Editorial, July 2011
John Joseph Adams

Welcome to issue fourteen of Lightspeed!

A quick announcement before we get to this month’s teasers: The Lightspeed: Year One anthology, collecting all of the fiction we published in our first year (from June 2010 – May 2011), will be published by Prime Books in November. But never fear—all of our content will still be available on lightspeedmagazine.com; this will just be yet another way for readers to find and discover Lightspeed.

With that out of the way, here’s what we’ve got on tap this month:

Leading off this month, we have a classic hard sf story—perhaps the classic hard SF story—“The Cold Equations” by Tom Godwin. In it, a deep space pilot discovers a stowaway on board while on a routine transport mission. But the fuel-to-mass ratio on deep space missions is calculated precisely, and what options are there when the cold equations allow for no variables?

SF author and astronomer Mike Brotherton takes a look at Godwin’s classic story and explores its lasting power and influence on the field in “The Cold Legacies.”

A space pilot on the first human flight to Gliese 581 d discovers that the journey he’s embarked upon is not the one that he or the wife he left behind expected, in Jake Kerr’s astonishing debut “The Old Equations.”

In “The First Step to Enlightenment is Abject Failure,” Jeff Hecht examines some famous examples of scientific theories that were once widely thought to be accurate only later to be proven false.

In “Sweet Sixteen” Kat Howard introduces us to a girl who, like every girl on her sixteenth birthday, gets to choose her own destiny (through gene therapy)—as long as it’s the destiny that’s needed most by everyone else.

Author and PhD scientist Ekaterina Sedia explains the real-life possibilities of genetic alterations in her article “The Superpowered Potential of Epigenetics.”

Karen Joy Fowler’s “Face Value” brings us the story of the xenologist Taki, and his struggle to understand the alien nature of the mene, and the equally alien nature of his partner, Hester.

And, in our feature interview this month, Kat Howard talks with award-winning author Mary Doria Russell, about her SF novels The Sparrow and Children of God, and her latest book, Doc, an historical novel about Doc Holliday.

So that’s our issue this month. Thanks for reading!

John Joseph Adams, in addition to serving as editor of Lightspeed and Fantasy Magazine, is the bestselling editor of many anthologies, such as Brave New Worlds, Wastelands, The Living Dead, The Living Dead 2, By Blood We Live, Federations, The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and The Way of the Wizard. He is a 2011 Hugo Award-nominee for Best Editor (Short Form), his books have been nominated for the World Fantasy Award, and he has been called “the reigning king of the anthology world” by Barnes & Noble.com. John is also the co-host of io9’s The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. Find him on Twitter @johnjosephadams.

The Cold Equations
Tom Godwin

He was not alone.

There was nothing to indicate the fact but the white hand of the tiny gauge on the board before him. The control room was empty but for himself; there was no sound other than the murmur of the drives—but the white hand had moved. It had been on zero when the little ship was launched from the Stardust; now, an hour later, it had crept up. There was something in the supply closet across the room, it was saying, some kind of a body that radiated heat.

It could be but one kind of a body—a living, human body.

He leaned back in the pilot’s chair and drew a deep, slow breath, considering what he would have to do. He was an EDS pilot, inured to the sight of death, long since accustomed to it and to viewing the dying of another man with an objective lack of emotion, and he had no choice in what he must do. There could be no alternative — but it required a few moments of conditioning for even an EDS pilot to prepare himself to walk across the room and coldly, deliberately, take the life of a man he had yet to meet.

He would, of course, do it. It was the law, stated very bluntly and definitely in grim Paragraph L, Section 8, of Interstellar Regulations: ”Any stowaway discovered in an EDS shall be jettisoned immediately following discovery.”

It was the law, and there could be no appeal.

It was a law not of men’s choosing but made imperative by the circumstances of the space frontier. Galactic expansion had followed the development of the hyperspace drive, and as men scattered wide across the frontier, there had come the problem of contact with the isolated first colonies and exploration parties. The huge hyperspace cruisers were the product of the combined genius and effort of Earth and were long and expensive in the building. They were not available in such numbers that small colonies could possess them. The cruisers carried the colonists to their new worlds and made periodic visits, running on tight schedules, but they could not stop and turn aside to visit colonies scheduled to be visited at another time; such a delay would destroy their schedule and produce a confusion and uncertainty that would wreck the complex interdependence between old Earth and the new worlds of the frontier.

Some method of delivering supplies or assistance when an emergency occurred on a world not scheduled for a visit had been needed, and the Emergency Dispatch Ships had been the answer. Small and collapsible, they occupied little room in the hold of the cruiser; made of light metal and plastics, they were driven by a small rocket drive that consumed relatively little fuel. Each cruiser carried four EDSs, and when a call for aid was received, the nearest cruiser would drop into normal space long enough to launch an EDS with the needed supplies or personnel, then vanish again as it continued on its course.

The cruisers, powered by nuclear converters, did not use the liquid rocket fuel, but nuclear converters were far too large and complex to permit their installation in the EDSs. The cruisers were forced by necessity to carry a limited amount of bulky rocket fuel, and the fuel was rationed with care, the cruiser’s computers determining the exact amount of fuel each EDS would require for its mission. The computers considered the course coordinates, the mass of the EDS, the mass of pilot and cargo; they were very precise and accurate and omitted nothing from their calculations. They could not, however, foresee and allow for the added mass of a stowaway.

The Stardust had received the request from one of the exploration parties stationed on Woden, the six men of the party already being stricken with the fever carried by the green kala midges and their own supply of serum destroyed by the tornado that had torn through their camp. The Stardust had gone through the usual procedure, dropping into normal space to launch the EDS with the fever serum, then vanishing again in hyperspace. Now, an hour later, the gauge was saying there was something more than the small carton of serum in the supply closet.

He let his eyes rest on the narrow white door of the closet. There, just inside, another man lived and breathed and was beginning to feel assured that discovery of his presence would now be too late for the pilot to alter the situation. It was too late; for the man behind the door it was far later than he thought and in a way he would find it terrible to believe.

There could be no alternative. Additional fuel would be used during the hours of deceleration to compensate for the added mass of the stowaway, infinitesimal increments of fuel that would not be missed until the ship had almost reached its destination. Then, at some distance above the ground that might be as near as a thousand feet or as far as tens of thousands of feet, depending upon the mass of ship and cargo and the preceding period of deceleration, the unmissed increments of fuel would make their absence known; the EDS would expend its last drops of fuel with a sputter and go into whistling free fall. Ship and pilot and stowaway would merge together upon impact as a wreckage of metal and plastic, flesh and blood, driven deep into the soil. The stowaway had signed his own death warrant when he concealed himself on the ship; he could not be permitted to take seven others with him.

He looked again at the telltale white hand, then rose to his feet. What he must do would be unpleasant for both of them; the sooner it was over, the better. He stepped across the control room to stand by the white door.

“Come out!” His command was harsh and abrupt above the murmur of the drive.

It seemed he could hear the whisper of a furtive movement inside the closet, then nothing. He visualized the stowaway cowering closer into one corner, suddenly worried by the possible consequences of his act, his self-assurance evaporating.

“I said out!”

He heard the stowaway move to obey, and he waited with his eyes alert on the door and his hand near the blaster at his side.

The door opened and the stowaway stepped through it, smiling. “All right—I give up. Now what?”

It was a girl.

He stared without speaking, his hand dropping away from the blaster, and acceptance of what he saw coming like a heavy and unexpected physical blow. The stowaway was not a man —she was a girl in her teens, standing before him in little white gypsy sandals, with the top of her brown, curly head hardly higher than his shoulder, with a faint, sweet scent of perfume coming from her, and her smiling face tilted up so her eyes could look unknowing and unafraid into his as she waited for his answer.

Now what? Had it been asked in the deep, defiant voice of a man, he would have answered it with action, quick and efficient. He would have taken the stowaway’s identification disk and ordered him into the air lock. Had the stowaway refused to obey, he would have used the blaster. It would not have taken long; within a minute the body would have been ejected into space—had the stowaway been a man.

He returned to the pilot’s chair and motioned her to seat herself on the boxlike bulk of the drive-control units that were set against the wall beside him. She obeyed, his silence making the smile fade into the meek and guilty expression of a pup that has been caught in mischief and knows it must be punished.

“You still haven’t told me,” she said. “I’m guilty, so what happens to me now? Do I pay a fine, or what?”

“What are you doing here?” he asked. “Why did you stow away on this EDS?”

“I wanted to see my brother. He’s with the government survey crew on Woden and I haven’t seen him for ten years, not since he left Earth to go into government survey work.”

“What was your destination on the Stardust?”

“Mimir. I have a position waiting for me there. My brother has been sending money home all the time to us—my father and mother and me—and he paid for a special course in linguistics I was taking. I graduated sooner than expected and I was offered this job in Mimir. I knew it would be almost a year before Gerry’s job was done on Woden so he could come on to Mimir, and that’s why I hid in the closet there. There was plenty of room for me and I was willing to pay the fine. There were only the two of us kids—Gerry and I—and I haven’t seen him for so long, and I didn’t want to wait another year when I could see him now, even though I knew I would be breaking some kind of a regulation when I did it.”

