Another plot hole I found: If the Exploration Crew on Woton are using the same philosophy that governs the tight tolerences on the crusiers and EDS ships, WTF are they going to do with this EDS pilot who just showed up? Somehow they now have to feed and care for him until he gets picked up when they do. If the method they are using to return from the planet to the crusier that picks them up is using the same guidlines then they do not have enough fuel to get themselves off the planet with him aboard. He is either on a one-way suicide run or has doomed the whole expedition.
Well, the thing you have to remember, that this is a bad story, written by a third rate writer. It has cardboard one dimension characters, little background and a trite storyline. Hell, it’s not even really SF by some definitions. The only reason why it got so much attention is because it broke the unwritten rules.:eek: The rules then, of Astounding, were that any tech problem had a tech solution. This story was like a chess column printing a “white to mate in 3 moves’ set up, then stating next day that there was no solution.
Except if you read the letters generated (and it generated a LOT) there were solutions, except that the author and Campbell (who is the real genius behind this story) kept denying them. Campbell really enjoyed the whole thing.
In the story as written, I agree, there is plenty of culpability to spread around. But it is still an essential element that the girl violated a “No Unauthorized Entry” sign. She deliberately acted against the stated regulations. That doesn’t negate the gross negligence shown by the crew and company regarding access control, but it does show that she is not blameless. If she had accidentally wandered into an unmarked area by going left when she should have gone right, or by wandering off from a tour and not seeing where they went, and then found herself on a rescue ship without authorization, then I would count her blameless or her culpability sufficiently low as to essentially be blameless. But she deliberately and with malice aforethought entered a restricted area and purposely stole away on the ship. She bears responsibility for that act, regardless of the company’s and crew’s responsibility to keep unauthorized people from the area.
Probably is one of those “no true scotsman” categories. It applies to things that literature departments in academia consider worthwhile and meaningful contributions to the world, not merely lots of sales and making a lot of money. The same way that The Hobbit is unlikely to win an Oscar for Best Picture, because even if it is well made, the story is a fantasy epic, and those aren’t considered the kind of movie worthy of Best Picture.
I agree, in the story as written, the company and crew are criminally liable. Doesn’t change the circumstance for the pilot or the girl after the audience enters the story. When he makes it back to civilization, then he can face criminal and civil charges for his failure to check for stowaways, but in the meantime, someone has to go out the airlock and she can’t land the ship.
But in the story as intended (and as written), the girl deliberately breaks regulations and takes intentional effort to stow away and not get caught at it. Ergo, she is guilty. Not death penalty guilty, and if they had caught her before launch, I wouldn’t expect them to space her on principle. She would get a lecture and a fine - exactly the punishment she expected. Conceivably be locked in her cabin for the rest of the voyage. But not summary execution. But that’s the point. Once she got past security and the launch occurred without detection, there is no more margin and thus no room for leniency and punishment equal to the crime. Rather, there are the Cold Equations and the balance of a trained pilot or a silly girl, which can the ship land without?
I see the point of the story. I also see the flaws in how it is written, and how those flaws compromise the suspension of disbelief necessary to receive the story as intended.
It is an important point that our current society is extremely safety conscious to the point of stupidity. When someone is inundated with meaningless alerts, we start to filter them out, and thus can miss the meaningful ones because we can’t distinguish the important ones from “warning: this is knife is sharp”. The girl comes from a society where everything is safe, and thus trivial hazards are marked with signs. Thus she does not realize that the signs on the ship carry actual hazards behind them. Yea society!
There’s no reason to assume so. The margins are specifically tight on the EDS rescue ship because it is a rescue ship. That’s stated in the story. They can function on tight margins because the details can normally be controlled very tightly. Except apparently keeping out a hardened criminal like a 17 year old girl.
But there’s no reason to think the margins on the Exploration Crew or their supply cruiser will be anywhere near that tight.
I don’t see that at all. The story needs her to have some level of culpability–she did break into the ship, after all–but it doesn’t require that the rest of the staff have no responsibility. The main point is that notions of human responsibility, fault, etc. have no meaning at all compared to the laws of physics.
You’re reading this from the late-20th/early-21st century perspective that people should be coddled and protected from their own actions, and that any disaster is actually the fault of the protectors. That’s not really something that’s been true for the vast majority of human history. And even today, it’s not fully true–the cold equations of gravity mean that if you step off a tall cliff, you die. In your last few seconds you may ask yourself if death is really a fitting punishment for such a minor transgression as a misstep.
It seems to me that the story is also about a culture collision–that between Earthside culture (which seems to resemble the present day) and life on a starship. Technology has apparently not quite progressed quite to the point where starship travel is easy enough to build in wide safety margins on everything; it seems a bit more like crossing the Atlantic hundreds of years ago.
