The Cold Equations/Headscratchers: Difference between revisions

** In fact if they're willing to cut things as close as they appeared to the mission could have been endangered by him sitting too long on one side and altering the course by a tiny fraction of a degree during the trip, killing him and (since there is no one to jettison) leaving the entire population of the planet to die. Would have gotten the point across even better than the story he wrote.

* I always wondered why they didn't have something on the ship that would light up red and go beep when the maximum was reached ''while they were loading it''. Or prevent the ship from being deployed if it was over max. And if weight was such an important consideration, why didn't they have small, slightly built people piloting the thing instead of big bruiser spacefaring dudes as per usual?

* Let me say two quick things in favor of Tom Godwin, the author of this short story. The first is, he DIDN'T want to kill the girl off. He sent the story to Astounding Magazine multiple times, each time with a non-lethal way of fixing the problem. It was the magazine's editor [[John W. Campbell]] who rejected each of Godwin's happier endings. It was Campbell, not Godwin, who wanted the girl to die. The second is that had the girl not been killed, NO ONE would remember this story 50+ years later. The cruelty of dealing with the situation in such a harsh manner is what made this story immortal, and I suppose Campbell probably understood that. The fact that it's horrific and goes against convention is what makes it stick out in a sea of similar stories. I mean, seriously people, how many people do you think would still be reading Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" all these years later if that story ended with everyone coming to their senses and abandoning their killing ritual?

** It's true that it's memorable because it has a cruel [[Downer Ending]]. It's still an [[Idiot Plot]].