I knew I would be breaking some kind of a regulation. In a way, she could not be blamed for her ignorance of the law; she was of Earth and had not realized that the laws of the space frontier must, of necessity, be as hard and relentless as the environment that gave them birth. Yet, to protect such as her from the results of their own ignorance of the frontier, there had been a sign over the door that led to the section of the Stardust that housed the EDSs, a sign that was plain for all to see and heed: UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL KEEP OUT!

“Does your brother know that you took passage on the Stardust for Mimir?”

“Oh, yes. I sent him a spacegram telling him about my graduation and about going to Mimir on the Stardust a month before I left Earth. I already knew Mimir was where he would be stationed in a little over a year. He gets a promotion then, and he’ll be based on Mimir and not have to stay out a year at a time on field trips, like he does now.”

There were two different survey groups on Woden, and he asked, “What is his name?”

“Cross—Gerry Cross. He’s in Group Two—that was the way his address read. Do you know him?”

Group One had requested the serum: Group Two was eight thousand miles away, across the Western Sea.

“No, I’ve never met him,” he said, then turned to the control board and cut the deceleration to a fraction of a gravity, knowing as he did so that it could not avert the ultimate end, yet doing the only thing he could do to prolong that ultimate end. The sensation was like that of the ship suddenly dropping, and the girl’s involuntary movement of surprise half-lifted her from her seat. “We’re going faster now, aren’t we?” she asked. “Why are we doing that?”

He told her the truth. “To save fuel for a little while.”

“You mean we don’t have very much?”

He delayed the answer he must give her so soon to ask, “How did you manage to stow away?”

“I just sort of walked in when no one was looking my way,” she said. “I was practicing my Gelanese on the native girl who does the cleaning in the Ship’s Supply office when someone came in with an order for supplies for the survey crew on Woden. I slipped into the closet there after the ship was ready to go just before you came in. It was an impulse of the moment to stow away, so I could get to see Gerry—and from the way you keep looking at me so grim, I’m not sure it was a very wise impulse. But I’ll be a model criminal—or do I mean prisoner?” She smiled at him again. “I intended to pay for my keep on top of paying the fine. I can cook and I can patch clothes for everyone and I know how to do all kinds of useful things, even a little bit about nursing.”

There was one more question to ask:

“Did you know what the supplies were that the survey crew ordered?”

“Why, no. Equipment they needed in their work, I supposed.”

Why couldn’t she have been a man with some ulterior motive? A fugitive from justice hoping to lose himself on a raw new world; an opportunist seeking transportation to the new colonies where he might find golden fleece for the taking; a crackpot with a mission. Perhaps once in his lifetime an EDS pilot would find such a stowaway on his ship—warped men, mean and selfish men, brutal and dangerous men—but never before a smiling, blue-eyed girl who was willing to pay her fine and work for her keep that she might see her brother.

He turned to the board and turned the switch that would signal the Stardust. The call would be futile, but he could not, until he had exhausted that one vain hope, seize her and thrust her into the air lock as he would an animal—or a man. The delay, in the meantime, would not be dangerous with the EDS decelerating at fractional gravity.

A voice spoke from the communicator. “Stardust. Identify yourself and proceed.”

“Barton, EDS 34GII. Emergency. Give me Commander Delhart.”

There was a faint confusion of noises as the request went through the proper channels. The girl was watching him, no longer smiling.

“Are you going to order them to come back after me?” she asked.

The communicator clicked and there was the sound of a distant voice saying, “Commander, the EDS requests . . . “

“Are they coming back after me?” she asked again. “Won’t I get to see my brother after all?”

“Barton?” The blunt, gruff voice of Commander Delhart came from the communicator. “What’s this about an emergency?”

“A stowaway,” he answered.

“A stowaway?” There was a slight surprise to the question. “That’s rather unusual—but why the ‘emergency’ call? You discovered him in time, so there should be no appreciable danger, and I presume you’ve informed Ship’s Records so his nearest relatives can be notified.”

“That’s why I had to call you, first. The stowaway is still aboard and the circumstances are so different—”

“Different?” the commander interrupted, impatience in his voice. “How can they be different? You know you have a limited supply of fuel; you also know the law as well as I do: ‘Any stowaway discovered in an EDS shall be jettisoned immediately following discovery.’”

There was the sound of a sharply indrawn breath from the girl. ”What does he mean?”

“The stowaway is a girl.”

“What?”

“She wanted to see her brother. She’s only a kid and she didn’t know what she was really doing.” “I see.” All the curtness was gone from the commander’s voice. “So you called me in the hope I could do something?” Without waiting for an answer he went on, “I’m sorry—I can do nothing. This cruiser must maintain its schedule; the life of not one person but the lives of many depend on it. I know how you feel but I’m powerless to help you. You’ll have to go through with it. I’ll have you connected with Ship’s Records.” The communicator faded to a faint rustle of sound, and he turned back to the girl. She was leaning forward on the bench, almost rigid, her eyes fixed wide and frightened.

“What did he mean, to go through with it? To jettison me . . . to go through with it—what did he mean? Not the way it sounded . . . he couldn’t have. What did he mean—what did he really mean?”

Her time was too short for the comfort of a lie to be more than a cruelly fleeting delusion. “He meant it the way it sounded.” ”No!” She recoiled from him as though he had struck her, one hand half raised as though to fend him off and stark unwillingness to believe in her eyes. “It will have to be.” “No! You’re joking—you’re insane! You can’t mean it!” “I’m sorry.” He spoke slowly to her, gently. “I should have told you before—I should have, but I had to do what I could first; I had to call the Stardust. You heard what the commander said.” “But you can’t—if you make me leave the ship, I’ll die.”

“I know.”

She searched his face, and the unwillingness to believe left her eyes, giving way slowly to a look of dazed horror. “You know?” She spoke the words far apart, numbly and wonderingly. “I know. It has to be like that.”

“You mean it—you really mean it.” She sagged back against the wall, small and limp like a little rag doll, and all the protesting and disbelief gone. “You’re going to do it—you’re going to make me die?” “I’m sorry,” he said again. “You’ll never know how sorry I am. It has to be that way and no human in the universe can change it.”

“You’re going to make me die and I didn’t do anything to die for—I didn’t do anything—”

He sighed, deep and weary. “I know you didn’t, child. I know you didn’t.”

“EDS.” The communicator rapped brisk and metallic. “This is Ship’s Records. Give us all information on subject’s identification disk.” He got out of his chair to stand over her. She clutched the edge of the seat, her upturned face white under the brown hair and the lipstick standing out like a blood-red cupid’s bow.

“Now?”

“I want your identification disk,” he said. She released the edge of the seat and fumbled at the chain that suspended the plastic disk from her neck with fingers that were trembling and awkward. He reached down and unfastened the clasp for her, then returned with the disk to his chair. “Here’s your data, Records: Identification Number T837—” “One moment,” Records interrupted. “This is to be filed on the gray card, of course?” “Yes.” “And the time of execution?” “I’ll tell you later.” “Later? This is highly irregular; the time of the subject’s death is required before—” He kept the thickness out of his voice with an effort. “Then we’ll do it in a highly irregular manner—you’ll hear the disk read first. The subject is a girl and she’s listening to everything that’s said. Are you capable of understanding that?” There was a brief, almost shocked silence; then Records said meekly, “Sorry. Go ahead.”

He began to read the disk, reading it slowly to delay the inevitable for as long as possible, trying to help her by giving her what little time he could to recover from her first horror and let it resolve into the calm of acceptance and resignation.

“Number T8374 dash Y54. Name, Marilyn Lee Cross. Sex, female. Born July 7, 2160.” She was only eighteen. ”Height, five-three. Weight, a hundred and ten.” Such a slight weight, yet enough to add fatally to the mass of the shell-thin bubble that was an EDS. ”Hair, brown. Eyes, blue. Complexion, light. Blood type O.” Irrelevant data. ”Destination, Port City, Mimir.” Invalid data.

He finished and said, “I’ll call you later,” then turned once again to the girl. She was huddled back against the wall, watching him with a look of numb and wondering fascination.

“They’re waiting for you to kill me, aren’t they? They want me dead, don’t they? You and everybody on the cruiser want me dead, don’t you?” Then the numbness broke and her voice was that of a frightened and bewildered child. “Everybody wants me dead and I didn’t do anything. I didn’t hurt anyone—I only wanted to see my brother.”

“It’s not the way you think—it isn’t that way at all,” he said. “Nobody wants it this way; nobody would ever let it be this way if it was humanly possible to change it.”

“Then why is it? I don’t understand. Why is it?”

“This ship is carrying kala fever serum to Group One on Woden. Their own supply was destroyed by a tornado. Group Two—the crew your brother is in—is eight thousand miles away across the Western Sea, and their helicopters can’t cross it to help Group One. The fever is invariably fatal unless the serum can be had in time, and the six men in Group One will die unless this ship reaches them on schedule. These little ships are always given barely enough fuel to reach their destination, and if you stay aboard, your added weight will cause it to use up all its fuel before it reaches the ground. It will crash then, and you and I will die and so will the six men waiting for the fever serum.”

