Amazing how such a flawed and ill-thought-out story became a classic of science fiction. 
I disagree that the story – no, scratch that. I disagree that the author wants the young girl (whose name is Marilyn) to be morally blameless. Godwin has her acknowledge her wrongdoing explicitly. Here’s some releveant dialogue:
[QUOTE=Tom Godwin, obviously]
“You still haven’t told me,” she said. “I’m guilty, so what happens to me now? Do I pay a fine, or what? … I wanted to see my brother. … There were only the two of us kids — Gerry and I — and I haven’t seen him for so long, and I didn’t want to wait another year when I could see him now, even though I knew I would be breaking some kind of a regulation when I did it.”
[/QUOTE]
The point is that the consequences of her act are not commensurate with the gravity of the offense. I wrote consequences rather than punishment
because the latter term implies a moral or ethical aim in what happens, when, rather, it is simple necessity that causes it. Marilyn’s extra mass will cause the ship to crash on landing. There’s nothing to jettison that will equal her mass. If the mother ship (the Stardust takes time to return for the EDS, it will disturb its schedule enough so that other, equally life-or-death missions will fail, and thus others will die. She cannot pilot the ship herself, so the pilot (Barton) dying in her place is not an option. And if the ship crashes, all the men in the survey party will perish.
Marilyn’s presence is the only element in the equations that can be changed; The girl is doomed from the moment Barton discovers her because there are not sufficient resources at hand to spare her. Obviously he could have spared her with a pre-flight check; probably a blunter written warning as to what happens to stowaways would lhave done likewise. But neither of those facts change Barton’s situation when the story opens.
True, but the underlying problem is the same. If there had been halfway competent efforts to prevent the situation from arising in the first place (locked doors, someone on duty from initial prep and cargo loading through takeoff*, a properly informative warning sign), the gravity of the stowaway’s offense would clearly be much higher. She would have been clearly on notice about the seriousness of the offense, and would have had to be much more willful and deliberate about trespassing in order to get into the situation – in short, she would have had to be much closer to the pilot’s concept of a stowaway as a clear-cut criminal and/or lunatic.
That, ultimately, is why the fridge-logic issues undermine the whole impact of the story.
*This is clearly not precluded by limitations on crew capacity. According to the story, the reason Marilyn knew about the EDS launch in the first place is that she was talking to a cleaning lady.
(bolding mine)
Did you mean to write more obvious or something similar there? Because I can’t see how Marilyn’s situation could GET more grave.
Anywhistle, while I agree that the situation exposes the grave and correctable flaws in the system, I still think it’s an error to analyze the story in terms of that system. The story is about Marilyn & Barton and the impact Marilyn’s foolish-but-understandable decision has on them. She is doomed from the moment the story opens, and there are not heroics possible at that point that can save her.
Obviously such situations are possible… but because humans are fallible we strive to make such situations as rare as possible, we don’t take them for granted and leave them easily stumble-into-able. I mean, you can make one mistake while driving and kill yourself… but a truly phenomenal amount of effort goes into the design of cars, the layouts of streets, the existence of traffic signs and markers, etc., to make that as unlikely as possible.
It is interesting that a story that is clearly considered a classic is generating such a heated response… which would never happen with a truly POS story to begin with.
“Morally blameless” is a bit ambiguous. Yes, she is the cause of her predicament - that is the essence of the story. Having the cause be some disaster that ruins the fuel supply is a different story - that’s not “The Cold Equations”, that’s “Explosions Ruin Space Vessels”. Yes, she made a conscious decision to hide on the ship, so she knew it wasn’t allowed. But the other element the story harps on is that she’s just a silly girl who on a whim decides to go see her brother, rather than a dangerous or evil person or deliberately trying to cause problems.
I think he meant that the offense would be something more serious - like deliberately sabotaging a mission, or attempted hijacking of the vessel, or some such crime, rather than the minor offense of stowing away that happens to have dramatic consequences because of lousing planning and oversight.
Ultimately, that’s where the story is. From the point we enter the story, there is no other recourse. I mean, trying to find another 100 lbs of mass to eject should have been at least considered, such as
Marilyn: “Isn’t there something else we can eject? A spare seat? Hatch covers?”
