The Cold Equations

The story takes place entirely aboard an Emergency Dispatch Ship (EDS) headed for the frontier planet Woden with a load of desperately-needed medical supplies. The pilot, Barton, discovers a stowaway: an eighteen-year-old girl. By law, all EDS stowaways are to be jettisoned because EDS vessels carry no more fuel than is absolutely necessary to land safely at their destination. The girl, Marilyn, merely wants to see her brother Gerry and was not aware of the law. When boarding the EDS, Marilyn saw the "UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL KEEP OUT!" sign, but thought she would at most have to pay a fine if she were caught. Barton explains that her presence dooms the mission by exceeding the weight limit, and the subsequent crash would kill both of them and doom the colonists awaiting the medical supplies. After contacting her brother for the last moments of her life, Marilyn willingly walks into the airlock and is ejected into space.

Critic and engineer Gary Westfahl has said that because the proposition depends upon systems that were built without enough margin for error, the story is good physics, but lousy engineering, and that it frustrated him so much he decided it was "not worth (his) time. Very poor Engineering."[1] Writer Cory Doctorow has made a similar argument, noting that the constraints under which the characters operate are decided by the writers, and not therefore the "inescapable laws of physics". He argues that the decision of the writer to give the vessel no margin of safety and a marginal fuel supply focuses reader attention on the "need" for tough decisions in time of crisis and away from the responsibility for proper planning to ensure safety in the first place. Doctorow sees this as an example of moral hazard.[2]

Writer Don Sakers' short story "The Cold Solution" (Analog, July 1991), which debunks the premise, received the 1992 Analog Analytical Laboratory award as the readers' favorite Analog short story of 1991.

In 1999, Richard Harter wrote a detailed analysis of the story online, with special attention to the possible negligence of those who designed the situation such that dilemmas like this could occur, and how this paralleled similar concerns involving industrial safety legislation.[3]

The story was shaped by Astounding editor John W. Campbell, who sent "Cold Equations" back to Godwin three times before he got the version he wanted, because "Godwin kept coming up with ingenious ways to save the girl!"[4] In a 2019 essay in Locus, author Cory Doctorow criticized Campbell's decision as one to turn the story "into a parable about the foolishness of women and the role of men in guiding them to accept the cold, hard facts of life."[5] In 2016, Campbell biographer Alec Nevala-Lee noted that the story was published at a time when Campbell had embraced contrarianism, on the basis that (in Campbell's words) there was "no viewpoint that has zero validity — though some have very small validity, or very limited application"; Nevala-Lee also revealed that Campbell described the story as a "gimmick on the proposition 'Human sacrifice is absolutely unacceptable.' So we deliberately, knowingly and painfully sacrifice a young, pretty girl… and make the reader accept that it is valid!"[6]

The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction points to Robert Cromie's "A Plunge into Space" from 1890 as having a plot very similar to "The Cold Equations", and the theme of Feldstein's story is itself similar to the story "Precedent", published by E. C. Tubb in 1949. As in "The Cold Equations", a stowaway must be ejected from a spaceship because the fuel aboard is only enough for the planned passengers.[7]

David Drake stated "The plot is lifted directly from "A Weighty Decision," a story in the May–June, 1952, issue of the EC comic Weird Science. I don't believe that coincidence could have created plots so similar in detail." and ends with "The plot is such an obvious steal from the comic that I think Godwin would have concealed it better if he hadn't intended to use a completely different ending. I can also imagine that Godwin wouldn't have expressed his qualms at changing the ending to Campbell, who wouldn't have winked at direct plagiarism. (Not that EC had any legitimate gripe: Bill Gaines laughed in later years about the way he and his staff at EC stole plots from SF stories and ran them without credit.)"[8]

Tied for 9th place in Astounding/Analog magazine’s 1971 All-Time Poll short fiction category.[13]

Placed 8th in the 1999 Locus Awards for best novelette.[14]

The following anthologies featuring literary works from the science fiction genre have included Godwin’s “The Cold Equations” in their publications:

• Modern Science Fiction (Anchor Books, 1974) By Norman Spinrad.[15]

• The Road to Science Fiction #3: From Heinlein to Here (Signet, 1979) By James E. Gunn.[16]

• The Great SF Stories: 16 (1954) (DAW Books, 1987) By Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg.[17]

• The Ascent of Wonder: The Evolution of Hard SF (Tor Books, 1994) By David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer.[18]

• The World Turned Upside Down (Baen Books, 2005) By David Drake, Eric Flint and Jim Baen.[19]

• Factor of safety
• The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One, 1929–1964, an anthology of the greatest science fiction short stories prior to 1965, as judged by the Science Fiction Writers of America
• Tunnel problem
• Trolley problem

• The Cold Equations title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database