It was a full minute before she spoke, and as she considered his words, the expression of numbness left her eyes. “Is that it?” she asked at last. “Just that the ship doesn’t have enough fuel?” “Yes.” “I can go alone or I can take seven others with me—is that the way it is?” “That’s the way it is.” “And nobody wants me to have to die?” “Nobody.”

“Then maybe—Are you sure nothing can be done about it? Wouldn’t people help me if they could?” “Everyone would like to help you, but there is nothing anyone can do. I did the only thing I could do when I called the Stardust.”

“And it won’t come back—but there might be other cruisers, mightn’t there? Isn’t there any hope at all that there might be someone, somewhere, who could do something to help me?” She was leaning forward a little in her eagerness as she waited for his answer.

“No.” The word was like the drop of a cold stone and she again leaned back against the wall, the hope and eagerness leaving her face. “You’re sure—you know you’re sure?”

“I’m sure. There are no other cruisers within forty light-years; there is nothing and no one to change things.” She dropped her gaze to her lap and began twisting a pleat of her skirt between her fingers, saying no more as her mind began to adapt itself to the grim knowledge.

It was better so; with the going of all hope would go the fear; with the going of all hope would come resignation. She needed time and she could have so little of it. How much?

The EDSs were not equipped with hull-cooling units; their speed had to be reduced to a moderate level before they entered the atmosphere. They were decelerating at .10 gravity, approaching their destination at a far higher speed than the computers had calculated on. The Stardust had been quite near Woden when she launched the EDS; their present velocity was putting them nearer by the second. There would be a critical point, soon to be reached, when he would have to resume deceleration. When he did so, the girls weight would be multiplied by the gravities of deceleration, would become, suddenly, a factor of paramount importance, the factor the computers had been ignorant of when they determined the amount of fuel the EDS should have. She would have to go when deceleration began; it could be no other way. When would that be—how long could he let her stay?

“How long can I stay?”

He winced involuntarily from the words that were so like an echo of his own thoughts. How long? He didn’t know; he would have to ask the ship’s computers. Each EDS was given a meager surplus of fuel to compensate for unfavorable conditions within the atmosphere, and relatively little fuel was being consumed for the time being. The memory banks of the computers would still contain all data pertaining to the course set for the EDS; such data would not be erased until the EDS reached its destination. He had only to give the computers the new data — the girl’s weight and the exact time at which he had reduced the deceleration to .10.

“Barton.” Commander Delhart’s voice came abruptly from the communicator as he opened his mouth to call the Stardust. “A check with Records shows me you haven’t completed your report. Did you reduce the deceleration?”

So the commander knew what he was trying to do.

“I’m decelerating at point ten,” he answered. “I cut the deceleration at seventeen fifty and the weight is a hundred and ten. I would like to stay at point ten as long as the computers say I can. Will you give them the question?”

It was contrary to regulations for an EDS pilot to make any changes in the course or degree of deceleration the computers had set for him, but the commander made no mention of the violation. Neither did he ask the reason for it. It was not necessary for him to ask; he had not become commander of an interstellar cruiser without both intelligence and an understanding of human nature. He said only, “I’ll have that given to the computers.”

The communicator fell silent and he and the girl waited, neither of them speaking. They would not have to wait long; the computers would give the answer within moments of the asking. The new factors would be fed into the steel maw of the first bank, and the electrical impulses would go through the complex circuits. Here and there a relay might click, a tiny cog turn over, but it would be essentially the electrical impulses that found the answer; formless, mindless, invisible, determining with utter precision how long the pale girl beside him might live. Then five little segments of metal in the second bank would trip in rapid succession against an inked ribbon and a second steel maw would spit out the slip of paper that bore the answer.

The chronometer on the instrument board read 18:10 when the commander spoke again.

“You will resume deceleration at nineteen ten.”

She looked toward the chronometer, then quickly away from it. “Is that when . . . when I go?” she asked. He nodded and she dropped her eyes to her lap again.

“I’ll have the course correction given to you,” the commander said. “Ordinarily I would never permit anything like this, but I understand your position. There is nothing I can do, other than what I’ve just done, and you will not deviate from these new instructions. You will complete your report at nineteen ten. Now—here are the course corrections.”

The voice of some unknown technician read them to him, and he wrote them down on the pad clipped to the edge of the control board. There would, he saw, be periods of deceleration when he neared the atmosphere when the deceleration would be five gravities—and at five gravities, one hundred ten pounds would become five hundred fifty pounds.

The technician finished and he terminated the contact with a brief acknowledgment. Then, hesitating a moment, he reached out and shut off the communicator. It was 18:13 and he would have nothing to report until 19:10. In the meantime, it somehow seemed indecent to permit others to hear what she might say in her last hour.

He began to check the instrument readings, going over them with unnecessary slowness. She would have to accept the circumstances, and there was nothing he could do to help her into acceptance; words of sympathy would only delay it.

It was 18:20 when she stirred from her motionlessness and spoke.

“So that’s the way it has to be with me?”

He swung around to face her. “You understand now, don’t you? No one would ever let it be like this if it could be changed.”

“I understand,” she said. Some of the color had returned to her face and the lipstick no longer stood out so vividly red. “There isn’t enough fuel for me to stay. When I hid on this ship, I got into something I didn’t know anything about and now I have to pay for it.”

She had violated a man-made law that said KEEP OUT, but the penalty was not for men’s making or desire and it was a penalty men could not revoke. A physical law had decreed: h amount of fuel will power an EDS with a mass of m safely to its destination; and a second physical law had decreed: h amount of fuel will not power an EDS with a mass of m plus x safely to its destination.

EDSs obeyed only physical laws, and no amount of human sympathy for her could alter the second law.

“But I’m afraid. I don’t want to die—not now. I want to live, and nobody is doing anything to help me; everybody is letting me go ahead and acting just like nothing was going to happen to me. I’m going to die and nobody cares.”

“We all do,” he said. “I do and the commander does and the clerk in Ship’s Records; we all care and each of us did what little he could to help you. It wasn’t enough—it was almost nothing—but it was all we could do.”

“Not enough fuel—I can understand that,” she said, as though she had not heard his own words. “But to have to die for it. Me alone . . . ”

How hard it must be for her to accept the fact. She had never known danger of death, had never known the environments where the lives of men could be as fragile and fleeting as sea foam tossed against a rocky shore. She belonged on gentle Earth, in that secure and peaceful society where she could be young and gay and laughing with the others of her kind, where life was precious and well guarded and there was always the assurance that tomorrow would come. She belonged in that world of soft winds and a warm sun, music and moonlight and gracious manners, and not on the hard, bleak frontier.

“How did it happen to me so terribly quickly? An hour ago I was on the Stardust, going to Mimir. Now the Stardust is going on without me and I’m going to die and I’ll never see Gerry and Mama and Daddy again—I’ll never see anything again.”

He hesitated, wondering how he could explain it to her so she would really understand and not feel she had somehow been the victim of a reasonlessly cruel injustice. She did not know what the frontier was like; she thought in terms of safe, secure Earth. Pretty girls were not jettisoned on Earth; there was a law against it. On Earth her plight would have filled the newscasts and a fast black patrol ship would have been racing to her rescue. Everyone, everywhere, would have known of Marilyn Lee Cross, and no effort would have been spared to save her life. But this was not Earth and there were no patrol ships; only the Stardust, leaving them behind at many times the speed of light. There was no one to help her; there would be no Marilyn Lee Cross smiling from the newscasts tomorrow. Marilyn Lee Cross would be but a poignant memory for an EDS pilot and a name on a gray card in Ship’s Records.

“It’s different here; it’s not like back on Earth,” he said. “It isn’t that no one cares; it’s that no one can do anything to help. The frontier is big, and here along its rim the colonies and exploration parties are scattered so thin and far between. On Woden, for example, there are only sixteen men—sixteen men on an entire world. The exploration parties, the survey crews, the little first colonies—they’re all fighting alien environments, trying to make a way for those who will follow after. The environments fight back, and those who go first usually make mistakes only once. There is no margin of safety along the rim of the frontier; there can’t be until the way is made for the others who will come later, until the new worlds are tamed and settled. Until then men will have to pay the penalty for making mistakes, with no one to help them, because there is no one to help them.”

“I was going to Mimir,” she said. “I didn’t know about the frontier; I was only going to Mimir and it’s safe.”

“Mimir is safe, but you left the cruiser that was taking you there.”

She was silent for a little while. “It was all so wonderful at first; there was plenty of room for me on this ship and I would be seeing Gerry so soon. I didn’t know about the fuel, didn’t know what would happen to me . . . ”

Her words trailed away, and he turned his attention to the viewscreen, not wanting to stare at her as she fought her way through the black horror of fear toward the calm gray of acceptance.

