The Cold Equations

Author: Tom Godwin

These were the great years of the sf short story; magazines like Astounding, F&SF, Galaxy and If were in their pomp and most of the brilliant novels of the period began their life as short stories. It would be easy to fill this list with short stories which together captured the classic years of science fiction perfectly, but there is one story that really stands out. If you were looking for one story that defined hard sf it would have to be "The Cold Equations" by Tom Godwin. A spaceship pilot is delivering urgently needed medical supplies when he discovers a young girl stowaway. Her extra weight means that his ship will not have the fuel necessary to reach its destination, so in the end he has no alternative but to jettison her. This is exactly what hard sf is all about: the laws of the universe are immutable, the only enemy is space itself. It is short, succinct, and unforgettable, an object lesson in what John W, Campbell wanted from the science fiction he published. Why it's on the list: Okay, the story is nonsense: no ship designed for such missions would be engineered to such ridiculously fine margins; no interstellar craft would have such lax security that a young girl could just wander unchallenged onto the ship; and there would inevitably be other objects aboard that could be jettisoned to make up for the not very great weight of a young girl. Let us not ignore, either, the blatant misogyny of the story, or the fact that Tom Godwin rewrote the story numerous times to find ways of saving the girl but Campbell wouldn't accept any of them. Even so, the story still generates impassioned debate today, some 60 years after it was first published. It is, like it or not, a story that has lasted and that has shaped our understanding of science fiction.