History Headscratchers / TheColdEquations

*** The really funny thing is the premise for the story had already been done - at least three times:
Robert Cromie's 1890 "A Plunge into Space", E. C. Tubb's 1949 "Precedent", and Al Feldstein's "A Weighty Decision" in Weird Science #13, May–June 1952. And they all have the same problems Cold Equations does - lack of security, little to no margin of error, and nothing resembling a pre flight check. I wonder if one of the solutions Godwin came up with (and Cambell rejected) was similar to "The Cold Solution" ie amputate some limbs.

** I think that was just Campbell being Campbell. Old John W. had certain fixed, specific attitudes about how science fiction should be written to reflect existing reality. He wasn't against women or strong women characters, but this is getting into his cast-iron conservative political view -- nature is coldly unforgiving, and life on the frontier (of space or whatever) is nasty, brutish and short; and/or, people are responsible for their own failures. [[http://www.panshin.com/trogholm/secret/liberal/coldequations.html Much more here about Campbell's mindset relating to this story.]]

*** A ship, with a very serious mission, through the vacuum of space, doesn't have at least one doctor on board? I mean, at least then the option could be shot down instead of outright ignored. And if there is a bio-engineer anywhere near where they should land (or even just a normal engineer), we could expect her cut limbs to be replaced at the end.

** The girl's gender is heavily emphasized to convey her innocence. While her age, occupation, status as a civilian and countless other factors could convey this innocence just as well, the author(or at least the pilot) bring a lot of attention to her gender that makes some readers uncomfortable. The implication strays out of "She's young and has no idea how things work out here" and disquietingly into "If she were a man, I'd have shot her by now."

*** In the words of EricFlint:

* The editor, Campbell, seems to have literally gone out of his way to make spacing the girl the only option. Disregarding all the stuff about him possibly having it in for the writer, why didn't he point out the other flaws in the story to make it more believable? It seems like they just inserted a few lines to say how desperate the situation was while keeping the rest of the story except for the ending intact. It's especially odd since Campbell probably could have written a much better story himself. Why this one?

** ... It's explicitly stated in the story that only the pilot could land the spacecraft safely. The girl would crash and die, and then the colony dies as well.