Woden was a ball, enshrouded in the blue haze of its atmosphere, swimming in space against the background of star-sprinkled dead blackness. The great mass of Manning’s Continent sprawled like a gigantic hourglass in the Eastern Sea, with the western half of the Eastern Continent still visible. There was a thin line of shadow along the right-hand edge of the globe, and the Eastern Continent was disappearing into it as the planet turned on its axis. An hour before, the entire continent had been in view; now a thousand miles of it had gone into the thin edge of shadow and around to the night that lay on the other side of the world. The dark blue spot that was Lotus Lake was approaching the shadow. It was somewhere near the southern edge of the lake that Group Two had their camp. It would be night there soon, and quick behind the coming of night the rotation of Woden on its axis would put Group Two beyond the reach of the ship’s radio.

He would have to tell her before it was too late for her to talk to her brother. In a way, it would be better for both of them should they not do so, but it was not for him to decide. To each of them the last words would be something to hold and cherish, something that would cut like the blade of a knife yet would be infinitely precious to remember, she for her own brief moments to live and he for the rest of his life.

He held down the button that would flash the grid lines on the viewscreen and used the known diameter of the planet to estimate the distance the southern tip of Lotus Lake had yet to go until it passed beyond radio range. It was approximately five hundred miles. Five hundred miles; thirty minutes—and the chronometer read 18:30. Allowing for error in estimating, it would not be later than 19:05 that the turning of Woden would cut off her brother’s voice.

The first border of the Western continent was already in sight along the left side of the world. Four thousand miles across it lay the shore of the Western Sea and the camp of Group One. It had been in the Western Sea that the tornado had originated, to strike with such fury at the camp and destroy half their prefabricated buildings, including the one that housed the medical supplies. Two days before, the tornado had not existed; it had been no more than great gentle masses of air over the calm Western Sea. Group One had gone about their routine survey work, unaware of the meeting of air masses out at sea, unaware of the force the union was spawning. It had struck their camp without warning—a thundering, roaring destruction that sought to annihilate all that lay before it. It had passed on, leaving the wreckage in its wake. It had destroyed the labor of months and had doomed six men to die and then, as though its task was accomplished, it once more began to resolve into gentle masses of air. But, for all its deadliness, it had destroyed with neither malice nor intent. It had been a blind and mindless force, obeying the laws of nature, and it would have followed the same course with the same fury had men never existed.

Existence required order, and there was order; the laws of nature, irrevocable and immutable. Men could learn to use them, but men could not change them. The circumference of a circle was always pi times the diameter, and no science of man would ever make it otherwise. The combination of chemical A with chemical B under condition C invariably produced reaction D. The law of gravitation was a rigid equation, and it made no distinction between the fall of a leaf and the ponderous circling of a binary star system. The nuclear conversion process powered the cruisers that carried men to the stars; the same process in the form of a nova would destroy a world with equal efficiency. The laws were, and the universe moved in obedience to them. Along the frontier were arrayed all the forces of nature, and sometimes they destroyed those who were fighting their way outward from Earth. The men of the frontier had long ago learned the bitter futility of cursing the forces that would destroy them, for the forces were blind and deaf; the futility of looking to the heavens for mercy, for the stars of the galaxy swung in their long, long sweep of two hundred million years, as inexorably controlled as they by the laws that knew neither hatred nor compassion. The men of the frontier knew—but how was a girl from Earth to fully understand? h amount of fuel will not power an EDS with a mass of m plus x safely to its destination. To him and her brother and parents she was a sweet-faced girl in her teens; to the laws of nature she was x, the unwanted factor in a cold equation.

She stirred again on the seat. “Could I write a letter? I want to write to Mama and Daddy. And I’d like to talk to Gerry. Could you let me talk to him over your radio there?”

“I’ll try to get him,” he said.

He switched on the normal-space transmitter and pressed the signal button. Someone answered the buzzer almost immediately.

“Hello. How’s it going with you fellows no —is the EDS on its way?”

“This isn’t Group One; this is the EDS,” he said. “Is Gerry Cross there?”

“Gerry? He and two others went out in the helicopter this morning and aren’t back yet. It’s almost sundown, though, and he ought to be back right away—in less than an hour at the most.”

“Can you connect me through to the radio in his copter?”

“Huh-uh. It’s been out of commission for two months—some printed circuits went haywire and we can’t get any more until the next cruiser stops by. Is it something important—bad news for him, or something?”

“Yes—it’s very important. When he comes in, get him to the transmitter as soon as you possibly can.”

“I’ll do that; I’ll have one of the boys waiting at the field with a truck. Is there anything else I can do?”

“No, I guess that’s all. Get him there as soon as you can and signal me.”

He turned the volume to an inaudible minimum, an act that would not affect the functioning of the signal buzzer, and unclipped the pad of paper from the control board. He tore off the sheet containing his flight instructions and handed the pad to her, together with pencil.

“I’d better write to Gerry too,” she said as she took them. “He might not get back to camp in time.”

She began to write, her fingers still clumsy and uncertain in the way they handled the pencil, and the top of it trembling a little as she poised it between words. He turned back to the viewscreen, to stare at it without seeing it.

She was a lonely little child trying to say her last goodbye, and she would lay out her heart to them. She would tell them how much she loved them and she would tell them to not feel bad about it, that it was only something that must happen eventually to everyone and she was not afraid. The last would be a lie and it would be there to read between the sprawling, uneven lines: a valiant little lie that would make the hurt all the greater for them.

Her brother was of the frontier and he would understand. He would not hate the EDS pilot for doing nothing to prevent her going; he would know there had been nothing the pilot could do. He would understand, though the understanding would not soften the shock and pain when he learned his sister was gone. But the others, her father and mother—they would not understand. They were of Earth and they would think in the manner of those who had never lived where the safety margin of life was a thin, thin line—and sometimes nothing at all. What would they think of the faceless, unknown pilot who had sent her to her death?

They would hate him with cold and terrible intensity, but it really didn’t matter. He would never see them, never know them. He would have only the memories to remind him; only the nights of fear, when a blue-eyed girl in gypsy sandals would come in his dreams to die again . . .

He scowled at the viewscreen and tried to force his thoughts into less emotional channels. There was nothing he could do to help her. She had unknowingly subjected herself to the penalty of a law that recognized neither innocence nor youth nor beauty, that was incapable of sympathy or leniency. Regret was illogical—and yet, could knowing it to be illogical ever keep it away?

She stopped occasionally, as though trying to find the right words to tell them what she wanted them to know; then the pencil would resume its whispering to the paper. It was 18:37 when she folded the letter in a square and wrote a name on it. She began writing another, twice looking up at the chronometer, as though she feared the black hand might reach its rendezvous before she had finished. It was 18:45 when she folded it as she had done the first letter and wrote a name and address on it.

She held the letters out to him. “Will you take care of these and see that they’re enveloped and mailed?”

“Of course.” He took them from her hand and placed them in a pocket of his gray uniform shirt.

“These can’t be sent off until the next cruiser stops by, and the Stardust will have long since told them about me, won’t it?” she asked. He nodded and she went on: “That makes the letters not important in one way, but in another way they’re very important—to me, and to them.”

“I know. I understand, and I’ll take care of them.”

She glanced at the chronometer, then back to him. “It seems to move faster all the time, doesn’t it?”

He said nothing, unable to think of anything to say, and she asked, “Do you think Gerry will come back to camp in time?”

“I think so. They said he should be in right away.”

She began to roll the pencil back and forth between her palms. “I hope he does. I feel sick and scared and I want to hear his voice again and maybe I won’t feel so alone. I’m a coward and I can’t help it.”

“No,” he said, “you’re not a coward. You’re afraid, but you’re not a coward.”

“Is there a difference?”

He nodded. “A lot of difference.”

“I feel so alone. I never did feel like this before; like I was all by myself and there was nobody to care what happened to me. Always, before, there were Mama and Daddy there and my friends around me. I had lots of friends, and they had a going-away party for me the night before I left.”

Friends and music and laughter for her to remember—and on the viewscreen Lotus Lake was going into the shadow.

“Is it the same with Gerry?” she asked. “I mean, if he should make a mistake, would he have to die for it, all alone and with no one to help him?”

“It’s the same with all, along the frontier; it will always be like that so long as there is a frontier.”

“Gerry didn’t tell us. He said the pay was good, and he sent money home all the time because Daddy’s little shop just brought in a bare living, but he didn’t tell us it was like this.”

“He didn’t tell you his work was dangerous?”

“Well—yes. He mentioned that, but we didn’t understand. I always thought danger along the frontier was something that was a lot of fun; an exciting adventure, like in the three-D shows.” A wan smile touched her face for a moment. “Only it’s not, is it? It’s not the same at all, because when it’s real you can’t go home after the show is over.”

“No,” he said. “No, you can’t.”

