11-04-2023, 12:56 PM | #1 |
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"The Cold Equations" -- Yay or Nay
"The Cold Equations" by Tom Godwin is a famous hard science fiction story from the 1950s -- but it's also controversial. It appeared in the famous Astounding Magazine (in digest form) in the 1950s. Of course, it was edited by John C. Campbell -- and he had a strong hand in the way the story turned out.
SF author and essayist James Gunn (not the director!) said “The touchstone story for hard-core science fiction is Tom Godwin’s ‘The Cold Equations’.” But others look at the story's flaws -- the way it was constructed, the writing, etc. (Is it great physics but lousy engineering? Is it about the dangers of the frontier, or is it a poorly constructed trolley problem?) So I was wondering what the readers on this site think of it. Thanks to Lightspeed Magazine, you can read it here. There is an essay plus an energetic discussion about it on File 770. There are many more essays online about it, probably too many to collect in one post. I wrote about it for Medium here, and I included links to more essays. Let me know if you find any new essays! There have also been new stories that were written in response to this tale. Like The Cold Crowdfunding Campaign by Cora Buhlert. Filled with lots of in-jokes. |
11-05-2023, 08:59 AM | #2 |
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Also, a nice, CLEAN PDF copy of the entire magazine for free at Archive.org:
https://archive.org/details/Astoundi...ge/n5/mode/2up -------- This is a short story, so I'm going to pick up a copy and read it. Thank you! Last edited by Dr. Drib; 11-05-2023 at 09:18 AM. Reason: Critteranne's link was for a FREE read. I missed that. |
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11-05-2023, 11:44 AM | #3 |
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I first came across this story when it was dramatized in the "Out of this World" TV series in the 1960s? on British television. Soon after I found an anthology in the library which contained the story an I read the original text.
I enjoyed both and found it to be quite quite well written at the time (I was about 14 at the time). On reflection the "dilemma' is plausible. My feeling is though that in the situation the pilot of the courier could only act as he did and "space" the stowaway. I do not think it was a real dilemma but more a case of psychologically did the pilot have the moral strength to space the girl. If he did not then many more would die on the colony world he was delivering cures for a plague to. The girls brother was on the colony hence her stowing away. |
11-05-2023, 03:42 PM | #4 | |
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Some modern takes see this more as a sign of a greedy corporation cutting corners rather than "physics" or "the dangers of space." Others still see this as an example of"Stupid people die in space." (OTOH why didn't they lock the door so nobody could sneak onto the ship? Why didn't the pilot check the closet before taking off?) |
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11-07-2023, 05:47 PM | #5 | ||
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Like you, I'd heard about the story, but only just now read it. And I have many thoughts. Instead of writing a crazy long post, I'll just put some basic thoughts down.
I don't think the criticisms are fair and likely have more to do with (valid!) dislike of John W. Campbell as a person than what is inherent in the story. Quote:
The ship is small and collapsible, like a lifeboat. Imagine that ship as your car. Would you be able to dismantle unnecessary components in your vehicle with what is onhand in your vehicle at the time? And the whole story takes place within an hour or so. Quote:
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11-08-2023, 05:12 PM | #6 |
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I read it in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One, 1929–1964. The story is perfectly fine, IMO. I understand it bothers some people nowadays because female characters should have agency or something, and why oh why the writer did not allow a workaround. But the story is powerful, and the decision not to find any workaround is 100% the right one for this story. With a workaround, it would be one more SF story about engineering problem solving, perfectly forgettable. As it is, it has impact.
The writer loads the dice so that there's no way out? Sure, so what, that's why there is a story to tell. That's the whole point. If they had ballast to throw out just in case, there would be no story. As for why they did not explore in more details other possibilities... I assume they did not overlook anything obvious, but it's not explored in detail because the story is just not about that. I feel like we are so unused to short stories nowadays that people can not conceive of a story getting to the point, but this is how many of these old SF stories used to be: Just an idea (math doesn't care about your feelings) and go for it. If you don't like it, well, move on, it's not like there aren't plenty of stories where math cares about your feelings. Last edited by db105; 11-08-2023 at 05:31 PM. |
11-09-2023, 10:36 AM | #7 | |||
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I also think that the story works best because that character is a young woman. That brought out the protective instincts in readers at the time it came out. But that can also be read different ways. Even without the help of JWC, Tom Godwin could write brutal stories even when there was a way out. His story "The Survivors" has a huge body count. (The original story was published in Venture.) At the same time, I wonder what an editor like H. L. Gold, Edward L. Ferman, or Anthony Boucher could have molded this story into -- with or without the original ending. Quote:
Quote:
I don't know if that's true because when I look at an equation, I do so as a copyeditor and not a mathematician. (Yay, he didn't incorrectly italicize "ln"!) Also, I can't believe I forgot to link to this detailed article by Richard Harter, based on what he originally posted in some form on Usenet. |
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11-09-2023, 12:25 PM | #8 | ||||
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Quote:
Quote:
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And as I mentioned upthread:
Quote:
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11-09-2023, 05:30 PM | #9 |
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When you're reading a book by some author, you are reading that authors story. If you don't like the story and would have written it differently yourself, go ahead and write your own. I've read many books - probably every book I've ever read - where I personally might have done something differently than was described in the book. Too bad - I didn't write the book, so I have no say in the story.
I read this short story about a year ago. I had not read it before. I enjoyed it. It was memorable. It was a story about a moral dilemma. It was not a story about engineering your way through a problem. Sophie's Choice between which child gets to live vs. MacGyver's choice to use an ax or a saw to cut a tree branch. Two totally different plot lines that are not interchangeable in a story. |
11-10-2023, 12:04 AM | #10 | |
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Now that could be interesting in the right hands. |
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11-11-2023, 10:08 AM | #11 | |
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11-15-2023, 09:51 PM | #12 |
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I couldn't take it seriously when they just kept coming up with weird contrivances to force it into a bad ending which just pushed it into "yeah, don't build spaceships with zero failsafes."
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01-31-2024, 04:59 PM | #13 |
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(duplicate)
Last edited by db105; 01-31-2024 at 05:05 PM. |
01-31-2024, 05:01 PM | #14 |
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hard science fiction, pulp fiction, science fiction, sff, the cold equations |
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