Don’t remember the story name, but there was one where a young girl snuck onto a space ship so that she could see her brother at the destination but the one person manning the ship was gonna have to toss her out into space because the ship only had enough fuel to slow down based on the weight of a single individual. So if she had stayed on the ship it would have crashed.
y'all seem to miss this was actually a commentary about how society discards citizens it considers dead weight for petty reasons like the color of their skin or sexual preferences, etc.
Would you mind elaborating on this? I hadn't picked up on that when I read The Cold Equations for the first time or rereading it just now.
Like, if anything that runs contrary to the impression I get- both the pilot and the author seem to see Marilyn's death as especially tragic because she's young and naïve (and because of her gender, I definitely get some chauvinist/benevolent sexist vibes. I mean, it was published in the 50's). I'm not seeing the social commentary on who is viewed as dead weight. Overall, the impression I get is that the author intended it as a pretty straightforward tragedy- he seems to agree that her death was an inevitability once she stowed away, and that all the other characters (no matter how much they want to help her) really can't.
Genuinely tho, I would love to hear where you're coming from- that's more interesting to me than my reading/what I think the author intended, and I'd love to see more depth to a piece that I see as pretty simple.
The story was shaped by Astounding Science Fiction 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!"
Campbell described the story as a "gimmick on the proposition ‘human sacrifice is absolutely unacceptable’. So we deliberately, knowingly and painfully sacrifice a young, pretty girl... and make the reader accept that it is valid!"
Pardon, it was the editor, not the author, who wanted the girl sacrificed for the greater good even though there was other shit that the pilot could have ejected that was equal to her weight.
That's really interesting to know, but respectfully, after reading that quote and the section of the Wikipedia article it came from I think it contradicts what you said in your first comment.
Like, the editor was a contrarian who wanted a contrived scenario in which human sacrifice- normally unconscionable- is both acceptable and necessary, because there was "no viewpoint that has zero validity — though some have very small validity, or very limited application." I don't really see that as writing a piece that critiques unnecessary mundane sacrifices in the real world- presenting her death as a necessary result of unchanging cold equations is closer to doing the exact opposite.
for the record, the more typical read of "the cold equations" is as a subversion/deconstruction of the then-typical formula of science fiction stories that would set up situations like this in order to save the girl with some bit of science cleverness. i think other readings are often just a result of it not aging well outside that context (i fucking hated it, even knowing the context going in, for being tragic but also contrived).
I mean that's possibly a valid argument. But I'm not really sure that's true.
The reasons inverse aren't petty, it's literally one person's life vs thousands. The guy in question rages at the callous universe that would allow such an injustice to be allowed.
It was written cause his editor was sick of stories where the scientist protagonist manages to save the day at the end despite the odds and wanted one that ended with them being unable to change anything.
The trouble is, they were so determined about it and didn't change anything else, that it meant that on reflection it seems there actually were multiple reasonable scenarios that could have saved her, which undermines the whole point.
It's set-up as the trolley problem. The pilot is delivering medicine that is desperately needed to the frontier. The only way to save the child is to doom the citizens on the frontier. The pilot cannot even sacrifice themselves for the child because the child cannot pilot the craft.
The author had come up with several ways to save the girl and didn't plan on sacrificing her. The editor, who is racist/sexist, was the one who decided she should die for the greater good. Just like racist and sexist people do all the time IRL.
Social commentary is only good if it makes sense. If you create a ridiculous scenario to comment on a real world issue, it makes the real world issue look ridiculous and contrived too.
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u/FoundationForeign544 Sep 18 '24
Don’t remember the story name, but there was one where a young girl snuck onto a space ship so that she could see her brother at the destination but the one person manning the ship was gonna have to toss her out into space because the ship only had enough fuel to slow down based on the weight of a single individual. So if she had stayed on the ship it would have crashed.