![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The Cold Equations
Dec. 19th, 2016 10:37 amThere has been a great disturbance in The Force a recent discussion about the famous SF short story The Cold Equations. You can read it at the link, but the gist of the story is due to a lack of fuel and massive authorial manipulations, a stowaway on a spaceship has to die. Alex Acks thinks its morally reprehensible and shitty writing. Camestros Felapton doesn't like it much either.
I'm willing to concede that the story is flawed, but I want to defend John Campbell's attempt. The story was written in 1954, when SF was in full Space Is Good mode. Campbell wanted a story in which, as in life, bad things happen to good people. He wanted a space version of Jack London's To Build a Fire. (read at the link)
In "To Build a Fire" an unnamed man decides to walk to a different camp in Alaska in the winter. He sets out alone, knowing that its cold but not knowing that it is negative 75 degrees Fahrenheit. The man is told it's too cold to be traveling, but he goes anyway. He gets accidentally wet, tries and fails to start a fire, and dies.
It's a great story, one of the classics of literature. Campbell (I think) wanted something similar. He almost got it with "The Cold Equations." Now, both stories had a ton of authorial manipulations. In "Equations" it's lack of fuel and redundancy. In "Fire" it is the decision to travel and where the man builds his first fire. But because Alaska is a real place, some of those manipulations we as a reader either don't see or are okay with. "Equations" happens in a completely made-up world.
The other big difference, and where "Equations" fails most badly, is moral. In "Fire" the only person that dies is the Man. He made a mistake, one that he had explicitly been warned by the "old-timers" that could be fatal, and paid the price. In "Equations" the "girl" stowaway has no idea she's made a fatal mistake. All she did was ignore one (1) (!) sign that said "Keep Out." What the sign didn't say was "Keep Out or Die."
So there's an opening for us writers - a "To Build A Fire" in space.
I'm willing to concede that the story is flawed, but I want to defend John Campbell's attempt. The story was written in 1954, when SF was in full Space Is Good mode. Campbell wanted a story in which, as in life, bad things happen to good people. He wanted a space version of Jack London's To Build a Fire. (read at the link)
In "To Build a Fire" an unnamed man decides to walk to a different camp in Alaska in the winter. He sets out alone, knowing that its cold but not knowing that it is negative 75 degrees Fahrenheit. The man is told it's too cold to be traveling, but he goes anyway. He gets accidentally wet, tries and fails to start a fire, and dies.
It's a great story, one of the classics of literature. Campbell (I think) wanted something similar. He almost got it with "The Cold Equations." Now, both stories had a ton of authorial manipulations. In "Equations" it's lack of fuel and redundancy. In "Fire" it is the decision to travel and where the man builds his first fire. But because Alaska is a real place, some of those manipulations we as a reader either don't see or are okay with. "Equations" happens in a completely made-up world.
The other big difference, and where "Equations" fails most badly, is moral. In "Fire" the only person that dies is the Man. He made a mistake, one that he had explicitly been warned by the "old-timers" that could be fatal, and paid the price. In "Equations" the "girl" stowaway has no idea she's made a fatal mistake. All she did was ignore one (1) (!) sign that said "Keep Out." What the sign didn't say was "Keep Out or Die."
So there's an opening for us writers - a "To Build A Fire" in space.
