May 2021 - "The Old Equations" by Jake Kerr

[Jim]

May 2021's short story is The Old Equations by Jake Kerr. It's free from Lightspeed Magazine in both text & audio here:
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fi...

It's an updated version of The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin that we discussed a few years ago here:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

[Ryan]

I read the Cold Equations and didn't like it at all. Is this story different enough that I might still enjoy it?

[Jim]

Ryan wrote: "I read the Cold Equations and didn't like it at all. Is this story different enough that I might still enjoy it?"

It's told through short messages, so a completely different format & it's an alternate history type story. It's not long, so give it a shot.

[*Tau*]

Thanks for drawing my attention to this short story, Jim!
Really enjoyed reading it and wrote a small review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Jim]

I really liked it too, Tau. I liked the way it edged into the problem. I probably didn't get it as soon as I should have, but as you mentioned in your review, once I did it became somewhat predictable. Still chilling & sad, though.

[Ed]

Ryan wrote: "I read the Cold Equations and didn't like it at all. Is this story different enough that I might still enjoy it?"

It is very different. Nobody dies. The author explained here that initially he was going to do something about a stowaway on a spaceship, but then decided that would be too similar to the Cold Equations. The main link between the two stories now is that physics can't change just because it is inconvenient for you.

This story should please those who like hard SF. You might enjoy trying to look at the timestamps of the messages and see whether they really make sense in terms of relativity. I'm far too lazy for that, myself!

[Ed]

I was confused a bit by the fact that one character is named "Mars", short for "Marsden". I was wondering for a while whether there was a colony on Mars.

[Jim]

That's a great author interview, Ed. Thanks for putting in the link.

Yeah, that 'Mars' kept getting me, too. Unfortunate naming & the biggest flaw in the story, IMO. It kept knocking me out of the flow. He really did get the stages of grief down well & I found the character limit worked frustratingly well.

[Oleksandr]

I finished the story and while the idea was interesting, I think it could have been way shorter. I'm no physicist, but I also doubt that modern physics could work (as it ought to to create space ships) without a relativity.

As to its relation to Cold Equations I think it is quite tenuous, for a pilot here had no choice

[Ed]

I pretty much agree that they would have discovered relativity at some point in the development of space flight. Also, Einstein wouldn't be so easily forgotten, since he was one of the pioneers in quantum mechanics as well as relativity.

The pilot did have the possible choice of abandoning the mission. A choice he rejects. But the main link to "Cold Equations" is the idea that the laws of the universe don't care what you want. They are what they are.

[Oleksandr]

I talked with a physicist and he said that before Einstein's e=mc^2 there was Lorentz–Lorenz equation which "made a path" for it, so the probability of discovery after 1880 was quite high

[Ed]

Oleksandr wrote: "I talked with a physicist ..."

Don't tell anyone, but ... I have a PhD in Chemical Physics.

[Oleksandr]

Ed wrote: "Don't tell anyone, but ... I have a PhD in Chemical Physics."

I won't. As a side note about the progenitor of this story, The Cold Equations and Other Stories, just recently came across an interesting fact - it was in the first since 1920s collection of short sf stories in the USSR, published in the 1960 - Научно-фантастические рассказы американских писателей (Goodreads lacks this book). And to print it the book has a preface were a Soviet SF author Александр Казанцев in detail tells what's wrong with each story as well as giving often false info about other books, e.g. says that Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future is chiefly about a nuclear war.

About Cold Equations he writes:
psychological novel of horror.... Excess weight is extra life. It have to be thrown overboard. It does not occur to the author to show genuine heroism, a willingness to sacrifice oneself in an acute situation. Not! The cold and cruel pilot, having spent the prescribed amount of sympathetic words and explaining to the passenger that, according to the laws of space travel, every extra passenger must be destroyed, gives the doomed one to talk on the radio with a shocked brother and write letters to her parents. Then this mechanical performer of duty and a representative of inexorable inhumanity firmly presses the red lever with his hand and throws the bewildered girl with blue eyes, in small shoes with shiny beads into space ... How much more human would the same inexorable equation be if there were another face outside the brackets, truly courageous the man-hero who left the girl in the rocket and turned on the automatic descent equipment! But the American novelist was interested only in whipping up horror, and not at all in showing the strength and nobility of a person.

[Ed]

Oleksandr wrote: "... the American novelist was interested only in whipping up horror, and not at all in showing the strength and nobility of a person..."

Love it!