Pilot: “I’m afraid this ship is stripped to the bone. There’s only one seat, and at the g-loads of landing, it’s a necessity if I’m to pilot the ship. Same thing with the hatches - they’re integrated and necessary for proper function of the ship. I really wish there were something else, but there isn’t.”
Just by adding a few lines of consideration, it eliminates one objection. It addresses an obvious question rather than leaving it unconsidered.
I think it’s a kobiashi maru (sp?) situation. Whereas early readers would focus their emotions on the scenario, modern readers are just as likely to focus on the author.
jackdavinci - good point bringing up the Star Trek kobiashi maru test. Remember Kirk only beat that by cheating. The point of the Cold Equations is that you can’t cheat physics - although, yes the author could have set up the scene better.
It’s not that sort of story, though. It’s not about finding a clever solution to the problem; it’s about the fact that in some situations, there is no happy ending possible from where you are.
And, as the Wrath of Khan makes clear, Kirk was wrong to cheat. The point of the KM simulation (I don’t think it’s really a test, as no solution is possible) is that nobody beats the odds forever; in the end, death always wins. Toward the end of the movie, after Spock’s funeral, Kirk even concedes to his son (David?) that he spent his life hiding from that truth, but now can no longer avoid it.
But that’s just me.
Skald - I think we are both on the same page re the Star Trek plotline - as usual you are just far more coherent than me. In both stories, the cold equations will ultimately wing.
My original point was that the modern reader may, like Kirk, deeply question whether a fictional scenario is contrived, and focus scrutiny on the author rather than the dilemma.
I’m not really sure what the point of the KM sim is. We get one answer in Wrath of Khan and another in the reboot. I think it could be useful to make sure the cadet isn’t going to panic or freak out in what may potentially be an unwinnable scenario. But I don’t think there’s any use or moral good in proposing that cadets be able to resign themselves to accepting a situation as unwinnable. The KM is written that way, but there’s no way to know that a real life situation is unwinnable until the moment that you lose. So you may as well try until you die.
The only exception I can see is a situation that isn’t winnable, but for which there is some secondary level of acceptable loss that can be bargained for in the place of total loss. Like surrendering to avoid death. But the KM doesn’t test for that.
I’m not sure what Kirk’s point was. Assuming he hadn’t cheated, how would that have affected the outcome?
All fictional stories are contrived to some degree it is just a matter of how blatantly obvious the contrivance is.
Supposedly this ship is big enough for someone to stow away on yet so small it doesn’t have 100 pounds of extra mass to eject. I found that odd but not so bad that it ruined the story.
To me the point was that physics does not care. It is not malicious it is just incapable of caring. Humans gotta deal with that up front.
Heinlein kind of mentioned that point in a less brutal way in the short story, It’s Great To Be Back. If people start going into space in significant numbers then dumb ones may not be allowed. Because it is too expensive and too dangerous and dumb mistakes would be really expensive. Would you want to be in space with someone that might get himself and you killed with stupidity?
It think people trying to dis the story on the grounds that better bureaucratic rules could eliminate the problem are either missing the point or giving it a different point.
psik
[QUOTE=jackdavinci]
I’m not really sure what the point of the KM sim is. We get one answer in Wrath of Khan and another in the reboot. I think it could be useful to make sure the cadet isn’t going to panic or freak out in what may potentially be an unwinnable scenario. But I don’t think there’s any use or moral good in proposing that cadets be able to resign themselves to accepting a situation as unwinnable. The KM is written that way, but there’s no way to know that a real life situation is unwinnable until the moment that you lose. So you may as well try until you die.
[/QUOTE]
I thik the point to Kobayashi Maru was just to test the cadet’s reaction to stress and failure. If the cadet went ass-crazed-ballistic after the test, maybe s/he isn’t a great candidate for command.
After all, the Star Trek universe seems to be one where an officer could be making life or death decisions quite frequently. “Failure” might be something less than the whole ship being blown to smithereens, but failure will come along sooner or later - the ship being damaged, a landing party being wiped out, failing to save a stricken ship, whatever.
Military history is littered with examples of generals whose greater failure came after the first failure, who were frozen by unfavourable turns of events into inaction and confusion and so the damage was worse than it had to be. There are dozens and dozens of exampes of leaders who looked great in terms of their academic credentials and understanding of things military but, when thing got stressful, they could not hack it. Example 1: George McClellan, a brilliant man and wonderful organizer who just sort of lost it every time the enemy got near.