Her glance flicked from the chronometer to the door of the air lock, then down to the pad and pencil she still held. She shifted her position slightly to lay them on the bench beside her, moving one foot out a little. For the first time he saw that she was not wearing Vegan gypsy sandals, but only cheap imitations; the expensive Vegan leather was some kind of grained plastic, the silver buckle was gilded iron, the jewels were colored glass. Daddy’s little shop just brought in a bare living . . . She must have left college in her second year, to take the course in linguistics that would enable her to make her own way and help her brother provide for her parents, earning what she could by part-time work after classes were over. Her personal possessions on the Stardust would be taken back to her parents—they would neither be of much value nor occupy much storage space on the return voyage.

“Isn’t it—” She stopped, and he looked at her questioningly. “Isn’t it cold in here?” she asked, almost apologetically. “Doesn’t it seem cold to you?”

“Why, yes,” he said. He saw by the main temperature gauge that the room was at precisely normal temperature. “Yes, it’s colder than it should be.”

“I wish Gerry would get back before it’s too late. Do you really think he will, and you didn’t just say so to make me feel better?”

“I think he will—they said he would be in pretty soon.” On the viewscreen Lotus Lake had gone into the shadow but for the thin blue line of its western edge, and it was apparent he had overestimated the time she would have in which to talk to her brother. Reluctantly, he said to her, “His camp will be out of radio range in a few minutes; he’s on that part of Woden that’s in the shadow”—he indicated the viewscreen—”and the turning of Woden will put him beyond contact. There may not be much time left when he comes in—not much time to talk to him before he fades out. I wish I could do something about it—I would call him right now if I could.”

“Not even as much time as I will have to stay?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Then—” She straightened and looked toward the air lock with pale resolution. “Then I’ll go when Gerry passes beyond range. I won’t wait any longer after that—I won’t have anything to wait for.”

Again there was nothing he could say.

“Maybe I shouldn’t wait at all. Maybe I’m selfish—maybe it would be better for Gerry if you just told him about it afterward.”

There was an unconscious pleading for denial in the way she spoke and he said, “He wouldn’t want you to do that, to not wait for him.”

“It’s already coming dark where he is, isn’t it? There will be all the long night before him, and Mama and Daddy don’t know yet that I won’t ever be coming back like I promised them I would. I’ve caused everyone I love to be hurt, haven’t I? I didn’t want to—I didn’t intend to.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” he said. “It wasn’t your fault at all. They’ll know that. They’ll understand.”

“At first I was so afraid to die that I was a coward and thought only of myself. Now I see how selfish I was. The terrible thing about dying like this is not that I’ll be gone but that I’ll never see them again; never be able to tell them that I didn’t take them for granted; never be able to tell them I knew of the sacrifices they made to make my life happier, that I knew all the things they did for me and that I loved them so much more than I ever told them. I’ve never told them any of those things. You don’t tell them such things when you’re young and your life is all before you—you’re so afraid of sounding sentimental and silly. But it’s so different when you have to die—you wish you had told them while you could, and you wish you could tell them you’re sorry for all the little mean things you ever did or said to them. You wish you could tell them that you didn’t really mean to ever hurt their feelings and for them to only remember that you always loved them far more than you ever let them know.”

“You don’t have to tell them that,” he said. “They will know—they’ve always known it.”

“Are you sure?” she asked. “How can you be sure? My people are strangers to you.”

“Wherever you go, human nature and human hearts are the same.”

“And they will know what I want them to know—that I love them?”

“They’ve always known it, in a way far better than you could ever put in words for them.”

“I keep remembering the things they did for me, and it’s the little things they did that seem to be the most important to me, now. Like Gerry—he sent me a bracelet of fire rubies on my sixteenth birthday. It was beautiful—it must have cost him a month’s pay. Yet I remember him more for what he did the night my kitten got run over in the street. I was only six years old and he held me in his arms and wiped away my tears and told me not to cry, that Flossy was gone for just a little while, for just long enough to get herself a new fur coat, and she would be on the foot of my bed the very next morning. I believed him and quit crying and went to sleep dreaming about my kitten coming back. When I woke up the next morning, there was Flossy on the foot of my bed in a brand-new white fur coat, just like he had said she would be. It wasn’t until a long time later that Mama told me Gerry had got the pet-shop owner out of bed at four in the morning and, when the man got mad about it, Gerry told him he was either going to go down and sell him the white kitten right then or he’d break his neck.”

“It’s always the little things you remember people by, all the little things they did because they wanted to do them for you. You’ve done the same for Gerry and your father and mother; all kinds of things that you’ve forgotten about, but that they will never forget.”

“I hope I have. I would like for them to remember me like that.”

“They will.”

“I wish—” She swallowed. “The way I’ll die—I wish they wouldn’t ever think of that. I’ve read how people look who die in space—their insides all ruptured and exploded and their lungs out between their teeth and then, a few seconds later, they’re all dry and shapeless and horribly ugly. I don’t want them to ever think of me as something dead and horrible like that.”

“You’re their own, their child and their sister. They could never think of you other than the way you would want them to, the way you looked the last time they saw you.”

“I’m still afraid,” she said. “I can’t help it, but I don’t want Gerry to know it. If he gets back in time, I’m going to act like I’m not afraid at all and—”

The signal buzzer interrupted her, quick and imperative.

“Gerry!” She came to her feet. “It’s Gerry now!”

He spun the volume control knob and asked, “Gerry Cross?”

“Yes,” her brother answered, an undertone of tenseness to his reply. “The bad news—what is it?”

She answered for him, standing close behind him and leaning down a little toward the communicator, her hand resting small and cold on his shoulder.

“Hello, Gerry.” There was only a faint quaver to betray the careful casualness of her voice. “I wanted to see you—” “Marilyn!” There was sudden and terrible apprehension in the way he spoke her name. “What are you doing on that EDS?”

“I wanted to see you,” she said again. “I wanted to see you, so I hid on this ship—”

“You hid on it?”

“I’m a stowaway . . . I didn’t know what it would mean—”

“Marilyn!” It was the cry of a man who calls, hopeless and desperate, to someone already and forever gone from him. “What have you done?”

“I . . . it’s not—” Then her own composure broke and the cold little hand gripped his shoulder convulsively. “Don’t, Gerry—I only wanted to see you; I didn’t intend to hurt you. Please, Gerry, don’t feel like that—”

Something warm and wet splashed on his wrist, and he slid out of the chair to help her into it and swing the microphone down to her level.

“Don’t feel like that. Don’t let me go knowing you feel like that—”

The sob she had tried to hold back choked in her throat, and her brother spoke to her. “Don’t cry, Marilyn.” His voice was suddenly deep and infinitely gentle, with all the pain held out of it. “Don’t cry, Sis—you mustn’t do that. It’s all right, honey—everything is all right.”

“I—” Her lower lip quivered and she bit into it. “I didn’t want you to feel that way—I just wanted us to say goodbye, because I have to go in a minute.”

“Sure—sure. That’s the way it’ll be, Sis. I didn’t mean to sound the way I did.” Then his voice changed to a tone of quick and urgent demand. “EDS—have you called the Stardust? Did you check with the computers?”

“I called the Stardust almost an hour ago. It can’t turn back; there are no other cruisers within forty light-years, and there isn’t enough fuel.”

“Are you sure that the computers had the correct data—sure of everything?”

“Yes—do you think I could ever let it happen if I wasn’t sure? I did everything I could do. If there was anything at all I could do now, I would do it.”

“He tried to help me, Gerry.” Her lower lip was no longer trembling and the short sleeves of her blouse were wet where she had dried her tears. “No one can help me and I’m not going to cry anymore and everything will be all right with you and Daddy and Mama, won’t it?”

“Sure—sure it will. We’ll make out fine.”

Her brother’s words were beginning to come in more faintly, and he turned the volume control to maximum. “He’s going out of range,” he said to her. “He’ll be gone within another minute.”

“You’re fading out, Gerry,” she said. “You’re going out of range. I wanted to tell you—but I can’t now. We must say goodbye so soon—but maybe I’ll see you again. Maybe I’ll come to you in your dreams with my hair in braids and crying because the kitten in my arms is dead; maybe I’ll be the touch of a breeze that whispers to you as it goes by; maybe I’ll be one of those gold-winged larks you told me about, singing my silly head off to you; maybe, at times, I’ll be nothing you can see, but you will know I’m there beside you.

Think of me like that, Gerry; always like that and not—the other way.”

Dimmed to a whisper by the turning of Woden, the answer came back: “Always like that, Marilyn—always like that and never any other way.” “Our time is up, Gerry—I have to go now. Good—” Her voice broke in midword and her mouth tried to twist into crying. She pressed her hand hard against it and when she spoke again the words came clear and true: “Goodbye, Gerry.” Faint and ineffably poignant and tender, the last words came from the cold metal of the communicator: “Goodbye, little sister . . . ”

She sat motionless in the hush that followed, as though listening to the shadow-echoes of the words as they died away; then she turned away from the communicator, toward the air lock, and he pulled down the black lever beside him. The inner door of the air lock slid swiftly open to reveal the bare little cell that was waiting for her, and she walked to it.

