What differentiates either “The Roads Must Roll” or “The Cold Equations” from the Weinbaum stories you read for last time? Are the narrative voices distinct? Do they have a similar or different way of presenting “science” and the technological?
4 thoughts on ““Hard” Science Fiction and the “Golden Age””
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
These stories place technology – as opposed to fantasy, which is central in Weinbaum’s stories – at the heart of the narrative. Moreover, these stories go beyond the basic science fiction tale, and explore issues of morality and class that were not apparent in Weinbaum’s work. “Roads Must Roll” was a particularly interesting story, given that it took place on earth, and used futuristic (although not unbelievable) technology to investigate Functionalist philosophy. I was immediately reminded of Silicone Valley and the tech world in general, which often prides itself as being a true meritocracy that plays an indispensable role in society. Overall, I found these works to be enjoyable for their mix of fun science fiction and serious dilemma.
The Cold Equations differs from the Weinbaum stories in that the cold equations takes a pessimistic view on the limits of science. Although Weinbaum represents foreign planets as dangerous, it is a very romanticized view of danger, where the heroes always escape, and the danger exists mostly as a vessel for Weinbaum to write his vivid descriptions of alien life. The danger in the cold equations is the harsh vacuum of space and the unrelenting laws of physics. There is no beauty in it, merely an equation repeated several times throughout the stories. The author makes you think there is a possibility of escape, but it is always a distant, faint hope, and in the end, the girl dies. In both of Weinbaum’s stories, science provides an escape, such as the flame-pistol that kills the doughpots, or the rocket that rescues Jarvis at the end of the Martian story. Weinbaum’s emphasis is on the potential of technology. In the Cold Equations, the author emphasizes the limits of science. The enemy is not an exotic alien, but rather the laws of gravity. Science is no longer unlimited possibility, but an unavoidable certainty.
The voices of the narrator differ in the cold equations and Weinbaum’s stories as well. In the cold equations, the narrators are brave frontiersmen, once again romanticized in the same style as cowboys in westerns. The cold equations narrator on the other hand has no name, no backstory, and is not exactly a hero. The narrator has no agency, and no power to change the outcome of the story. Weinbaum’s stories allow the reader to live out a fantasy, but in the Cold Equations, the narrator is as helpless as the reader them self.
Both stories underline the bleaker side of the double edged sword of technology and “science” in Weinbaum’s stories much of the focus was on the fantastic and exotic nature of the setting and the settings inhabitants. The unforgiving worlds of Venus and Mars were the primary antagonist while human technology merely aided the stories’ protagonists. Technology such as the transuit, thermoskin or flame pistol were shown only to help the heroes of the story. The flame-pistol is a dangerous weapon that could have caused injury or death to a human character in the story, but instead it is only shown to aid the adventurers. In the “Roads Must Roll” the roads are presented as an impressive technological and engineering feat, but Heinlein exposes the dangers of both their design and the danger of societies reliance on such a system. As a result the story acts as a cautionary tale for the dangers a seemingly too perfect technology hides. “The Cold Equations” shows interstellar space travel in similar light. Marilyn is excited by the possibility of using space travel to see her brother, but she sees it as a romantic endeavor where stowing away could cause at worse a fine for her. She doesn’t understand the dangers of such space travel, and in the end this innocence costs her her life. Godwin is demonstrating that, for the wonders and opportunities technology such as space travel offers, it is a technologic advancement that brings its users much closer to the knife-edge of life or death than they realize. Overall, the difference between these two story set’s presentation of technology is the amount of problems it causes as well as solutions it finds.
As mentioned in Cole’s post, much of Wienbaum’s prose is dedicated to discussions and descriptions of the worlds in which he sets his stories. In lending attention to the settings of his stories, the settings themselves become antagonists — a motif that is prevalent to modern science fiction works. Characters and protagonists are competing with a foe that is formidable and frightening, but not necessarily evil — malice is something we associate with intention, and there is no intention the random chaos of the natural world. Wienbaum’s descriptions of his environments is the basis of his scientific descriptions, much of which underlies the fictional conflicts between his characters and environments. “The Cold Equations” shares some similarities with Wienbaum’s work in that the natural environment is the active antagonist. Marilyn, who boards the ship as a stowaway in order to see her brother finds herself in mortal danger as the ship doesn’t have enough fuel to support her additional weight. While feeling tremendous sympathy for Marilyn and remaining aware of the narrator’s moral convictions, the reader is made to understand that due to the nature of the unforgiving environment, there is nothing that the narrator can do to save her. The narrator refers to Marilyn as x — “the unwanted factor in a cold equation.” There is no malice in the decision that ultimately defines Marlyin’s doom — there is no evil, and there is no sentiment. The forces responsible for her death are unfeeling and unthinking. The young girl the reader has grown affections for is doomed for reasons beyond human control and barely within human understanding — this is the crux of what makes science fiction brilliant. Through technical prose and imaginative descriptions, stories like these allow audiences to think about natural phenomena — like space — in new and challenging ways.