* The pilot also comes off as having a rather unhealthy attitude toward women. His initial reaction to finding the stowaway is to think that [[TheUnfairSex if she were a man]], [[DoubleStandard he could probably have killed him secure in the knowledge that he was probably some criminal or con man, but now he can't do that]]. With the unspoken implication that [[TheUnfairSex he can tell she can't be one of those things because she's young, female,]] [[BeautyEqualsGoodness and wholesome-looking]]. [[ValuesDissonance It might have something to do with when the story was written]].
** In all fairness, the girl did appear to be completely harmless. Harmless-looking people can be terrorists or murderers just as easily as anyone else, but they tend to catch people in RealLife off guard when they are.
** All true, but the story does have some UnfortunateImplications in the way it treats her gender as a mitigating factor. All the pilot has to do to convince his superiors that a real tragedy is unfolding is say "the stowaway is a girl". Even before he goes on to relay her motives, they're taken aback - and just a few seconds before, they were callously asking why he hadn't killed the stowaway yet!
*** Though, since the whole story's trying to subvert the usual plot where the man performs a HeroicSacrifice to save the girl, perhaps it was written that way deliberately, to call out the reader's own innate prejudice. Had it been a man, most readers probably ''would'' have been more comfortable with the situation. The girl's innocence and beauty don't do her any good: the story's practically beating the audience over the head with the idea that the universe doesn't play favorites or show mercy, so the first step of that lesson is to lampshade our expectations about who's supposed to live and die in these kinds of stories, by having the pilot and mission control share them.
** Woah, wait a second. How is the attitude that any random man is obviously a criminal deserving of death even remotely healthy?
*** The attitude also worsens one of the other plot holes. If the pilot's default assumption is that EDS stowaways are "warped men, mean and selfish men, brutal and dangerous men", that is all the more reason he should have searched the ship ''before taking off'', so he could ''call for backup'' in case he encountered such a dangerous intruder.
*** As a more general principle, the total lack of a preflight inspection is IdiotPlot. If this is supposed to be some super ultra emergency mission being conducted well past reasonable safety margin, at the absolute outer limit of the spacecraft's fuel envelope, because its just ''that vital'' that this get through ''no matter what''... then it makes no sense that there wasn't a pre-flight maintenance check so rigorous that it made a Formula One racing pit crew look like your neighbor who never changes his oil and drives on bald tires. If we're supposed to believe this is a critical mission being conducted under risky conditions, then shouldn't the characters be ''acting'' like it? Instead, we get a guy who just walks into his spacecraft, fires it up, and takes off without so much as doing a basic visual inspection of the interior space, as casual about the whole thing as if he were getting into a car to go deliver a pizza.
** Oh, get real. A strong and and hardened man who lived through dangerous life and death situations, is living on the edge of civilization, where most of the people he encounters are either brave explorers or dangerous criminals and irresponsible adventurers. He encounters a young girl. Of course he feels pity for her, and yes, because she's a young and frail girl. And that feeling is not an "unhealthy attitude toward woman", it's a natural human reaction which will hopefully never vanish. What is really an "unhealthy attitude" is to present it as a proof on some kind of oppression of women, and gender inequality and political incorrectness and other craziness. There's absolutely nothing wrong to feel pity about someone who is weaker than you, and is in mortal danger because of a sad misunderstanding. And if 99% of criminals in a border world happen to be strong and brutal males (because of the harsh conditions), then assuming a stowaway being one of them, and feeling differently when finding a young girl is not any form of evil and outdated and unhealthy prejudice. Given the demographics of the border worlds, being a young and frail girl is and should be a mitigating factor.
*** It's less to do with his attitude, perhaps, than with the way it's articulated: The constant, almost fawning dwelling on her youth, her grace, her sweet perfume, her blue eyes, her soft brown hair, contrasts sharply with 'If she were a guy, he'd be dead by now.' It's implied that a male stowaway wouldn't have to be a crude opportunist; being male would be enough for the pilot to space said male stowaway with far less hestitation, which may imply that females are worth more, in their vulnerable, innocent fragility, than their male equivalent. That's just a guess, though.
** What ''this'' troper found bothersome was the focus on her youth and "innocence": She calls her parents "Mama" and "Daddy" at eighteen, she's a "lonely little child" ignorant of laws which are unaffected by her 'innocence and youth and beauty,' and if she had stayed on Earth, it would have been well-mannered parties and [[HaveAGayOldTime gaiety]] in the moonlight, because that's what a woman does in the future, even if she picked up a new language and was heading to a job off-world. We even learn that she probably dropped out of college and worked part-time to support her family, yet the narration (and, by extension, the pilot) dwells on her being a pretty young girl. And while it was probably incidental, having her overcome the idea of death to by stymied by the idea of being ''ugly'' when she dies, on the heels of the repeated noting of her good looks, is a bit.. unfortunate. Granted, this was written in the 50's, so that was probably pretty progressive, but...
** That's the ''point.'' You're supposed to notice how prejudiced the captain is.
*** The story was written in 1954. It was not making a point about sexist prejudice.

* One short story entitled 'The Cold Solution' (Analog magazine, early '90s) not only dealt with most of the fridge logic by having the stowaway being a cute kid who wanted to visit an uncle on a plague-stricken colony world, but proposed a [[LifeOrLimbDecision working solution]].
** Is that the one where the guy cuts his limbs off -- you call that a solution?
*** The ''gal'' cuts her limbs off, thank you.
*** Well, they have [[GoodThingYouCanHeal regeneration technology]], so that's not a problem.
*** The pilot/narrator mentions that regeneration only works reliably with children, so [[ScarsAreForever she thinks she's out of luck]] (although she doesn't think it will affect her career as a spacer).
*** Assuming the theory of cutting her limbs off would reduce the weight enough to allow the ship to land safely is workable, the idea that a ship pilot would be able to (medically speaking, the fortitude to do so is another issue) do so without killing her is rather unlikely, to say the least.
** Er, how exactly does "having the stowaway be a cute kid" solve any of the FridgeLogic problems? If anything, a little kid sneaking onto the flight deck makes the SwissCheeseSecurity problem stick out like an even sorer thumb.
*** The kid would weigh less than the girl, draining less fuel, so they have to dump less weight than in the original story, so they can get by with just jettisoning some limbs instead of a full person. This Troper has never read ''The Cold Solution'', but it seems like that's where it's going. The problem of the kid getting onboard in the first place is still there, though.

