The Chilly Equations
I want to tell you about a story I read more than half a century ago, and just re-read this afternoon. I think you may find it kind of interesting.
There’s a spaceship. It’s a prototype, and its mission is such that it has to be totally stripped down. Its fuel has been measured to the ounce and/or the gram. The weight factor is so vital that not a single extraneous thing can be permitted onboard—not even so much as an extra sandwich or a hairbrush.
The mission is not going to be a long one. Every factor and every possibility has been carefully calibrated. There can be no errors, nor are any anticipated.
The ship takes off, and it isn’t long before the pilot realizes that something is very wrong: it’s using much too much fuel. It’s only a few hours into the flight and the mission is seriously endangered.
The engines are checked for malfunctions. They’re working perfectly. The fuel tanks are checked for leaks. They’re airtight. The exterior is checked for damage by meteors or space debris. Its structural integrity has not been compromised.
The pilot goes down the list of possible causes, and finally he finds that the ship is carrying extra weight, maybe 120 pounds’ worth. It’s a stowaway, a beautiful girl—and an ugly problem. If he can’t find 120 pounds’ worth of things to jettison in one hell of a hurry, the mission—and quite possibly the ship itself—is doomed…but the ship had been stripped down to its essentials. There is absolutely nothing to jettison.
Except the girl.
With her onboard, nothing survives. Without her, the cold equations suggest that the mission will just barely succeed, but only if her weight is removed quickly.
And, amidst tears and regrets, the innocent stowaway is jettisoned into space.
The end.
Sound familiar?
Well, it probably should—if you were reading EC’s Weird Science #13 back in the summer of 1952. It was titled “A Weighty Decision,” with Wally Wood supplying his usual fine artwork.
It wasn’t identical to Tom Godwin’s “The Cold Equations.” There were three crew members (and none of them, after ten months of training, could perform either of the others’ jobs, so none of them could be jettisoned). The ship wasn’t delivering desperately-needed medicine. And the girl wasn’t somebody’s kid sister, but the pilot’s fiancée.
But the thing that made the story go, the thing it hinged upon, the thing that made it memorable, was the cold equation that cost an innocent and lovely young girl her life.
“The Cold Equations” is probably the most-discussed science fiction story ever written, even more so than Heinlein’s Starship Troopers. Not a day goes by that you can’t find people talking about it on the internet, 56 years after it first appeared. It was a special story, no question about it.
But it wasn’t the first to tell that special story. I suppose one could claim that Godwin wrote it without ever seeing the comic book, and quite possibly he did; I have no knowledge of that. But I would argue with anyone who says he wrote it before the comic book came out. The comic had a May-June, 1952 cover date, and the Astounding with Godwin’s story had an August, 1954 cover date. Add in lag times, and does anyone seriously think John Campbell sat on that story for between 2 and 2 ½ years? (Yes, I know Godwin said Campbell put him through some rewrites, but surely not two years, or even six months, worth of them.)
Well, hell, people have only been discussing and arguing “The Cold Equations” for 56 years. Maybe this’ll give ’em another year’s grist for their mills.