The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin

[Mourning Star]

Alright, I need some help here. I'm reading The Science Fiction Hall Of Fame - Volume One. This is the anthology edited by Robert Silverburg where the members of the SFWA voted on the best short stories before 1965 and made an anthology of them. The top 15 are listed and tied for 8th is "The Cold Equations" by Tom Godwin.

From what I'm seeing online this story was considered to be very shocking, controversial, and powerful. It was obviously very popular among fellow writers.

I hated it.

However, with the high praise this story has been given, I want to be sure that I havn't missed something. I'm hoping that someone who remembers it, or someone who is willing to read it will be able to point out why my issues are invalid.

There are obvious technical issues to take offense at, such as the a simple generic warning sign but no locked doors or preflight inspection? The story could have easily been reworked to produce the same circumstances on more plausible grounds.

But thats not my real problem with the story. I think the ending is awful. If you've read it, please highlight below to see what I mean.

What man in this position wouldn't sacrifice himself to save the young girl? Suddenly, he realizes that there is a way to help her, he needs to reduce mass, it doesn't have to be her mass. He can show her the simple things that need to be done to land (they don't have autopilot in this future?) and he goes out the airlock instead of her.

Am I wrong?

 

[j d worthington]

Quite simply, he has to see the larger picture. Even if you had a fully automatic landing procedure, there has to be a human backup in case of malfunction, as his mission is to provide medical assistance to large groups of people. All his training requires much more than he can possibly supply to this girl in such a short time, and if he dies, a great number of people whose lives depend on him die, as well.

The impulse to sacrifice himself in her place is definitely there, but that's the point -- it's the cold equations, the laws of physics, plus the cold fact of the importance of him and others like him to thousands (if not, in the end, millions) of people, that make that a noble and romantic idea... but utterly unworkable.

As for the technical flaws: these are minimized pods; they are for one purpose, and one purpose only. Anything that is not absolutely necessary has been left out, as it would add even a minim of weight beyond that required. These are for fast delivery of emergency medical supplies, nothing else. One can remark that a pre-flight inspection would have done the job, and so it would... but such hasn't stopped stowaways on air flights (recall the fellow who was found in the wheel well of an airplane not that long ago, for instance?). So somewhere, at some time, an unforeseen eventuality like this would be bound to crop up, as human fallibility enters the picture. That's what the story was about: human fallibility pitted against the cold, uncaring laws of the universe. It shows just how out of place and how tiny we are in the "big picture" ... and yet how each individual life can still matter, because we are who we are....

 

[j d worthington]

Sorry for the double post, but I made the previous one when I was getting ready for work and about to leave the house....

While I was away, I had been thinking about the story and another detail occurred to me: correct me if I'm wrong, as it's been about 10 years since I last read this story, but wasn't this a case of the ship not actually being equipped to land, but rather to deliver the goods while in flight? And then having to once again correct for exiting the atmosphere? In which case, there's no way he could have taught her the complex equations and experience he had with such, either....

In any event, while the story certainly has its flaws, I'd say the ending is not really among them....

 

[JQH]

I think the pod was intended to land - IIRC correctly it had been launched from a starship that had picked up the colony's distress call but was already on another mission and could not divert.

 

[brsrkrkomdy]

You also have to consider the budgetary concerns. That ship the guy's going down in was not made for landing and take-off missions. The budget from some Federation of planets wouldn't allow for it. They'll spend millions on big ships that zip here and there but that's it. The smaller crafts were not made for landing and taking off. Only landing.

JD, you just nailed that story right on the money. That's why the story's called "Cold Equations." No matter which way you try to solve it, the results are still the same, QED: mathematics of chaos. It is why this story got a lot of people upset. It was hard to take. We, SF fans were so used to reading stories where science has all the answers and able to solve the problem in a nick of time. Not so with Tom Godwin story.

Plus, that story's definitely believable IMO. Consider the space programs we've gotten right now. Even though we've made some great strides in space technologies, and thru them we've been able to accumulate a lot about our red neighboring planet, not to mention the moons of Jupiter. Yet, it's still pathetic, what with the budget constraints? We've managed to do spacewalks, and went literally to the moon, landed on it, then came back. Yet, us humans have not set one foot on the red soil of Mars. Hence, we go back to "Cold Equations." We're a microcosm in this cold and unforgiving macrocosmic universe. If we check back our history of space tech and seen how far we've progressed, we're a long ways away. And we're not without some screw-ups that had cost human lives already.

That's why Tom Godwin story remained a classic, and still a controversial one at that.

 

[j d worthington]

JD, you just nailed that story right on the money. That's why the story's called "Cold Equations." No matter which way you try to solve it, the results are still the same, QED: mathematics of chaos. It is why this story got a lot of people upset. It was hard to take. We, SF fans were so used to reading stories where science has all the answers and able to solve the problem in a nick of time. Not so with Tom Godwin story.

That's why Tom Godwin story remained a classic, and still a controversial one at that.

