the cold equations

[cellio]

A recent conversation brought to mind an SF story called "The Cold Equations" (by Tom Godwin), considered a classic by some. I had heard of the story but had not read it (had the title slightly wrong and no author). It turns out to be Googlable; that's probably a copyright violation. But now I've read it. Interesting story (no spoilers here; I make no promises about comments).

I had previously been under the impression that one of the pivotal characters was a child (of perhaps nine or ten), not an eighteen-year-old. I found that this affected my enjoyment of the story; the character makes a mistake with consequences (not following directions, in a really big way), and when I thought those mistakes were being made by a child I had more sympathy. As it is, it's hard for me to really appreciate this character's angst. The story is also somewhat a product of its time (the 50s); the other main character makes a point of saying he would have handled things differently if it had been a "man". (Aside: she's a "girl".) It's still a good story, but I liked it better with my mistaken impressions. :-)

There was a Twilight Zone episode based on the story (the series from about a decade ago, which I mostly missed due to not having the right cable channels available). I'd kind of like to see that.

Comments

[sethg]

The NYRSF also had a letter from Damon Knight, where he listed all the things likely to be found on the ship that could be thrown out the airlock to compensate for the stowaway's weight.

Now that I'm thinking about it, Knight's list reminds me of the scene in Apollo 13 where the astronauts and engineers are trying to jury-rig an air filter(?) out of whatever equipment they have left in their craft. They didn't just say, "well, the cold equations of the universe have decreed that we're all going to die".

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

You're thinking of the scene where Mission Control dumps a pile of equipment in front of the engineers, along with the two filters that are incompatible. They're told that they need to get this (the first filter) to connect to that (the second filter) using nothing but those (all the equipment on the ship). The point of the filter was to get all the Carbon Dioxide out of the craft.

[cellio]

The NYRSF also had a letter from Damon Knight, where he listed all the things likely to be found on the ship that could be thrown out the airlock to compensate for the stowaway's weight.

Sure, but the question of what to do when you've already done all that makes a more interesting story, so I'm willing to grant that the pad of paper, case containing the medicine vials, chair, tools, and clothing don't add up to enough. I think the conceit of this story is that the only way to solve the problem is going to be unpleasant for someone.