* "The Cold Equations" has been so long and so widely hailed as a "classic" that when Richard Harter posted the original version of his [[http://www.richardhartersworld.com/cri_d/cri/1999/coldeq.html "Critical Analysis"]] -- a lengthy, detailed FridgeLogic analysis -- fans reacted in horror and outrage (or, as Harter himself put it, "The original posting triggered an extended discussion, conducted in the calm, even-handed, dispassionate style for which usenet is famed for").
* Let me say two quick things in favor of Tom Godwin, the author of this short story. The first is, he DIDN'T want to kill the girl off. He sent the story to Astounding Magazine multiple times, each time with a non-lethal way of fixing the problem. It was the magazine's editor Creator/JohnWCampbell who rejected each of Godwin's happier endings. It was Campbell, not Godwin, who wanted the girl to die. The second is that had the girl not been killed, NO ONE would remember this story 50+ years later. The cruelty of dealing with the situation in such a harsh manner is what made this story immortal, and I suppose Campbell probably understood that. The fact that it's horrific and goes against convention is what makes it stick out in a sea of similar stories. I mean, seriously people, how many people do you think would still be reading Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" all these years later if that story ended with everyone coming to their senses and abandoning their killing ritual?
** I may be unique, but I judge works based on their merits and am not afraid to compare like to like simply because they are like. But even excepting that, and assuming it could be lost in a sea of similars, a distinct happy ending could have easily been produced and still be memorable. Maybe it could have been made into a movie. Or revolutionized society's views on women and on taking technological precaution - the problems are mainly human error, not the universe being cruel or cold.
** It's true that it's memorable because it has a cruel DownerEnding. It's still an IdiotPlot.
*** YMMV clearly, because every 'solution' made above makes wildly optimistic assumptions, misreads the text or outright ignores the laws of physics as applied to spacecraft. The only complaint that can justifiably be levelled at it is that it is not clear in ruling out the impossibilities (every member of the crew, and the colonists, understand the situation so implicitly they jump straight to stoic despair) with the exception of the (huge and expensive) hyperdrive motherships, this is a very, very hard piece of scifi
*** It seems the main solutions are "Check before leaving", "Build a wider margin of error", and "Remove equivalent weight". So human error, human error, and human error. The captain obviously expects any stowaway to be a dangerous criminal - so why didn't he check before launch? The ship is massive and pretty roomy, but less than less than less than a fraction of a fraction of 1% of its weight causes it to swerve off-course only at the end of its trip? Plus, this ignores how the planets (if not stars) they pass would have their own masses also affecting the ship's course - and she would be insignificant to most of them as well. Hell, this last one "outright ignores the laws of physics as applied to spacecraft"! The third is odd because it is less-solvable directly, because it seems the ship is ultra-minimalist - but given the extra space and such the claim doesn't hold weight even if we do accept a human-weight margin-of-error.
*** The problem isn't the solution -- as mentioned above, the problem is the fact that the scenario is implausible in the extreme for multiple reasons.
*** That's not necessarily a problem, if you read it as a morality play. But if the story is an Aesop about an impartial universe sometimes requiring cruel actions, the moral starts to fall apart once you wonder if things would have been different, had whoever designed the craft considered a margin of error. Or, if that would have been too inefficient, maybe they could have replaced the closet with a button that flashed before take-off if the ship was over its weight-limit. Or maybe this carefully-constructed ship and its precious cargo could have been better-secured, so that random college students can't just walk aboard. After a point, the moral sounds less like "An impartial universe forces cruel choices" and more "Human error forces cruel, potentially-avoidable choices."
*** How do you weigh a ship?
** Regarding "The Lottery" analogy. In that story the townspeople killed because they were irrational and superstitious. That their rationale for killing makes no sense is the point of the story. "The Cold Equations" is (supposedly)about cold logic necessitating killing. If, in this story, the rationale for killing makes no sense, the story has failed.

