear.  It is quite frankly a book that every child from the age of 3 should have on their shelf.

It has one unusual aspect, the girl and boy sections are separate, you turn the book one way to read one side, flip it over to read the other.  Its funny how in writing, designing and publishing a book about equality and diversity that the girl and boy sections are separate but it’s not near enough to lose any rating points.

(image from Little island)

The illustrations are fun and cheerful, girls having the right to be dirty and boys having the right to wear pink.  I love the way it uses the format of “Articles”, just like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights with Article 15 for both boys and girls being

...The right to fall in love with anyone they like...

Amnesty International also supports the “declaration”, which debunks received ideas and stereotypes – a quirky list of invented rights, which reminds us how important it is to value equality for all.

Whilst a lot of work has been done to empower girls, yes they can be outspoken, strong and even astronauts we need to do a lot more work to show boys they can be compassionate, shy and (Article 10) "not to be muscly without being called a sissy”.  Ultimately, the book does a fantastic job of spreading a message of equality without being preachy or insulting to anyone’s faith.   There’s really not much else to say except buy it now.  A must read for all ages.

John The Captain Ryan

YES, I'm going to SPACE

The internet is a weird and wonderful place where one blog leads to an article which leads to a link and next thing you know you are going to space.

But - is STEM education as dead as space travel?

(picture source - NASA)

Stephen Hawking to Blue origin to SpaceX to the VSS.  My journey started with checking out other blogs and came across - The Librarian Errant

The author was seconded to another library and was involved with digitising material.  I learnt that Stephen Hawking's original thesis is available for the whole World to read (understanding it, now that's a different matter) here

This lead me to learning that Richard Branson has offered Hawking a place on the VSS to go to space - the Virgin Galactic project opening up space travel to the public.  Learn all about it here Virgin Galactic.

But, unfortunately €200,000 is a little bit rich for my blood so I've got to shop around or see if there is a possibility to stow away with Elon Musk's SpaceX (http://www.spacex.com/) or Blue Origin (https://www.blueorigin.com/)

Okay, okay, back down to Earth!.  I know there is no place for a 40 year old married man to get to space, but it's the dreaming.  Ever since NASA finished it's space shuttle program in 2011, for me, it has left a void in our aspirations and dreams.  So many young nerds and geeks (whilst dodging the bullies) decided to study engineering, biological science, physical science, computer science or mathematics, or even join the Airforce and become pilots with the hope of getting off this pile of rock and see what the universe has to offer.  

(picture source - NASA)

Don't forget, the race to the moon, started by the Russians on November 3rd 1957, with the launch of Sputnik 2 kept them and the US battling for scientific superiority, which in turn helped them not start WW3.  So why does it matter today?  Instead of the most powerful & dangerous countries in the World figuring out new and more violent ways of destroying the lot of us - from Trump & North Korea to conflict in the Middle East - wouldn't it be great if we could use our combined knowledge and money for the betterment of the human race.  Wouldn't it be great if we figured out how the universe was created and where would this lead us?  Hang on - the World wasn't created 6,000 years ago - who knew! Wow!

My point is, what once led the aspirations and dreams of the brightest kids in school to become amazing scientists is now diminished.  There is a huge push in Ireland today towards promoting STEM Education - Science, Technology, Engineering & Maths - or make it all steamy by sticking an A in the middle for Arts but why should we bother.

Why should we promote a boring career in becoming a roads engineer and study the density and lifespan of concrete in comparison to the amazing and awesomeness of space travel and exploration?  Why should we consign our youth to a career which we cannot support in Ireland and even then how to we get a generation of kids that have an attention span of a goldfish and demand information in 140 characters to enter a field of study that uses a few more than 140 characters - thermodynamics anyone?  

(picture source - http://www.jendai.com)

Before we carry our youth towards a career in STEM, in a wheelbarrow with square wheels we need to do some serious soul-searching and ask why.  We need to have something inspirational, exciting and fun to encourage our youth, not a lifetime of computer coding in a dark data storage farm powered by renewable energy.  Yes the bunker will be perfectly built, with perfect engineering and mathematical skills but it's still a dark, cold lonely World that the geek is consigned to, the very same as their time in school.  Previously they had the dream of escaping to space, now...just the cold dark concrete bunker.  

Then again, I might partner with one of them and the two of us can devise how to stow-away on the VSS.  Then I could really be a Captain.

John "The Captain" Ryan