I've also seen criticisms of the story from outside the USSR complain that it was really the greed of corporation that caused the real problem. They shouldn't have allowed a ship to travel with just barely enough fuel an no margin for error.

[Ed]

So, this book, eh?

Machine translation comes up with this description:

Arm yourself with patience, reader!

We embark on a daring journey through the jungle of American science fiction. Let us be researchers, penetrate the thickets, where among the tenacious vines, blood-sucking orchids, poisonous thorns, among the darkness of the thicket and the swamp of swamps that suck in, you can find the most interesting examples of the mind game, and sometimes the cinchona tree of heart bitterness. It is worth delving into this jungle in order to better understand what worries Americans today, among whom there are already many who are looking for a way out of the dense thicket. However, our finds will still be rare, and on our way we will meet a lot of things that testify to a fantasy fueled by hatred, hopelessness, a fantasy that is unable to rise to a bold and bright dream.

[Oleksandr]

Ed wrote: "Oleksandr wrote: ".They shouldn't have allowed a ship to travel with just barely enough fuel an no margin for error.

Yes, there were a few, the newest one I'm aware of in this (and last) year Hugo nominee Cora Buhlert - http://corabuhlert.com/2020/03/18/the...

And yes, that book. Actually some researchers say that the preface of this and most other translated works from 60s-80s was written to pacify censors, like "we inform a reader about what authors made wrong before reading"

Also, the author of Cold Equations made several attempts of more optimistic finale, but Campbell as an editor turned them all down, so actually it is not an author's fault.

[Jim]

I thought there was a line in the original about how she couldn't operate the spaceship, so that's why he was the only choice to continue.

[Jim]

I just reread the "Cold Equations" & there isn't anything in it that explicitly states she couldn't operate the ship, but the whole tone suggests she couldn't. She's young & naïve without any understanding of the situation or space travel which is what led her into the problem in the first place. While the pilot relies on computer control for the course, we're led to the idea that his job isn't just that of a mindless drone, so I think the criticism about his lack of sacrifice is wrong.

[Ed]

Oleksandr wrote ..."

Thanks. That story by Cora Buhlert was quite nice: The Cold Crowdfunding Campaign

[Oleksandr]

Ed wrote: "Thanks. That story by Cora Buhlert was quite nice: The Cold Crowdfunding Campaign"

Agreed. A nice allusion to fandom as well.

[Ryan]

This story was nothing more than an homage to The Cold Equations - the connection is tenuous at best. Were it not for the similar titles I would not have even thought of the older story.

I enjoyed the story quite a bit. I don't read much alternate history, and I think this may be the first one I have that takes place in the far future with an alternate history in the past. But like others have said, I don't think the alternate history is believable - it's basically unthinkable that advanced spaceflight would develop without first developing satellites, which depend on the theory of relativity's predictions of time differences in order to function correctly.

I liked how the story unfolded gradually with the characters (and readers) coming to understand the implications of relativity, in particular with regards to the husband/wife relationship.

[Ryan]

I just wish the conclusion had gone further. There was an obvious reason to end the story where it did, but I would have liked an epilogue style rundown of what would have happened when James returned.

Also, was it ever really said what the journey was for, or where? It was obviously the first time they had done it, so was it just a test run or was there some other objective they wanted to accomplish out there?

[Ed]

This month there is yet another version of the story: "The Cold Calculations" by Aimee Ogden. She tries to give the original an optimistic ending, with a call to action.

https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/ogde...

[Jim]

Thanks. I like how the one story spawned several others.

[Oleksandr]

Jim wrote: "Thanks. I like how the one story spawned several others."

In this specific case I'm more surprised that a lot of authors who 'answer' don't like the original story

[Jim]

Oleksandr wrote: "In this specific case I'm more surprised that a lot of authors who 'answer' don't like the original story"

I'm not. The original story is basically the trolley problem which everyone has objections to. It doesn't sit well with us at all since it always seems ethically wrong & ultimately reduces people to numbers. This story is a typical response by changing the conditions to make the decision unnecessary.

[Oleksandr]

Jim wrote: "The original story is basically the trolley problem which everyone has objections to. "

The problem (?) is that most alt-version don't stand the trial of time, while this story continues to generate rage that leads to more stories

[Jim]

I agree that the original continues to generate responses, but I don't see that as a problem; quite the opposite.

[Oleksandr]

Jim wrote: "I agree that the original continues to generate responses, but I don't see that as a problem; quite the opposite."

ok, not a problem, more a paradox, because the subsequent stories are usually homages and these are the opposite