She walked with her head up and the brown curls brushing her shoulders, with the white sandals stepping as sure and steady as the fractional gravity would permit and the gilded buckles twinkling with little lights of blue and red and crystal. He let her walk alone and made no move to help her, knowing she would not want it that way. She stepped into the air lock and turned to face him, only the pulse in her throat to betray the wild beating of her heart.

“I’m ready,” she said.

He pushed the lever up and the door slid its quick barrier between them, enclosing her in black and utter darkness for her last moments of life. It clicked as it locked in place and he jerked down the red lever. There was a slight waver of the ship as the air gushed from the lock, a vibration to the wall as though something had bumped the outer door in passing; then there was nothing and the ship was dropping true and steady again. He shoved the red lever back to close the door on the empty air lock and turned away, to walk to the pilot’s chair with the slow steps of a man old and weary.

Back in the pilot’s chair he pressed the signal button of the normal-space transmitter. There was no response; he had expected none. Her brother would have to wait through the night until the turning of Woden permitted contact through Group One.

It was not yet time to resume deceleration, and he waited while the ship dropped endlessly downward with him and the drives purred softly. He saw that the white hand of the supply-closet temperature gauge was on zero. A cold equation had been balanced and he was alone on the ship. Something shapeless and ugly was hurrying ahead of him, going to Woden, where her brother was waiting through the night, but the empty ship still lived for a little while with the presence of the girl who had not known about the forces that killed with neither hatred nor malice. It seemed, almost, that she still sat, small and bewildered and frightened, on the metal box beside him, her words echoing hauntingly clear in the void she had left behind her:

I didn’t do anything to die for . . . I didn’t do anything . . .

“The Cold Equations” by Tom Godwin

Originally appeared in Astounding Science Fiction, Aug. 1954.

This text is in the public domain.

Tom Godwin (1915-1980) is the author of the novels The Survivors (a/k/a Space Prison), The Space Barbarians, and Beyond Another Sun. He also published nearly thirty short stories, which appeared in magazines such as Astounding, If, Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Amazing Stories, and Analog, much of which has been collected in The Cold Equations and Other Stories.

Author Spotlight: Tom Godwin
Stacey Friedberg

Despite being an incredibly respected science fiction writer, not much is known about the life of Tom Godwin (1915-1980). The author of three novels and around thirty short stories, according to some sources, dropped out of school in the third grade. Still, he managed to write one of the most famous and controversial short stories in the science fiction genre. “The Cold Equations” was originally published in Astounding Magazine in 1954, and was Godwin’s fourth published story.

John W. Campbell, the editor of Astounding, greatly influenced the ending. In the original version of the story, Barton, the commander of the Emergency Dispatch Ship, figures out a way to keep Marilyn, the stowaway, alive. It was Campbell that requested that the girl die, and it is due to, in part, this changed ending that the story has made such an impact on readers. In a letter to Robert E. Graham, Campbell wrote, “Only once did I send a story back six times for revisions—and that was not a commissioned story, but an author who had an idea, a good one, and could write—but simply couldn’t accept the underlying honest answer to the story-idea he had come up with. ‘The Cold Equations’ by Tom Godwin is now one of the classic shorts of science fiction. It was Tom’s idea, and he wrote every word of it, and sweated over it … because he simply couldn’t accept that the girl simply had to die.”

With Campbell’s changes, the story transforms from a typical 1950s science fiction story to one that acts as a commentary on the genre itself. There is no miraculous way to solve the problem of the ship’s fuel, nor can Barton sacrifice himself. Marilyn’s only fault is that she has been raised in a world that has sheltered her to the point of ignorance. She does not realize the perils of space and she pays for it. She does not die because she is a child, or even, as some have suggested, because she is female. She dies because she is uninformed, and idealizes the hazards of space. “I always thought danger along the frontier was something that was a lot of fun; an exciting adventure, like in the three-D shows,” she says. “Only it’s not, is it? It’s not the same at all, because when it’s real you can’t go home after the show is over.”

Likewise, this story made many critics realize that science fiction was not all warp-speed and flashing lights. Godwin proved that the genre could be deep and dark and scary, and, in a strange way, real. In reality, advancements in science and society involve sacrifice. Sometimes, in order to move forward, we must leave a part of ourselves behind. In Godwin’s own lifetime, Einstein gave up his pacifism to support the creation of the atomic bomb, and countless soldiers gave up their lives in World War II and the Korean War.

Did Marilyn have to die? Despite solutions drawn up by other writers (as well as by Godwin himself), the answer is yes. Not because she deserved it, but because life is, sometimes, more often than not, unfair. Barton and the others simply couldn’t think of an acceptable solution in time. We can’t let ourselves become too content in our own worlds. We need to learn to become smarter, faster than before in order to compete and survive. Marilyn was too wrapped up in her own world to know anything about the universe or its potential dangers, and Barton was, perhaps, too closed-minded to think of a solution to the problem at hand.

Though the story was written and published in the ‘50s, the concept of the story grips us still. The bleak, uncaring nature of the universe, the unjust punishment of the stowaway, the guilt that Barton knows he’ll feel for the rest of his life. This is what great stories are made of. Stories should make us think, and argue, and debate. Because at the end of the day, it’s stories like this one that enlighten us—and make us more likely to know what lies behind that door that says “UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL KEEP OUT!”

Stacey Friedberg is a recent graduate of Emerson College, where she earned her BFA in Writing, Literature, and Publishing. She enjoys reading, writing, and cooking. You can follow her (very infrequent) tweets via @stacabird.

The Cold Legacies
Mike Brotherton

Tom Godwin’s classic story, “The Cold Equations” was first published in the August 1954 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. Astounding editor John W. Campbell, Jr. asked for revisions of “The Cold Equations” until he got the version he wanted, turning a run-of-the-mill hard science fiction puzzle story into something of deeper meaning. The equations governing the universe don’t care how young, cute, or innocent someone is; they’re cold and heartless, and on the frontier, ignorance of them is a good way to get yourself killed.

That’s a profound statement about nature; that the laws of the universe don’t care about us. It’s also a profound statement about our assault on conquering the universe. Only preparation and knowledge can protect us. Ignorance leads to loss, perhaps the ultimate loss: Death.

That’s clearly the intended meaning of the story, but there has been plenty of controversy over how to interpret “The Cold Equations.” Many critics focus upon technical flaws of the story. For instance, science fiction legend Damon Knight purportedly compiled a list of objects on the ship that massed enough to have saved the girl’s life. This and similar objections could perhaps be fixed with some minor revisions, but there exists a more fundamental issue perhaps related to people’s varying instinctual feelings about justice.

Exactly who is to blame for the unfortunate situation? A universe operating according to the cold equations of physics? A girl who ignored a warning out of innocent ignorance? Or a system that fails to do more than post a warning and only supplies minimal fuel without a meaningful safety margin? Imagine the circus a wrongful death lawsuit would bring in today’s courts!

“The Cold Equations” is a story notable for trumping the puzzle with a more fundamental theme, as well as hitting on a basic ethical dilemma concerning responsibility that society as a whole has failed to come to grips with in an absolute sense, as well as notions of self-sacrifice for the greater good. While the story has spawned a variety of responses, first let us examine some tales that came before. No idea is completely original.

Precursors

Popular comic book writer Kurt Busiek, among others, has alleged that the idea behind “The Cold Equations” was borrowed from an EC Comics’ Weird Science tale, “A Weighty Decision,” by Al Feldstein, as it possesses many similar elements. A rocket, insufficient fuel, and too many passengers who weigh too much—the female who cannot land the ship nobly sacrifices herself by going out the airlock. Also similar is the aptly named “Precedent,” a story by E.C. Tubbs published several years before “The Cold Equations.” In that tale, the male stowaway is tossed off the rocket.

The account of Campbell’s rewrite requests suggests that Godwin had initially set out to pen a simple story requiring a clever solution to save the stowaway. Only during subsequent edits did it come to resemble some famous existing fiction. However, even if Godwin didn’t borrow elements of the story from another source, it cannot be denied that rockets were very popular in the years following World War II and leading into the space race. The high-profile1950 movie Destination Moon, based on a Robert Heinlein novel, featured issues of a heavy rocket and too little fuel, coupled with the possible solution of leaving behind a crew member. A story akin to “The Cold Equations” was ripe to be born in those days.

The theme of the importance of knowing the rules of survival in a frontier’s harsh environment was not new, either. Jack London’s “To Build a Fire” illustrates how there is no margin for error in the sub-zero Yukon. Any mistake can lead to death, and does in that story. The protagonist rationalizes that he might lose a toe to frost bite in an isolated forest on a cold day. Then he believes he might lose an arm, or a leg, not accepting that he’s made a fatal mistake and will lose everything.

Godwin’s “The Cold Equations” seems to have been at the right place at the right time, with its special combination of themes and flaws, to strike a chord with readers of the time that still resonates today.

Responses

There have been two adaptations of “The Cold Equations” on American TV. The 1980s incarnation of The Twilight Zone did an episode that followed Godwin’s story pretty closely. Maybe better, fixing some technical issues, as there weren’t a lot of extraneous items to toss off the ship. It’s worth tracking down.

