Friday, October 22, 2010

Tom Godwin's "The Cold Equations & Other Stories" (ed Eric Flint) (collection, free): Annotated table of contents & review

Cover image of the 2003 short story collection The Cold Equations and Other Stories by Tom Godwin. Collection is compiled and edited by Eric Flint.
Entire collection is online at Baen CD. One story in this online version, "The Gulf Between", has been extensively edited by Eric Flint because it "was very dated". I personally prefer originals, even if dated; download link for this story below, therefore, goes to an unedited copy elsewhere.

Table of contents (9 stories, best first, unread last).

If I have a separate post on a story, link on title goes there. Links on publisher or year fetch more matching fiction. My rating is in brackets.
  1. [novelette] "The Cold Equations" (A); download; Astounding, August 1954: An innocent girl is to be executed due to apathy of administration (according to author, due to nature's laws, but that's now how it comes across in the story). Intensely emotional.
  2. [novel] "The Survivors" aka "Space Prison" (A); download; 1958; survival: Never give up hope.
  3. [novelette] "--And Devious the Line of Duty" (A); download; Analog, December 1962; diplomacy: A young man gets his heart broken as part of his work!
  4. [novelette] "No Species Alone" (A); download; Universe Science Fiction, November 1954: Snakes are afraid of cats!
  5. [novelette] "Empathy" (A); download; Fantastic Science Fiction Stories, October 1959: Actions speak louder than words.
  6. [novella] "Mother of Invention" (B); download; Astounding, December 1953; problem solving: Marooned space explorers find a way to end their predicament.
  7. [ss] "Brain Teaser" (B); download; If, October 1956: Solving an impossible physics problem!
  8. [novella] "The Gulf Between" (B); download; Astounding, October 1953: Man & machine (AI) will forever think differently.
  9. [ss] "The Harvest" (C); download; Venture Science Fiction, July 1957: Something I cannot make out head or tail of.

    Biblical(?) "angels" are carnivorous energy beings living outside earth's atmosphere, & they feed of "fralings" - (probably) souls of people who've died on surface? Something.

Fact sheet.

First published: 2003.
Related: Stories of Tom Godwin.

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