The Cold Equations

This article is about science fiction story. For the Twilight Zone episode, see The Cold Equations (The Twilight Zone).

"The Cold Equations" is a science fiction short story by Tom Godwin, first published in Astounding Magazine in 1954. In 1970, the Science Fiction Writers of America selected it as one of the best science fiction short stories published before 1965, and it was therefore included in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One, 1929–1964.

Summary

The story takes place entirely aboard an Emergency Dispatch Ship (EDS) headed for the frontier planet Woden with a load of desperately needed medical supplies. The pilot, Barton, discovers a stowaway: an eighteen-year-old girl. By law, all EDS stowaways are to be jettisoned because EDS vessels carry no more fuel than is absolutely necessary to land safely at their destination. The girl, Marilyn, merely wants to see her brother, Gerry, and is not aware of the law. When boarding the EDS, Marilyn sees the "UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL KEEP OUT!" sign, but thinks she will simply have to pay a fine if she is caught. Barton explains that her presence dooms the mission and will result in the deaths of the colonists. After exhausting all other options (such as calling the mothership, The Stardust), he is forced to eject her into space.

The story, first published in the August 1954 issue of Astounding, has been widely anthologized and even dramatized. It is in the form of a cautionary tale, which commonly has three parts. First, a cautionary tale presents a restraint or restriction, in which something is said to be taboo, dangerous, or forbidden. The story's fifth paragraph sets up the first part by including a quotation from "Paragraph L, Section 8, of Interstellar Regulations: Any stowaway discovered in an EDS shall be jettisoned immediately following discovery." Second, the story introduces a hero figure who disregards—wittingly or unwittingly—the restriction. Readers of "The Cold Equations" learn that Marilyn has not seen her beloved brother for ten years, and because she has not traveled before, she is unaware that "the laws of the space frontier must, of necessity, be as hard and relentless as the environment that gave them birth." The third part of a cautionary tale consists of the transgressor coming to a tragic end. In "The Cold Equations," Marilyn realizes that nothing can be done to save her. She accepts her fate and is ejected into space.

Reactions

Critic Gary Westfahl has said that because the proposition depends upon systems that were built without enough margin for error, the story is good physics, but lousy engineering. Writer Don Sakers' 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.

However, the context in which the story was published bears on its premise. Science fiction was still a fairly young field, and was still working free from its roots in pulp fiction. In the story, the girl addresses the distinction, contrasting the frontier she had imagined, which was "a lot of fun; an exciting adventure, like in the three-D shows" and the frontier she discovered, where the danger was real and proved fatal. The story recognized that if space travel ever did come about, then sometimes there would be little margin of error, and fatalities would happen.

Another trend to which "The Cold Equations" is a reaction is the science fiction sub-genre of the puzzle story, where impending disaster is prevented when one of the characters works out an ingenious application of scientific principles, thereby saving 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.

The story was shaped by Astounding editor John W. Campbell, who sent "Cold Equations" back to Godwin three times before he got the version he wanted, because "Godwin kept coming up with ingenious ways to save the girl!"^[1]

Allegations of borrowing

Some sources, including Kurt Busiek, have alleged that Godwin essentially took the story from a story published in EC Comics' Weird Science #13, May–June 1952, called "A Weighty Decision," scripted by Al Feldstein. In that story there are three astronauts who are intended to be on the flight, not one, and the additional passenger, a girl that one of the astronauts has fallen in love with, is trapped aboard by a mistake rather than stowing away. As in "The Cold Equations", various measures are proposed but the only one which will not lead to worse disaster is for the unwitting passenger to be jettisoned. Algis Budrys said that "The Cold Equations' was the best short story that Godwin ever wrote and he didn't write it."

Other sources note that the theme of Feldstein's story is itself strikingly similarly to the story "Precedent", published by E.C. Tubb in 1949; in that story, as in the others, a stowaway must be ejected from a spaceship because the fuel aboard is only enough for the planned passengers. These sources argue that neither Feldstein nor Godwin intentionally "swiped" from the stories that came before, but merely produced similar variations on an ancient theme, that of an individual being sacrificed so that the rest may survive.

Arthur C. Clarke's 1949 short story Breaking Strain is based on two people on a spacecraft and only one can live. But this is a male crew of two and they are short of oxygen, not fuel.

Adaptations

The story has been adapted for television at least three times: as part of the 1962 British anthology series Out of This World; as part of the 1985–1989 revival of The Twilight Zone ("The Cold Equations") and again in 1996 as a made-for-TV movie on the Sci-Fi Channel. The story was also adapted into an episode of the radio program X Minus One in 1955, an episode of the radio program Exploring Tomorrow in 1958, and for "Faster Than Light" on CBC Radio's Sunday Showcase in September 2002 by Joe Mahoney (hosted by science fiction author Robert J. Sawyer). In the X Minus One broadcast the girl was trying to visit her husband to make amends for an affair she had.

See also

Novels portal

• Factor of safety
• The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One, 1929-1964, an anthology of the greatest science fiction short stories prior to 1965, as judged by the Science Fiction Writers of America

References

1. ^ Our Five Days with John W. Campbell, by Joe Green, The Bulletin of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Fall 2006, No. 171, page 13

External links

• Online copy of the story (w/quote from original introduction)
• Online copy of the story (from a freely distributable Baen ebook CD)
• Adrian T. Miller: B/S Flag on "The Cold Equation"
• "The Cold Equations" by Tom Godwin - a review of the story with resources for where to find it.
• The "MathFiction" review of the story
• Richard Harter: the story has "deep flaws"
• The Cold Equations at the Internet Movie Database -- The 1996 feature-length adaptation
• Baen Books' 2003 anthology, The Cold Equations & Other Stories
• A Usenet thread in which Kurt Busiek states his belief that the story was essentially taken from Feldstein
• A rebuttal of the claim that Godwin took the story from Feldstein