Rather than the alternate history I was expecting, A History of What Comes next closely follows the events that led to the space race. All the historical figures do what they were recorded as doing, the only difference is that they are being steered by the Kibsu. War had always been the assumed catalyst for rocketry, but in this version of events, a mother and daughter team, forever reborn, is at the heart of the competition. They help both sides on their way to space, wanting to save humankind from something.

The majority of the story switches between Sarah and Mia as they insinuate themselves into the lives of the people responsible for getting us into space, with occasional diversions to the distant past to visit the Kibsu that came before. I loved the idea that some information had been lost in the past and all that they knew know was a few rules. There can only ever be two and they must “send them to the stars”.

Mia is essentially a clone of Sarah, and Sarah a clone of her mother, and so on. They are sort of based on a kind of (actually real) fish that only ever produces female offspring. They mate with a male but discard all their DNA.

I like that this tied into me reading Last Night at the Telegraph Club, since this book also featured a Chinese immigrant working at the Jet Propulsion Lab; Qian Xuesen who was later accused of Communism despite all the work he did.

This was one of those books where I enjoyed reading the author’s notes at the end, there were so many snippets of history and real people included, it was nice to have that section to highlight who was real and what inspired some of his choices.