"Eric Flint - The Cold Equations" - читать интересную книгу автора (Flint Eric)

Production by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH
Printed in the United States of America
 Preface

by Barry Malzberg
The title story of this volume, "The Cold Equations," is perhaps the most famous and
controversial of all science fiction short stories. When it first appeared in the August
1954 issue of Astounding, it generated more mail from readers than any story previously
published in the magazine. Since then, it has been reprinted thousands of times (almost
all college courses on science fiction routinely include it on reading lists). It has been the
basis of a television movie and a Twilight Zone episode, and prior to that had been
adapted for radio and television many, many times.
Its impact remains. In the late l990's it was the subject of a furious debate in the
intellectually ambitious (or simply pretentious; you decide) New York Review of Science
Fiction in which the story was anatomized as anti-feminist, proto-feminist, hard-edged
realism, squishy fantasy for the self-deluded, misogynistic past routine pathology, crypto-
fascist, etc., etc. One correspondent suggested barely-concealed pederasty.
The debaters' affect over a story more than four decades old was extraordinary, and
the debate did not end so much as it kind of expired from exhaustion. Godwin's adoptive
daughter, Diane Sullivan, said in conclusion that Godwin himself had always felt women
were "To be loved and protected" and A.J. Budrys in a similarly funerary tone noted that
" 'The Cold Equations' was the best short story that Godwin ever wrote and he didn't
write it."
But, of course, he did. I'll have more to say about the history of the short story in my
afterword (see below), but for now that's enough. Here, in one volume, are the best
writings of Tom Godwin. It begins with his most popular novel, The Survivors, and
closes with his legendary story, "The Cold Equations."
 THE SURVIVORS
Editor's note: This is my personal favorite of all of Godwin's writings.
Some of my fondness for this short novel, I'll admit, is perhaps simply
nostalgia. The first two science fiction novels I ever read were Robert
Heinlein's Citizen of the Galaxy and . . . this one. Between them, the two
stories instilled a love of science fiction in a thirteen-year-old boy which
has now lasted for more than four decades. But leaving that aside, I think
this story more than any other captures those themes which recur
constantly in Godwin's fiction: the value of courage and loyalty.

Godwin had a grim side to him, which is reflected in The Survivors as it is
in most of his stories, but—also as in most—it is ultimately a story of
triumph. More so, in some ways, than in any other science fiction novel
I've ever read.

Eric Flint


Part 1
For seven weeks the Constellation had been plunging through hyperspace with her
eight thousand colonists; fleeing like a hunted thing with her communicators silenced and
her drives moaning and thundering. Up in the control room, Irene had been told, the
needles of the dials danced against the red danger lines day and night.