Lifeboat stories

[lydy]

So somebody, I don't remember who, has a new novel out where the general theme is that the only way for the human race to survive is for the main character (who is genetically neuter) to commit mass murder. James Nicol, who has a much lower tolerance than I do for lifeboat stories, is mocking it, and people on his blog are helping out. I can't say they're wrong. But it leads me back to the ultimate sf life boat story, "Cold Equations." (Quick definition: lifeboat story: there are X number or people on a lifeboat, which will only support X-1. Who do you throw overboard?)

I continue, into my old age, to like "Cold Equations." Part of it is sheerly nostalgia. In all honest truth, "Cold Equations" was the first time that I ran into the concept that physics trumped wishful thinking. The idea that the world was really, truly real and that good people and good intentions couldn't make it different than it was was an eye opener for me. There are problems with the story, of course. There are legitimate arguments about the set-up. But, if you accept the givens, the answer is logical, reasonable, and inevitable. (I hereby disregard as foolish the argument than the pilot could have done radical leg-ectomies on himself and the girl and thereby saved both their lives. There is no reason to believe, based on when the story was written and the amount of tech likely available to the protagonists, that the two of them would have survived the amputations. Or managed to pilot the capsule to the ground after the leg-ectomies. And that's the closest argument to realistic I've seen that doesn't alter the basic parameters of the problem that might work.)

I find myself wondering what the attraction of life boat stories is, though. Is it just that we want to be able to justify killing innocent people? Is there some base instinct we have to want to be able to kill people? I don't remember where it is that Lois McMaster Bujold says that hard choices are hypnotic, but she's right. But I think that the thing we find hypnotic is not just the hardness of the choice, but its certainty. There's a clear, defined, understood reason why some people die and other people live. Yes, we throw the crippled 12 year old over-board, but we all understand that there's a reason. It will preserve other lives. That's one of the reasons why the usual life boat argument is so unsatisfactory. In real life, even real life involving life boats, we don't know what's going to happen. We don't know if rescue will come in a day or a thousand days. In a day, we didn't need to kill the crippled girl. If in a thousand, then we were all dead anyway, and we didn't need to kill the little girl, we could all have died together. Who knows when or if it will rain? Who knows what fish we may or may not be able to catch from the sea. (Life boats tend to attract life, actually, and the hard equation of X amount of food and water is anything but a hard equation, in the end.) "Cold Equations" doesn't have any of those fuzzy edges, which is why it's so satisfactory as a story, but so unsatisfactory as a model for real life.

In real life, we don't know why people live and die. We don't have any good answers for why him and not her, why me and not him, why them or us and not us or them. It's complicated and scary, and there aren't any actual, simple equations deciding all these scary things life and death and disease and happiness. It's why people reach to a God, a hope that there is somebody in charge of all these big, scary, random events that change us into things we never expected to be, sometimes change us into things that are not at all. Even if we have to be the crippled 12 year old on the life boat, we'd like to believe that there's a reason, a point, a clear choice being made. And there isn't. There's us, every day, making choices, in a world where things aren't clear, aren't precise, aren't easy. And you know, maybe it'll rain. Maybe we'll be able to catch some fish. Maybe there'll be a desert island. Maybe we'll be rescued. Maybe we can rescue ourselves. It seems, you know, worth trying.

Comments

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Physics is seductive. You see this with the elderly physicists who have decided that if it isn't exactly like physics, it isn't real science, so hey, about this global warming thing....

[wild-irises.livejournal.com]

The book is Necessary Ill by Deb Taber. I james_nicoll and I've been kind of astonished at his level of venom about a book he hasn't read. Partly because it's published by Aqueduct, and partly because I get defensive in the service of unread books, I'm inclined to think it may be better than the treatment it's getting; I will read it at some point, though my stack is awfully high right now (and never seems to get lower).

I like your questions about the genre, and I like your answer. I know there are times when having clear, unambiguous reasons for the hard things seems awfully seductive to me.

[pameladean]

I read the author's Big Idea column and I was really not impressed. But I know it's actually hard to describe one's own work. I mean, if one could describe it really well, then one wouldn't have to write it.

What bugged me was the odd disconnection between what the author thought the problem was -- that her protagonist, whom she wished the reader to sympathize with, was a mass murderer -- and what sounded like the real problem to me, which was her really naive, stereotyped, and apparently unconscious-of-all-nuance depiction of said mass murderer as sexually neuter, and the idea of what must flow from that, how that must work. It's not what she did, which might be workable somehow, maybe, so much as that she never seemed to feel it was a problem. It was just a Cool Thing. Again, she might just have messed up writing about her book. That's really easy to do. But I dread reading it.

I don't want to derail Lydy's discussion, though.