* This entire page seems to ignore one very important thing: ''There is very little less important to story function than '''''''scientific plausibility.''''' Thing is, this wasn't supposed to be a story explaining the various ins and outs of a fictional universe. It is, first and foremost, a story about the cruel necessity of one girl's death to save others. The lack of fulfillment the ending creates? The feeling that it all could have been avoided? ''That's the point.'' And no amount of scientific accuracy would change it.
** This objection ignores one very important thing: the complaints are not about 'scientific plausibility', they're about how this entire story can't exist in the first place unless every significant actor in the story has the IQ of an oxygen-deprived lemming on muscle relaxants. [[IdiotPlot We have a trope for that.]]
** This would be more believable if the story didn't beat the reader over the head with the "cold scientific reality" of the rocket equations and how the girl's death was a necessary due to scientific laws and various engineering constraints.
*** Bingo. A story whose Aesop is 'sometimes horrible things happen due to engineering constraints' has an obligation to ''make the engineering make sense'' -- otherwise, it subverts its own Aesop, and the real lesson the story teaches becomes 'protip: don't hire morons to be your engineering staff'.
*** I don't think the premise of the story (physics are unforgiving) and the criticism (the engineering is bad) are incompatible. In RL, physics really are unforgiving, and this story the girl doesn't know it, yes... But I'd argue that the designers do know it and just don't care, or simply accept the risks. Yes, they could have done things better. Who fucked up? The girl? The designers? The pilot? All of them? The universe doesn't care who fucked up. There are laws of physics. Maybe you are ignorant like the girl, or maybe you know the consequences but just don't care, like the designers, maybe it could've been prevented, but once the situation got rolling, all the what-ifs don't matter. Remember the 9/11 hijackers? In hindsight, it's clear that having poor cabin doors can be a bad idea, but that doesn't make all the passengers less dead. And even then, when someone jacked your plane, you were expected to get ransomed off, not flown into a building. I mention this point because people complain about the pilot and his pistol. He was under the idea that only violent maniacs would try to jack the ship. I thought the gun was for his protection. If you think only crazy dudes try to stow away, you'll also think someone crazy enough to try would also be willing to kill you and jettison your body. I'd say the gun was for his protection, mostly.
*** The question is not 'who fucked up' (as the answer is a clear and unambiguous 'everyone involved in this mess, at every step along the way'), the question is 'are the fuckups within the suspension of disbelief'. For those in the audience who have any knowledge of flight ops or safety engineering, the answer is 'no, no it is not'. Its not just that the mistakes in-story are epically blatant and huge, its also that they contradict what the story claims is the set-up for this plot. (See elsewhere on this page for 'if this thing really is designed to such extreme weight tolerance, why the hell does it even have enough room for a second person to fit in it?' and 'if its really such a critical emergency mission, why did nobody do even a basic preflight inspection?' and so forth).

* Why does no one consider that there are two people on board? They don't even have to through with it, but it's mind-boggling that no one even notices that the pilot could die instead.

* One thing that occurs to me, is that for a story about the universe being uncaring for mistakes or negligence, the company and the pilot are rather negligent in protecting themselves from dangerous stowaways. It Pre-flight checks and security are so light that an untrained girl can slip on-board and find a hiding spot, it seems that a dangerous (and armed!) criminal could have done the same. He then could have easily gunned down the pilot before he realized there was someone else on board, and made off with the ship supplies to be fleeced at a black market. Result? The inadequate security that forced the innocent girl to be spaced, could have just as easily resulted in the deaths of the pilot and the entire colony.

** The girl's gender is heavily emphasized to convey her innocence. While her age, occupation, status as a civilian and countless other factors could convey this innocence just as well, the author(or at least the pilot) bring a lot of attention to her gender that makes some readers uncomfortable. The implication strays out of "She's young and has no idea how things work out here" and disquietingly into "If she were a man, I'd have shot her by now."