In the 1990s, the Sci-Fi Channel (now Syfy) aired a made-for-TV movie that took some liberties. While the storyline was basically consistent with the original, a lot was added to pad out the length and to change the theme. This was a version where the evil corporation prioritizing profit over human life was to blame, without a doubt, as they’re even the cause of the need for the emergency medical mission (safe working conditions were too expensive to maintain). Unfortunately, this version, whatever perspective someone might have on “The Cold Equations,” was heavy handed, slow, and not terrific.

It can be argued that one of the most classic scenes in science fiction film, the death of Spock in Wrath of Kahn, was inspired by “The Cold Equations.” Cold-blooded Mr. Spock was not an ignorant stowaway, but given the choice to sacrifice himself to save many others, he logically solves the moral equation and calmly walks into a radiation zone and his own death. Maybe that’s a stretch, but the themes inherent in “The Cold Equations” are universal and endlessly interesting.

There have been a number of literary responses in the science fiction field, some quite direct and others more subtle. One straightforward attempt to force “The Cold Equations” back into puzzle mode was Don Saker’s effective tale “The Cold Solution.” This story recognizes that Godwin’s characters didn’t try every possible solution to resolve their problem, and that an arm or a leg weighs more than you might think.

Michael Burstein’s “The Cold Calculations” is another riff, featuring a spaceship with limited fuel reserves on an emergency rescue mission to Titan. The pilot makes a hasty decision to avoid a meteoroid, and then there’s not enough fuel to land safely. No stowaway in this case, but again not enough stuff that can be thrown overboard. There’s an artificially intelligent computer that can land the ship without the pilot if necessary, and its existence opens the door to a science fictional solution: Upload the pilot’s brain into the computer, so his mind lives on even if his body doesn’t. However, there isn’t enough memory in the system for the pilot’s mind and the existing A.I., so it’s the existing A.I. that exists the metaphorical airlock.

One of the most interesting responses is James Patrick Kelly’s Hugo-winning “Think Like a Dinosaur,” which was also adapted for TV in an episode of the latest incarnation of The Outer Limits. Kelly appears interested at getting at certain ideas in the original story, and creates a situation to highlight just those, so gone are the rocket and its mass/fuel issues. Reptilian aliens, the “Dinosaurs” of the title, have come to Earth and shared their interstellar teleportation technology, but under one restriction: A human must press a button to “balance the equation” after teleportation is successful. Their teleporter is actually more like a fax machine, which leaves the original behind, and multiple copies of someone in the universe is apparently unbalancing to Dinosaur logic. All travelers know this and agree to the procedure, and the mechanics of pressing the button is a distant, emotionless task, until one day, something goes wrong. There is a glitch at the other end, and the traveler, an intelligent and well-informed young woman, decides not to go through with her trip. When confirmation comes through that the copy was successful, the aliens insist that “the equation must be balanced.” Obeying these cold masters is the price of exploring the universe, and our protagonist (it is difficult to call him hero) tricks the woman into an airlock and expels her into space despite her anguished pleas to live. His blood thereafter chilled, it is a bittersweet irony when the woman teleports back a few years later, stronger and wiser, and tells him how kind he was when she was so frightened on her outbound journey.

Add to that the newest response, “The Old Equations” by Jake Kerr, which will be the next fiction story in this issue of Lightspeed. Ignorance comes in many forms, and when challenging a new frontier, ignorance can extract a high price, in one unexpected way or another.

The Rich Equations

Just as a single important equation in physics can hold a myriad of solutions and describe a dazzling array of behavior, so too a sufficiently rich story. In part because of its flaws, its fundamental themes, and its challenging moral calculus, “The Cold Equations” is still spawning discussion and new stories six decades after its original publication.

If that’s not quite cold, it is still pretty darn cool.

Mike Brotherton is the author of the science fiction novels Star Dragon (2003) and Spider Star (2008), both from Tor books. He’s also a professor of astronomy at the University of Wyoming and investigates active galaxies using the Hubble Space Telescope and nearly every observatory that will give him time on their facilities. He is the founder of the NASA and National Science Foundation funded Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop for Writers, which brings a dozen award-winning professional writers to Wyoming every summer. He blogs about science and science fiction at www.mikebrotherton.com.

The Old Equations
Jake Kerr

“Imagination defined the advance of physics in the twentieth century. Although we were enticed by the less challenging models of minor thinkers like Einstein, science reached higher, and the era of quantum mechanics changed civilization. Naturally, very few remember Einstein these days—he died during the First World War, after publishing a widely ignored theory that would have set physics back centuries—and instead our future has been shaped by the models developed by visionaries such as Planck, Schrödinger, and Jain.”

—Pascal Delacroix, Lucasian Chair of Mathematics, Cambridge, from 500 Years of Physics, Oxford Press, 2187

May 5, 2193

My dearest James,

Surprise! Yes, the final item on your launch checklist is this special message from me.

I miss you already. But you know that. What you don’t know is just how proud I am of you. You were born for this, and no one could possibly be able to handle such a demanding job as well as you. I saw the joy in your eyes when we agreed in your taking the mission. Although I cried and complained, and it seemed like I hated the idea, the reality is that, more than anything, I was and am happy for you. I guess I was just scared—I’m still scared, but I know that this is how our life was meant to be. I’m prepared for it. And proud. Did I mention I’m proud of you?

Know that even while we are millions of miles apart, my heart will always be with you. Ten years is not so long. I’m sad that for most of the journey I won’t be able to hear from you, but you’ll be able to hear from me, and that’s more than some people have, isn’t it?

So this is the first of many, many reminders of the person you are leaving back on Earth, and also of the love that you are bringing with you.

I love you so much,

~Kate

Jimbo,

Your wife left me like no room to leave a note on this damn page. Incredibly proud of you, man. Jealous, too, you lucky bastard! I told Marsden to let me hit you with news from home, but he said no dice. Short messages from control and your wife only. Guess you won’t know the winner of the next ten Super Bowls until you get home, as your wife sure as hell won’t be mentioning it! Anyway, going to miss you, man. I’ll keep the beer cold. Tony

May 6, 2193—E-LC transmission

14:23:31: Testy test test test. askdfjowig. Yeah, this is a fucking test.

14:23:58: Sorry about that, Colonel. All systems are working perfectly on our end. First sail calibration is still set for 4 June. General Marsden wants us to get through a few more days of testing the QE comlink, so you won’t hear from your wife as soon as you may like, but don’t be alarmed. Just to clarify, because you seemed concerned before liftoff—we’re still planning on sticking to the original schedule of odd days being hers and even days ours. Marsden made it very clear that we’re not to take any of your personal message time unless it was critical. Thought you’d like to hear that. Smitty [MESSAGE TRANSMITTED]

May 9, 2193—E-LC transmission

18:03:32: James, it’s me. Kate. Wow, this is so weird. I’m writing to you, and you’re out there in space. Sorry I haven’t written, but General Marsden wanted to get all the systems with the sail and monitors and stuff perfect first. I guess I’m glad that he’s using the word “perfect.” It makes me worry a little less.

I told Tony that it must be beautiful to watch the planets float by, and he laughed and said you are basically encased in lead with no windows. You never told me that. You made it sound so romantic, and now it sounds oppressive. I hope that you are able to keep that sparkle in your eyes for the whole trip, despite the conditions. It was always there whenever you looked in the sky. Remember that, James. Whenever things get tough, remember me holding your hand as you looked up at the sky, the stars reflecting in your eyes.

It’s only been a few days, and I can’t wait to hear from you on the fourth. Don’t worry—I can handle ten years, as long as I can hear from you. I’m running out of space. Love you so very mu [WARNING: CHARACTER LIMIT REACHED—MESSAGE TRANSMITTED]

May 23, 2193—E-LC transmission

18:02:18: Sorry I didn’t write last time. It is awful that I’m only allowed to sit down at 6 and can only write a few paragraphs every other day. Anyway, I shouldn’t use the space to complain! Amy had a performance at school at 4:30, and your sister would have killed me if I missed it. I couldn’t get to the base until almost 7 because of traffic. General Marsden said I couldn’t even send you an “I love you,” and he wouldn’t give me a make-up day. Sometimes I hate the stick up his ass, but then I remember that it’s one of the things helping keep you alive, so I try to be thankful.

Anyway, I’m very excited that I’ll be able to get a message from you soon, but General stick-up-his-ass (kidding!) says not to expect more than a few words as this is your first time setting up your comlink. Still, even a few words will be a blessing. I miss you horribly, and it’s only been three weeks. Ten years seems almost unbearable now. Sorry to be such a downer. I’m sure I’ll feel better after I hear from you next week.