P.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

I think that the thing I found most astonishing and emotionally important about "Cold Equations" was the realization that actions have consequences, that the things we do matter. I was raised a Calvinist, and this can do very strange things to your understanding of reality, especially as a teen. The Most Important Thing In the World, that is to say, your eternal salvation, is not only a thing outside your ability to change or influence, it is a thing beyond your ability to know. You hope, you pray, but God can do whatever he damn well wants, and good works and good thoughts and hope and birth and charity and study and thought have no influence on the outcome. One can easily start extrapolating that to the rest of one's universe. So my reaction to "Cold Equations" was probably somewhat idiosyncratic. I found it to be freeing and empowering.

[apostle-of-eris.livejournal.com]

I thought the word I wanted was "antinomian", but I checked, and that's not it.
Anyway, if we're already saved, then we can't sin, so we can do whatever we want. whoopee!

[pameladean]

I hate lifeboat stories with a passion. And with global warming, I feel we are actually in one, and the people who actually need to be thrown overboard are going to cling on with their fingernails and toss everybody else out instead.

P.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

We don't have any good answers for why him and not her, why me and not him, why them or us and not us or them.

When J was diagnosed with diabetes, he was given some literature to read. One of the things it said was "You'll ask, 'Why me?'" He thought that was very odd: why not him? I had the same reaction when I learned I had endometrial cancer: why not me? (For anyone who doesn't know, we are both doing well.)

I am far more comfortable with uncertainty, it seems, than a lot of people are--J is, too, but we agree that I am even farther toward that end of the scale. I consider this a great gift that the universe has given me, considering that, well, it IS all so uncertain.

It's why people reach to a God, a hope that there is somebody in charge of all these big, scary, random events...

And that I've never understood. Why would someone rather believe that with the horrors, the pain, that life can bring, actually someone is in charge, who could make it otherwise, rather than that it just happens? More, why would someone who believes that react by worshiping, adoring such a being?

[lydy.livejournal.com]

You are rather far out on the bell curve when it comes to comfort with uncertainty. My theory predicts that you are, therefore, not a big fan of life boat stories. My guess would be that they don't bother you, particularly, but they don't appeal to you, either, and that you tend to think of possible loop holes, rather than admiring the terrible plight that forces people to do terrible things. Am I even close to right?

As for God in charge of things...the sane Christians I know seem to believe that the suffering exists for some reason which God understands but which humans can't understand, what with not being God and all. They accept as a given his omnibenevolence and believe that his grace and mercy are infinite, even though there is suffering. Crazy Christians believe that the suffering is there to teach people a lesson and as revenge for bad behavior. Me, I parted ways with Christianity largely because I couldn't really believe that somebody that was omnipotent and omniscient couldn't do any better than what I saw. I don't quite understand how the sane Christians do that thing they do, but they do. And seem happy with it. Whatever. Every time I believe in God, I get really really pissed off at him, so mostly I don't. Oddly, I do believe in Grace. I just don't believe in God.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

You're right: I am not a fan, but they don't bother me. I tend to look for loopholes (or plot holes) in ALL the fiction I read/watch! Right now I am reading a cozy mystery, and if I had been its copy editor, I would have queried: "Don't law enforcement officers in even small town know, these days, that you don't cover the body with a cloth before checking for trace evidence?"

...for some reason which God understands but which humans can't understand, what with not being God and all.

This is how I feel about the whole God question: if there is a being capable of creating the universe, it is totally beyond our understanding. If we could understand God, we would BE God. Therefore, whether or not God exists is irrelevant to me, and if God exists, I'm pretty sure whether I believe in God is irrelevant to God.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

Well, "Cold Equations" did set up a definite, short time limit. And a closed environment: no rainclouds, no flying fish, no possible rescue.

I admire John Campbell's concept here: the first (or near first) apparent techy-puzzle story that did NOT have a solution. And his blurb,

The Frontier is a strange place - and a frontier is not always easy to recognize. It may lie on the other side of a simple door marked "No admittance" - but it is always deadly dangerous.
https://oglethorpe.edu/faculty/~m_rulison/Honors/SpeculativeFiction/The%20Cold%20Equations.htm

However, the story itself is patches on patches.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

Well, "Cold Equations" did set up a definite, short time limit. And a closed environment: no rainclouds, no flying fish, no possible rescue.

I admire John Campbell's concept here: the first (or near first) apparent techy-puzzle story that did NOT have a solution. And his blurb,

The Frontier is a strange place - and a frontier is not always easy to recognize. It may lie on the other side of a simple door marked "No admittance" - but it is always deadly dangerous.
oglethorpe.edu/faculty/~m_rulison/Honors/SpeculativeFiction/The%20Cold%20Equations.htm

However, the story itself is patches on patches.

[apostle-of-eris.livejournal.com]

"The Cold Equations" is and will remain a classic not because it is immortal literature, but because it so forcefully, unblinkingly pushes your face into the basic fact that Physics Doesn't Care. It's significant that a lot of the whinging is from the relativism of the "humanities".
(I was furious when that dino story a few years ago ("Think Like A Dinosaur"?) was held up as a parallel or rebuttal. No, children, the laws of physics are NOT comparable to strong social sanctions.)