From: dstein@oak.math.ucla.edu (David Stein)
Subject: Re: The Cold Equations (Was: Re: Political Correctness + Sci-fi)
Organization: UCLA Mathematics Department
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 92 09:31:39 GMT

  When I said:

     The core of the moral of the story is "stupid kids die".  One of
     the reasons it is a classic, I suspect, lies in the fact that it 
     is not customary, even today, to kill kids for stupidity in the
     SF/Fantasy genre.  
  
  Jim Mann objected:

     No, the "moral" of "The Cold Equations" is in the title itself:
     the universe doesn't care.  The laws that govern the universe
     are "cold" and don't care about human feelings.  

  I'm aware of the title and the implications, which is why I chose
  the word *core*.  I expected some dissent, but did not want to 
  make my reply to Crawford even longer then it already was.  So 
  I'll deal with this here.

  I agree that `cold and uncaring universe' is part of the moral,
  but it is not the whole moral.  It would hardly be original as 
  such; the idea of a cruel and indifferent universe can be found in 
  many earlier stories, be it H.G. Well's _The Star_ or J. London's 
  _How to Build a Fire_.

  You write:

     The girl dies, not because she is stupid, but because the laws 
     of the universe can't be changed, no matter how much our emotions
     want them to in this case.  

  The girl dies because she gets herself into a situation where even
  the physical and electronic presence and efforts of adults cannot
  help her.

  To say she died because "the laws of the universe can't be changed, 
  no matter how much our emotions want them to" is like saying a cat 
  stupid enough to run under the wheels of a car died because of the 
  indifference and cruelty of the univere (see _Valis_).  Such a form
  of abstraction in the context of a story like "Cold Equations" does 
  little to explain the choice of the particular circumstances under
  which the girl dies, or to explain why the story affects its readers.

  You write:

      The power of the story (which, though flawed, does have an
      emotional impact) is that Godwin doesn't cop out. The pilot
      doesn't pull a rabbit out of his hat (as most readers of the
      time no doubt expected, because in such stories that is what
      usually happened). 

  Unless you are willing to reduce the power of the story to a stylistic 
  trick of countering the reader's expectations, and if you are to take 
  the idea of a "moral" seriously, you should interpret the events in the 
  story in moralistic terms.  

  The girl dies. The girl does not die alone.  The girl strikes the readers 
  as "emotional and dumb" or at least as "certainly ignorant and naive".
  She could have been saved, but this would cost the lives of many others.

  Your interpretation of the moral is independent of the above choices.
  In my opinion, these choices are not irrevelant.  I think the moral
  is essentially:

    Kids, don't stray too far from society ("family") and don't fuck with 
    things you don't understand ("technology") otherwise civilization 
    ("the engineers") may not be able to help you because the nature of
    the universe ("physical laws") is cold and uncaring ("unlike we")
    -- and even we might sacrifice you if the price is too high.

  From this, given that in the SF genre children are seldom killed off due 
  to a fault of their own, I extracted, as the *core*, "stupid kids die." 

 - David

--
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I'm not a native speaker of English, so I'm not sure what I wrote.
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================================ - David (the metamathician) - ===
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