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The Cold Equations-- Condensed Version
May. 30th, 2010 11:24 pm
The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin -- Condensed Version
(Published in Astounding Magazine in 1954, and for some reason rated as one of the great SF stories of all time)
Slick: Roger, Colony Control, this is Rescue Ship X Minus One. We'll arrive at the colony with the life-saving medicine in eight hours, unless I picked up a naive stowaway--
Marianne: (popping out of a storage compartment) Yoo-hoo!
Slick: (sighs) Hello. Please step into the airlock so I can jettison you into outer space.
Marianne: Are you sure? That will kill me in great agony, and I'm pretty sure that's bad!
Slick: Well, yes, but the problem is that due to your additional weight we won't have enough fuel to deliver the life-saving medicine to the plague-ridden colony. So if I don't kill you, thousands of other people will die.
Marianne: That's silly. Use your reserve fuel.
Slick: We don't have any. And nothing you can possibly imagine will work either.
Marianne: I've never heard anything more stupid in my life. Jettison your spacesuit, or...
Slick: (with a huge sigh) Look, Missy, let's save some time here. We're stuck in a story where the author Has A Point To Make, and he thinks the reader is too stupid to appreciate it. So he's designed a completely unrealistic scenario designed to drive that one idiotic idea through the reader's skull with a thousand blows of a stone mallet. No matter what you propose, he'll just come up with some reason, however far-fetched, why it won't work.
Marianne: What's the point he's trying to make? That physics has no mercy?
Slick: More like he's a jackass, if you ask me.
Marianne: (looking at the fatal airlock door) Well, I guess I can't argue against that. So I step into the airlock now?
Slick: Yup.
Marianne: OK. (Steps into the airlock) Bye!
Slick: Bye! (pulls the lever. FWOOOSH!)
(Published in Astounding Magazine in 1954, and for some reason rated as one of the great SF stories of all time)
Slick: Roger, Colony Control, this is Rescue Ship X Minus One. We'll arrive at the colony with the life-saving medicine in eight hours, unless I picked up a naive stowaway--
Marianne: (popping out of a storage compartment) Yoo-hoo!
Slick: (sighs) Hello. Please step into the airlock so I can jettison you into outer space.
Marianne: Are you sure? That will kill me in great agony, and I'm pretty sure that's bad!
Slick: Well, yes, but the problem is that due to your additional weight we won't have enough fuel to deliver the life-saving medicine to the plague-ridden colony. So if I don't kill you, thousands of other people will die.
Marianne: That's silly. Use your reserve fuel.
Slick: We don't have any. And nothing you can possibly imagine will work either.
Marianne: I've never heard anything more stupid in my life. Jettison your spacesuit, or...
Slick: (with a huge sigh) Look, Missy, let's save some time here. We're stuck in a story where the author Has A Point To Make, and he thinks the reader is too stupid to appreciate it. So he's designed a completely unrealistic scenario designed to drive that one idiotic idea through the reader's skull with a thousand blows of a stone mallet. No matter what you propose, he'll just come up with some reason, however far-fetched, why it won't work.
Marianne: What's the point he's trying to make? That physics has no mercy?
Slick: More like he's a jackass, if you ask me.
Marianne: (looking at the fatal airlock door) Well, I guess I can't argue against that. So I step into the airlock now?
Slick: Yup.
Marianne: OK. (Steps into the airlock) Bye!
Slick: Bye! (pulls the lever. FWOOOSH!)