Well, to be honest, this has been a personal favorite since I first read it as a teenager nearly 40 years ago; and largely because it was an uncomfortable story. It didn't have a happy ending that was false to the premise, a deus-ex-machina, or any sort of simplistic handling of the situation. It was cold, and the human beings faced with the cold, uncaring (because completely mechanistic, with no moral or ethical dimension to it save ours) universe were very human. There were no villains in this piece, no one you didn't care about, no one who deserved to get the short end of the stick -- it just happened that way, because of simple human error and, in a sense, the hubris of thinking we're in control of our environment... especially such an alien environment as space. That hit home, because it made the human ethics of the situation much more realistically complex; I could feel for all the characters in this one, and while my own inclination would have been to do as the original poster said, the story makes it uncompromisingly clear that this simply isn't an option. It is an equation with only one viable answer, and it's an answer that no one concerned is ever going to feel good about. This one hurt, in a way that only a truly human story can hurt; and that, to me, is why it retains its power even today....

 

[ChrisBfla]

Yes, I remember reading this story when I was about 13 or 14? I was thinking, why couldn't he start tossing everything non-essential out of the ship?

Chris

 

[j d worthington]

Yes, I remember reading this story when I was about 13 or 14? I was thinking, why couldn't he start tossing everything non-essential out of the ship?

Chris

Because it was already peared down to the bare essentials, with very, very little margin for error; certainly not enough to make up for any extra human cargo. That's the point: to remind us that space is an utterly alien, unforgiving environment, with no room for human error or fallibility, and if we're going to explore that environment, we have to do so with both a particular kind of courage and a willingness to face painful losses along the way -- even such a gut-wrenching loss as this (and let's face it, folks... if we actually do get out there and colonize, we're going to see a lot of deaths of children and entire families who simply don't make it, either through human error, or unforeseen changes in environment, or mechanical failure, or a thousand other causes) is far from impossible, given such attempts at colonization. Godwin's story reminds us that all those adventure stories about space travel come at a price, and sometimes that price is something we would have never considered, and will never find it easy to live with once we're presented with the choice....

 

[Omphalos]

It is definitely one of the more subtle ones in that whole volume that the original poster mentioned, even if it is about tossing a pretty, innocent little thing out the airlock. The problem is that the real impact is not in the text, which is pretty much about a little girl remembering fine spring days and things like that. Its in the implications and the unyielding nature of physics. It was about these scientists too, that could get a spacecraft into orbit, then between planets, and could colonize a planet, but could not figure out a simple equation to save a little girl's life, so failure of science was also something it discussed.

It also did a very fine job of presaging the precision nature of space-flight.

The spacecraft was going to land, but it only had enough fuel to do just that. The problem was that the spacecraft would not be able to help the colonists if it landed a few islands away, and the flight was calculated down to the gram.

 

[barlennan]

The people who have critiqued or questioned this story here have largely addressed the technological "what-ifs", which actually demonstrates how effective The Cold Equations is. We all want to save the unwitting damsel in distress. Disappointingly, the way the author makes us root for the stowaway is to make her a defensewess wickle girly, which is sexist, patronising and manipulative, but there's the 50's for you. Nevertheless, the sympathetic reader grasps at hypothetical straws, trying to resolve the cognitive dissonance by imagining some soothing, heroic cadence in which the girl's death is averted.

As JD points out, the story works because it uses our expectations of a narrative; the more hope is denied, the more it seems that there will be a third-act twist, even though the author has made it plain from the start that the stowaway's death is inevitable.

I would not agree with Omphalos that this story is "subtle": the authorial voice may be rational and dispassionate, but Godwin is using Marilyn to make broad slashes at deep, primal emotions.

I'd also disagree that this is a story solely about logic or science: it's a much broader message about the fundamentals of the human condition: life is short. We don't matter much as in dividuals. We will all die. Death is likely to be final; it will extinguish of all your unoriginal thoughts and disposable memories. This is a pretty heavy trip to lay on your audience, daddio, and that's what makes this little tale a classic.

 

[BigBadBob141]

I thought this was a good story when I first read it a long time ago.
Now I just find it plain annoying, it makes no sense.
From what I can tell the only areas in the ship with life support are a tiny control cabin and an even smaller closet.
Why have a closet in the first place if the ships that small, and why oh why did the pilot not look into it before take off if he know the was a possibility of a stow away.
It would of take him all of 5 seconds to check if anyone else was aboard!
The idea behind the story wasn't bad but it was poorly thought out.
P.S. There is a sequel where in the same situation the pilot saves the day by amputating some of his and the stowaways limbs and ejecting them from the ship to save mass, yuk!!!!!

 

[psikeyhackr]

Am I wrong?

If my memory serves me correctly she could not land the ship anyway so the cargo would have been lost and other people would have died.

The absurd thing is that I could not imagine a ship being so small that 150 pounds of excess mass could not be found to throw overboard and yet at the same time be large enough to hide a stow away.

But if there was enough excess mass there would be no story.

In my opinion Lois Bujold presents pretty much the same parable in Komarr. The universe will kill you if you make too serious a mistake. A scientist got his wormhole theory wrong and it killed him and other people.

