|
|
|
|
|
The Cold EquationsThe Cold Equations is a science fiction short story by Tom Godwin, first published in Astounding Magazine in 1954. It is widely regarded as one of the most notable stories in the history of science fiction. Premise The story takes place onboard an Emergency Dispatch Ship, a spaceship that is transporting a fever serum needed to keep six people from dying on the frontier world of Woden. The pilot discovers a stowaway hiding on the ship, an eighteen-year-old girl who wanted to see her brother, a colonist on Woden. The girl believes that she will be asked to pay a fine; the pilot has to explain to her that the ship has only just enough fuel for itself, its pilot and its cargo, and that her staying on board will cause the crash of the ship, killing not only them but the six sick colonists. The best that can be done for her is to recalculate the ship's course, maneuvering to the very limits of the fuel supply, to delay for a single hour the moment when her extra weight must be jettisoned from the ship. Within that single hour, she writes letters to her parents and her brother, talks with the pilot about death, and in the last few minutes, radio contact is made with her brother, allowing them to say their goodbyes. When the horizon of the planet breaks up the radio contact, the girl enters the airlock and is jettisoned out into space. Reactions Half a century after its publication, The Cold Equations is still recognized as one of the classic stories of science fiction; SF writer and critic James Gunn has called it "The touchstone story for hard-core science fiction." In 1970, the Science Fiction Writers of America voted it as one of the fifteen most significant stories published between 1929 and 1964. When Baen Books published an anthology of Godwin's fiction in 2003, the selected title was The Cold Equations & Other Stories, giving the story title prominence above the complete novel The Survivors published in the same volume. Approval for the story has not been universal; many have criticized the central situation as being artificially constructed to make the end result seem 'inevitable' when it is not. If the problem of stowaways has been foreseen, as indicated by the quoted portion of the "Interstellar Regulations" that orders pilots to jettison stowaways upon discovery, then why isn't the precaution of checking the cargo spaces for stowaways part of the regular pre-flight checklist? How plausible is it that the EDS would have the supplies closet that the girl hides in, but not possibly have enough mass that can be jettisoned to compensate for her? Critic Gary Westfahl has said that because the premise depends upon systems that were built without enough margin for error, the story is good physics, but lousy engineering. Writer Don Sakers's short story "The Cold Solution" (Analog, 1991), which debunks the premise, received the 1992 Analog Analytical Laboratory award as the readers' favorite Analog short story of 1991. It is important, however, to understand the context the story was published in. Science fiction was still a fairly young field and was still working free from its roots in pulp fiction, where science fiction had merely been an alternate setting for sensationalist and shallow tales of adventure. In the story, the girl addresses the distinction, distinguishing between the frontier she imagined, which was "a lot of fun; an exciting adventure, like in the three-D shows" and the frontier she discovered, where the danger is real and has proved fatal to her. Another trend that The Cold Equations reacted to was the science-fiction sub-genre of the puzzle story, where a disaster would seem to loom up but it was only a matter of time before one of the character would work out an ingenious application of scientific principles that saved the day. Though pleasing to fans, these stories were seen by those outside science fiction as evidence that the genre was all about escapism. By echoing the conventions of the puzzle story, but focusing on the fates of characters trapped by the puzzle instead of the machinations of solving the puzzle, the story showed critics that science fiction would not always be about lesser subjects than other literature. Adaptations The story has been adapted for television at least twice, as part of the 1985-1989 revival of The Twilight Zone (The Cold Equations (The Twilight Zone)) and again in 1996 as a made-for-TV movie on the Sci-Fi Channel. This latter adaptation received a great deal of criticism for altering the central premise: instead of tragedy happening because "the cold equations" of physics are inalterable by human beings, the blame is placed on the greedy corporation that the pilot works for. External links Cold Equations
|
 |
|
| Copyright 2005-2009 OnPedia.com. All Rights Reserved |
|
|