For Book Club

[james_davis_nicoll]

Aside from The Cold Solution, which stories could be said to be replies to The Cold Equations?

Comments

[dragoness_e]

So the dude that reviews The Cold Solution seems to whine that "solution" stories all miss the point of the original story, which he feels is a "trolley problem" story, and the whole point is the terrible dilemma. Unfortunately for him, the story "The Cold Equations" is not a thought experiment, it is an attempt to tell a story. Thought experiments are allowed to be stupid and make no sense--they are intended to challenge you to think. Stories that are stupid and make no sense just annoy readers, they don't challenge them--except maybe to write fanfiction fixing the stupid. "The Cold Equations" has too many plotholes and idiotic circumstances to sit well with readers who know anything about the real world.

[patrick_morris_miller]

Would that TCE had been a story, rather than an exercise in petty sadism on Campbell's part.

[dragoness_e]

Indeed. I hear he made Godwin change the ending to the bad one, because, I don't know, he wanted to posture about hard men making hard decisions or something. I much prefer Julius Caesar's attitude in Gallic Wars, or Captain Bligh's after the mutiny: Both of them had a reputation for ruthlessness, and yet none of their people were expendable, they tried to get them ALL home/win the war with a minimum of casualties.