I just think the story disturbs some people so much that they dislike the story. It is not really an enjoyable story but it has a point.

psik

 

[j d worthington]

P.S. There is a sequel where in the same situation the pilot saves the day by amputating some of his and the stowaways limbs and ejecting them from the ship to save mass, yuk!!!!!

There was also a take on the entire thing in New Worlds many years ago, which was by D. M. Thomas, if memory serves; it uses parallel columns of text -- one is Thomas' verse telling of the same story, save for a sexual encounter with the stowaway, handled in a way which, while a very human encounter, emphasizes the cold, mechanical situation; the other is (again, if memory serves) a selection of quotations from a schizophrenic as reproduced in R. D. Laing's The Politics of Experience and The Bird of Paradise, which acts as a stunning combined complement and contrast to it all. Essentially, this is a gloss on Godwin's story which critiques science fiction and the rejection of the human element in the colder forms of sf.

As for the story not being well thought out... you raise valid points, but I think this misses the heart of the matter where this story is concerned.

 

[Bick]

There was some support for this story on the best anthologies thread. It was so long since I think I read it, that I read it again this evening to re-appraise it. I think I'm in the camp that feels it's quite flawed. It's certainly not bad, and is better than many stories I've read for entertainment but I think there are several flaws, listed below. Now I realize many others have noted the same things in the past, and I'm not suggesting anything very new here, but for the record:

1) I subscribe to the suggestion that while it nicely shows the implacable physics of the universe, it offers really shonky engineering. It's only 110 lbs - surely that should be within margin of error.
2) It seems silly to me that the pilot doesn't even try to lose the weight any other way. We know there is already a small weight margin available. Lose clothes, shoes, his clipboard, anything else lying around; maybe this wouldn't be enough, but the story fails in not addressing the obvious thought at all.
3) It's not actually an original idea, as there were very similar stories with the need to chuck someone out an airlock to save weight in the decade preceding it.
4) The story's notoriety comes from the fatalistic tragic ending, but this wasn't even the plan of the author, it was Campbell's insistence. So it's the editor who should get the kudos. Godwin saved the girl!
5) Pacing is rather weak. It starts strongly and then loses pace and excitement as the fatalism is drilled into the reader many times as opposed to keeping the reader guessing if a solution could be found, which would have been more interesting, as well as add to the pathos of a tragic end.

So, I feel it's a moderately strong story, and maybe 3.5 or 4 out of 5. But not in the list of top stories I've read I think.

 

[BigBadBob141]

The real villains of this peace are the shoddy engineers who designed the ship in the first place.
Allowing no extra fuel ( what if the pilot has to go into orbit to wait out bad weather?) is completely bonkers!!!

 

[Randy M.]

The real villains of this peace are the shoddy engineers who designed the ship in the first place.
Allowing no extra fuel ( what if the pilot has to go into orbit to wait out bad weather?) is completely bonkers!!!

I doubt it would be the engineers.

I remember the struggle for money from Congress to get the space shuttle built. Eventually it was, but (as I recall) as a bulky glider rather than as a plane that could miss a landing, pull up and try again. The shuttle pretty much had one shot at landing and it had better work.

TCE, from the first time I read it in the '70s, struck me as uncomfortably based on real-world decisions and behavior.


Randy M.

 

[BAYLOR]

If my memory serves me correctly she could not land the ship anyway so the cargo would have been lost and other people would have died.

The absurd thing is that I could not imagine a ship being so small that 150 pounds of excess mass could not be found to throw overboard and yet at the same time be large enough to hide a stow away.

But if there was enough excess mass there would be no story.

In my opinion Lois Bujold presents pretty much the same parable in Komarr. The universe will kill you if you make too serious a mistake. A scientist got his wormhole theory wrong and it killed him and other people.

I just think the story disturbs some people so much that they dislike the story. It is not really an enjoyable story but it has a point.

psik

Eliminating parts of the ship should have solved the weight problem.

 

[Bick]

Exactly, Baylor. Mind you, my main issues against it being considered 'great' are as much my points 3-5 listed above.

 

[dask]

3) It's not actually an original idea, as there were very similar stories with the need to chuck someone out an airlock to save weight in the decade preceding it.

I remember reading about William Gaines running a similar story in one of his E.C. Comics before "The Cold Equations" saw print leading some to whisper plagiarism.

 

[Bick]

I remember reading about William Gaines running a similar story in one of his E.C. Comics before "The Cold Equations" saw print leading some to whisper plagiarism.

In Wierd Science #13 (EC Comics) in 1951 there was a story called A Weighty Decision, apparently, which was very similar. Also, and perhaps more notably, there was the E. C. Tubb story Precedent, published in 1952 in New Worlds #15 (with Tubb writing as Charles Gray). My impression from reading articles on Tubb was that he came up with a number of great ideas first, published them in British magazines, and they were thereafter copied by others. Godwin's use of his idea of the grim consequence for stowaways on ships with limited fuel, is the best example.