Return of the King won best Picture and the series won 17 Oscars overall. But yes, it’s a “No True Scotsman”. Note that our “guest” refuses to give any cites or answers.
40 years or so ago my father worked in the basement of the UN. When I visited him I went to the lower level of the lobby, past the vending machines, and through a door that said more or less “UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL KEEP OUT!”. I never got stopped. The last time I went there was a lock and an alarm on that door.
Godwin can be criticized for not foreseeing the insane level of security we are used to today. But remember, there were no people from the bad part of town to keep out, and for the most part people could be expected to obey the rules. In a crisis situation a lock on a door delaying or preventing access could be a lot more dangerous than not having one.
We should remember this is a work of fiction, not a users manual. However bad you think the story is, it would be worse with a two page prelude outlining in detail the security procedures (or lack of them,) the reasons for them, and how she got around them. And if Godwin had put them in Campbell would have cut them.
You realize I’m not actually arguing against science fiction on its own merits, right? I am saying that in the larger literary world, genre fiction authors have to work much harder than “general adult literature” authors to receive critical attention and acclaim, and that when their works do become accepted to the literary canon, there is a tendency for people to stop thinking of them as “science fiction.”
The stigma of the SF label has probably lessened in recent years, as the old guard of criticism has begun to die off and be replaced by more open-minded writers. But I would wager that its effects are still felt even today.
Oh, yeah, PS: When thinking about all the things that are wrong with society today, the fact that there’s a warning label on my hairdryer telling me not to use it in the shower is not something that comes to the forefront of my mind. In fact, I bet the crew and the stowaway in the story would probably have enjoyed a society that was a little more warning oriented. For Christ’s sake.
Seriously, you wouldn’t even tell people about the weight limit? Do you tell your kids what to do if they catch fire, or do you think the little bastards should figure out “stop, drop and roll” by themselves?
Gee, maybe that’s because an extra person in the UN basement isn’t going to automatically, unavoidably cause everyone in the building to DIE. And again, it says in the story that hostile stowaways are a known problem that screws things up occasionally (which doesn’t even make sense, because WHY?), so you can’t say the crew didn’t know it could happen.
TOTAL STORY FAIL
As I said: familiarity breeds contempt. Excessive warning labels/signs are worse than useless, because they train people to disbelieve them.
The girl’s sin was ignorance. Obviously, information on the nature of EDSes is out there in their society–she probably slept through an introduction video when she boarded the ship in the first place, and any experienced member of the ship could have told her about the consequences of unauthorized boarding had she simply asked. Most passengers probably learn this in due time, and the existing warning messages are sufficient in the meantime. The story describes the situation as unique, so it’s obviously not a failure path that anyone thought of a great deal. That’s how most things get fixed, anyway–only after the first failure happens.
No, just the opposite. The situation was so common they had procedures and a blaster just for it. What seems to have been unique was that it was a young girl.
That’s what I meant. It was unique that someone would just slip in on a whim. All the other cases were criminals or the insane; people that were more motivated to bypass the existing security as well as ignore the warnings (perhaps the criminals hoped to kill the pilot first to bypass the dilemma), and who were disposable enough that no one cared if they got blasted or vented.
And aside from that, the situation wasn’t common. It was extremely rare (estimated to happen once per pilot’s career), but nevertheless pilots were trained on the procedures, just as they are trained on all kinds of other rare failure modes.
No, but they could steal stuff and cause lots of problems. And not every flight would be so close to the limit to make a stowaway automatically die.
I suppose you aren’t old enough to remember the almost total lack of security that used to be common. People did leave their houses unlocked. My dorm had no cards or other means of preventing access. There were no seatbelts in most cars, let alone airbags. In the early 1950s I suspect there was even less security. When could not having total security cause a problem? When one of the very few naive people on the ship stowed away on one of the very few flights where it would be fatal.
Maybe not, but his books get long and respectful review in the NY Times Book Review, often on the front page. It is a bit early to call them classics that will live forever, but they are definitely not considered junk. And lots of them go into Horror, even more of a ghetto than SF.
No, they don’t. What are you talking about? Is… is that what happened to you?
Again, it wasn’t the first failure. Did you even read the story? 
And nothing in the story indicates that the crew had any expectation that the stowaway should have known that her presence on the ship dooms them all. The only thing they are surprised about seems to be that somehow, titties have managed to board a spaceship.
Maybe you should rewrite the story. Until you do, it’s still shit. 
Do you really think that this story seemed logical in the 1950s? I suspect that every single one of my objections and more was brought up almost immediately after the wretched thing was published.
I have nothing against Stephen King, but I can tell you right now that many, many people consider his books junk. I am sorry.
King writes everything from pure hackmaster trash to quite good fiction.
No, actually I am not. Now I am under the distinct impression that you and I were having separate conversations.