I’m not going to try to fanwank the extremely inconsistent ST universe, but conceptually I always liked the idea that Starfleet would subject its cadets to psychologically challenging situations to see if, to put it very plainly, they had the balls to handle it when their crew died, or even were willing to send them to their deaths to accomplish the mission.
IIRC, Sulu’s response upon hearing the Kobayashi Maru’s distress call was “They’re in the neutral zone? Screw it, I’m not going in there.”
Accidentally bumped the thread
Sorry about the zombie. You can shoot it out the airlock.
I can respect the story on its own level. I don’t much care for it, but I don’t hate it. Read a long time ago, don’t give a damn now.
However, and this is a huge however, the entire plot is a noodle carefully constructed to be as stupidly unwinnable as possible. It had to be designed that way, and it works only if you pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. If you start to doubt the story for even a moment, it falls apart completely. And that’s the hugest failing of the story.
Many better sci-fi authors (including of that era) went to impressive lengths to define how and why things worked in their story, often for much more trivial issues, so that it would be utterly plausible when something went wrong, or the crew had to figure out a way to fix things. The science - the titular cold equations - only work how the plot wants them to when the plot wants them to. And because of that, it fails to emotionally connect with me. It requires that hundreds or thousands of people, all kept carefully “off-screen”, act in extremely specific and unintelligent ways to make the “on-screen” events happen. It requires a girl to act in a specific way at a specific time because of a strange twist of fate.
Maybe worst of all, it requires a setup in which anything could result in disaster, but in which no precautions are taken whatsoever. Consider this: I search a public campground for stray bits of paper more carefully than these numbnuts searched their emergency vessel for life-threatening baggage. I can think of a lot of excuses or rationales, but none of them are supported by the text, and there are absolute factors which point against them. In the story, it was a girl. But it could easily have been an engineer’s tool or part of a loading crate, and the pilot might not have found them so easily - or might never have noticed they were present at all until the ship crashed. If they don’t even check for things they expect might be onboard, and don’t check for giant obvious things that any idiot could find, then frankly I don’t really give a damn whether anybody dies or not: they’re all Too Stupid to Live in the first place.
Second, this may have been a mildly unusual case, but it was evidently not so unusual that the crew wasn’t prepared with supplies, a pilot, and a shuttle ready to act. The scenario is evidently common enough that there are formal procedures for everything. I really can’t get around that: the story requires them to be professionals at times, and unprofessional at others, but only when it’s convenient. They make no mistakes only when they are supposed to. And yeah, that utterly shatters my suspension of disbelief, and the story becomes only a story. It has no message or moral, because it’s all contrivance. I then go watch My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic for realistic mistakes and compellingly plausible stories.
Edit: Yes, I know it’s a zombie, but it’s a fun thread.
Given the culture of no worries that developed at NASA leading to Apollo 1, Challenger and Columbia, I could accept the “Cold Equations” if it came about more of an oopsies than deliberatly. Kind of like “Oh we never thought there would be a stowaway and so NOW we realize you won’t have enough fuel.” although I think not enough air would be more realistic.
Then again, one might also write a story from the point of view of someone who’s just jumped off a building, and who, on the way down, is contemplating whether he ought to commit suicide. The fact that the fateful decision is past and that the consequences are now inevitable does not change the fact that the character has already made that fateful decision.
Yup, I liked the novel The Kobayashi Maru too.
In fact, as much as I liked the 2009 Star Trek movie, I liked this novel’s presentation of Kirk’s simulator re-program a little better than the movie’s.
[spoiler]In the simulator, the Klingon captain asks the commander of the Starfleet vessel to identify himself. For the first time ever, Jim hears himself saying, “Captain James T. Kirk.”
The Klingon captain’s reply?
“THE James T. Kirk?!”
Within minutes, the Klingon ship is backing off, its commander babbling apologies, while Kirk has mounted a rescue mission and has gotten the Kobayashi Maru’s female first officer to have dinner with him that night.
Now, if THAT isn’t a scenario straight out of the mind of James T. Kirk, I don’t know what is! [/spoiler]