*** It was apparently written as a TakeThat to the ''DestinationMoon'' type stories of the time, which always had happy endings, even if a DeusExMachina was required to make it so.[[note]]Judith Merril's ghastly "Dead Center", also published in '54, was written for similar reasons.[[/note]] But though "The Cold Equations" is implausible, unsubtle, and exists solely to drop an anvil, the same can be said of many of its contemporaries.

* The YMMV page cites a quote by Barry Malzberg calling it "proto-feminist," "anti-feminist" or even "misogynist." Where and how do gender politics come into play, and what evidence do people have for their interpretations, especially of misogyny?

*** I don't think the premise of the story (physics are unforgiving) and the criticism (the engineering is bad) are incompatible. In RL, physics really are unforgiving, and this story the girl doesn't know it, yes... But I'd argue that the designers do know it and just don't care, or simply accept the risks. Yes, they could have done things better. Who fucked up? The girl? The designers? The pilot? All of them? The universe doesn't care who fucked up. There are laws of physics. Maybe you are ignorant like the girl, or maybe you know the consequences but just don't care, like the designers, maybe it could've been prevented, but once the situation got rolling, all the what-ifs don't matter. Remember the 9/11 hijackers? In hindsight, it's clear that having poor cabin doors can be a bad idea, but that doesn't make all the passengers less dead. And even then, when someone jacked your plane, you were expected to get ransomed off, not flown into a building. I mention this point because people complain about the pilot and his pistol. He was under the idea that only violent maniacs would try to jack the ship. I thought the gun was for his protection. If you think only crazy dudes try to stow away, you'll also think someone crazy enough to try would also be willing to kill you and jettison your body. I'd say the gun was for his protection, mostly.

*** It was apparently written as a TakeThat to the stories of the time, which always had happy endings, even if a DeusExMachina was required to make it so. But though "The Cold Equations" is implausible, unsubtle, and exists solely to drop an anvil, the same can be said of many of its contemporaries.

----*** I don't think the premise of the story (physics are unforgiving) and the criticism (the engineering is bad) are incompatible. In RL, physics really are unforgiving, and this story the girl doesn't know it, yes... But I'd argue that the designers do know it and just don't care, or simply accept the risks. Yes, they could have done things better. Who fucked up? The girl? The designers? The pilot? All of them? The universe doesn't care who fucked up. There are laws of physics. Maybe you are ignorant like the girl, or maybe you know the consequences but just don't care, like the designers, maybe it could've been prevented, but once the situation got rolling, all the what-ifs don't matter. Remember the 9/11 hijackers? In hindsight, it's clear that having poor cabin doors can be a bad idea, but that doesn't make all the passengers less dead. And even then, when someone jacked your plane, you were expected to get ransomed off, not flown into a building. I mention this point because people complain about the pilot and his pistol. He was under the idea that only violent maniacs would try to jack the ship. I thought the gun was for his protection. If you think only crazy dudes try to stow away, you'll only think someone crazy enough to try would also be willing to kill you and jettisons your body. I'd say the gun was for his protection, mostly.

----

*** Bingo. A story whose moral is 'sometimes horrible things happen due to engineering constraints' has an obligation to ''make the engineering make sense'' -- otherwise, it subverts its own attempted moral, and the real moral of the story becomes 'protip: don't hire morons to be your engineering staff'.

*** Bingo. A story whose moral is 'sometimes horrible things happen due to engineering constraints' has an obligation to ''make the engineering make sense'' -- otherwise, it subverts its own attempted moral, and the real moral of the story becomes 'if you hire morons to be your engineers, you're going to regret it'.

*** Bingo. A story whose moral is 'sometimes horrible things happen due to engineering constraints' has an obligation to ''make the engineering make sense'' -- otherwise, it subverts its own attempted moral, and the real moral of the story becomes 'sometimes horrible things happen because some engineers are really really incompetent'.

***** Difficult in the sense of 'fatal for the pilot' as that chair seems to be the deceleration couch, and that alone might be a good reason to toss her out the airlock: would you rather die from depressurization, which is more or less fast, or being turned into chunky salsa by several gravities worth of force may not be fast enough?