Love, ~Kate [MESSAGE TRANSMITTED]

June 4, 2193—E-LC transmission

12:03:01: Jim, it’s Mars. Did the sail calibrate? Were you able to initiate the quantum link? I’ll assume you’re having some com problems. Let us know what went wrong with the process when you get the link established. [MESSAGE TRANSMITTED]

15:32:54: Jim, are you okay? We’re still waiting to hear from you. I’m going to kill Ollie if he didn’t account for something on your quantum pair. I’ll be up until we hear from you. We don’t want to stress our QE link with too many messages, so don’t make me keep hassling you, soldier. [MESSAGE TRANSMITTED]

19:02:17: Jim, I’m going to go against all of my instincts and assume the best. I’m working from the theory that you didn’t have time to get the link initiated with calibration going on. Understandable. I’m hoping for the best next month. I’ll tell everyone that it was a communication issue and that everything is fine. Don’t fucking make a liar out of me or I’ll kick your ass. Mars [MESSAGE TRANSMITTED]

June 4, 2193—LC-E transmission

12:42:12: Hello? I sure hope to hell this thing is working. What the fuck is happening back on Earth? Why are you sending messages at all hours? Half of them don’t even make sense. I thought you were going to do one message a day at 18:00? Why are you guys so worried about this calibration? It’s going perfectly. This isn’t Tony fooling around is it? I can’t believe Mars would let him do that. Jesus. Someone better answer. [MESSAGE RECEIVED]

June 4, 2193—E-LC transmission

19:59:33: Colonel, this is Smitty. General Marsden and your wife have already left. You’re almost eight hours late. What happened? We can’t send through any more messages due to the strain on the QE link, so we’ll have to catch up next calibration. Just give us a status update, and we’ll figure it out next time. [MESSAGE TRANSMITTED]

June 4, 2193—LC-E transmission

12:43:41: What the hell are you talking about Smitty? I’m 43 minutes late, which is within the range we considered as acceptable before I left. I’m looking at the clock right now. Shit, I don’t want to wait another month to talk to Kate. Can’t believe you guys fucked this up on our very first calibration.

Anyway, all readings are normal except for distance traveled. It’s off slightly. I’ll have more data for the next calibration. Just don’t fuck it up next time, and make sure Kate is there. [MESSAGE RECEIVED]

June 7, 2193—E-LC transmission

18:00:04: I am so mad, but I’m not sure if I should be mad at you or the idiots who planned this mission. How could it take you so long to set up the quantum link? This is killing me, and now I have to wait another month. Argh! At least you’re okay. I was so scared when they said something was wrong and I missed you, but General Marsden was so calm and kind. Tony told me that sometimes that even though the buttons are shiny or new it doesn’t mean they don’t occasionally get stuck. I laughed, but I’m not sure that it made me feel better.

Ugh, here I am venting at you again, and you’re the one who’s all alone in space. Sorry! I am so proud of you, and I love you.

Oh, I’m supposed to tell you that your Uncle Bill broke his leg skateboarding. Your dad said you’d laugh at that. Everyone here wants me to pass along messages and stories. I’m watching your friends and family share their life with me. It makes me feel closer to you, James, even though you are so far away. I love you so much. Please make sure that everything is [WARNING: CHARACTER LIMIT REACHED—MESSAGE TRANSMITTED]

June 16, 2193—E-LC transmission

12:03:34: Colonel, you need to make sure the comlink is set up by 16:00:00. Not to put any pressure on you, but it’s so the President can talk to you. General Marsden will have more details later. Oh, and a reminder, Kate’s scheduled session tomorrow was kicked by General Marsden so we can send you the latest data points on the sail calibration. You’ll hear from her on 19 June and then we pick up the normal schedule. Smitty [MESSAGE TRANSMITTED]

June 22, 2193—E-LC transmission

18:01:33: Jim, it’s Mars. The President wants to communicate with you on the next sail calibration. Yeah, I’m sure you noticed it’s the fourth of July, and yes it means you won’t be able to send a message to Kate. You wanted to be the hero? Well, look here—you’re the hero. Anyway, just be your normal “oh golly” humble self. It’s one of the things that I hate about you but everyone seems to find endearing, so you have my permission to be yourself. Just this once.

Not sure what Kate is saying, as I’ve forbidden anyone from accessing her logs. Whatever you say is between you and her. I just wanted to say that she’s being a real trooper. Seems strong. Pissed as all hell about the com issues, but I can’t blame her. Anyway, she seems okay. Shit, I don’t know about women, dammit. All I’m trying to say is that you shouldn’t worry about her. [MESSAGE TRANSMITTED]

June 23, 2193—E-LC transmission

18:00:41: Well, they finally told me, and I’m both proud and angry. Mostly angry, to be honest. I can’t stand that I’ll have to wait another month to hear from you because you’ll be talking to the president. Of course it IS the president, which is a bit overwhelming. I have to admit that I’m getting quite a bit of attention over your mission, and now the president is going to talk to my James on the fourth of July because he’s a hero and inspiration. Is it bad that I’m kind of thrilled that I’m being asked to do talk shows? I know that sounds so shallow, but talking about you to others makes you feel closer somehow. Ha, that almost sounds like I’m rationalizing this celebrity thing, but honestly it’s not. If I can’t talk to you, I can at least talk ABOUT you.

I was invited to dinner by Tony and Gwen this evening. They’ll ask about you, and I don’t know what I’ll say. Because I don’t know. But it’s nice that they ask. They care, you know?

I’m still angry about not talking to you. Maybe if I ask the President he’ll say s [WARNING: CHARACTER LIMIT REACHED—MESSAGE TRANSMITTED]

July 3, 2193—E-LC transmission

17:59:44: M. says I only have 50 characters. Love you! ~Kate

18:03:07: Colonel, all systems are fine on our end. I sure hope you can get the comlink initiated tomorrow. We finally got all the data from your first missed broadcast, and the only issue was the slight calibration error on distance. Beyond that things look good. The systems on the ship haven’t so much as hiccupped. Just make sure you get that communication link set up ASAP. Smitty [MESSAGE TRANSMITTED]

July 4, 2193—E-LC transmission

15:21:21: Jim, please tell me you’ll have the comlink set up soon. I’m forbidding anyone from coming near the com station until I hear from you. You know what to do, soldier! Mars [MESSAGE TRANSMITTED]

15:44:03: Jim, we just checked every fucking scan, transmission, assessment, and data point, and everything looks normal. Please get on the line within the next 15 minutes. I told the president that it would probably be good to wait, but he’s adamant. He wants to go live with you at 16:00. LIVE. Mars [MESSAGE TRANSMITTED]

16:00:00: Colonel Murphy, this is President Wallace. I just wanted to say how proud we are of you. You embody the true American spirit! [MESSAGE TRANSMITTED]

16:00:12: They are telling me that there may be sunspots affecting our conversation, and that I may not get a response from you. How unfortunate, I was hoping to hear how beautiful space must be as you fly past at such extraordinary speed. I wonder if you see out your window what we think of when we think of America—truth and beauty quickly passing us by as we look forward to an even better future. But we should stop and enjoy the view, don’t you think Colonel? [MESSAGE TRANSMITTED]

16:00:41: I’m sure your view is beautiful. [MESSAGE TRANSMITTED]

16:00:47: It is unfortunate we can’t hear of it due to the sun. Perhaps next time, Colonel. Remember, all of America is proud of you. God bless you, and God bless America. [MESSAGE TRANSMITTED]

16:23:28: Jim, I’m cutting the link for today, but I’ll have Smitty monitor the line in case we hear from you. Don’t expect to hear from Kate for a few days. All the messages today put a strain on the quantum link. Sorry. Mars. [MESSAGE TRANSMITTED]

July 5, 2193—E-LC transmission

18:06:18: Colonel, I don’t know if you’re there, but we’re seeing normal readings across the board. General Marsden has everyone believing in the sunspots story, but what is really going on? We’re returning to the normal com schedule on 7 July. You’ll hear from Kate then. Smitty [MESSAGE TRANSMITTED]

July 6, 2193—E-LC transmission

18:01:08: Jim, I fear the worst, but I’m not against giving everyone one more month of hope. Hell, I need another month of hope. Readings are normal, so there is that. I expect this is your ineptitude and not anything worse. I’ll forgive ineptitude this once. Just don’t let it happen in August. Please. Mars. [MESSAGE TRANSMITTED]

July 7, 2193—E-LC transmission

17:59:32: Dearest James, I am so sorry you haven’t heard from me. General Marsden wouldn’t let me talk to you until the sunspot interference died down. He said you wouldn’t even get the messages. I guess I yelled a bit, but he put his foot down. Sometimes I hate that man. But don’t worry, I’m okay. I was just so worried. Not hearing from you is killing me inside. First it’s normal first run mistakes, and now it’s sunspots. I haven’t heard from you in over two months!

Please please please tell me you’re okay, and you’ll be able to talk to me soon? Please? I know you’re okay. I just want to hear it. I love you. ~Kate [MESSAGE TRANSMITTED]

July 4, 2193—LC-E transmission

12:33:12: Kate, are you there? I just got your message. Is everything okay? I can’t make sense of half of what you are saying to me, and I’m now getting a couple messages a day. Have you guys changed the schedule? [MESSAGE RECEIVED]

July 7, 2193—E-LC transmission

19:03:28: Holy shit, Colonel, am I glad to hear from you! It’s Smitty. We’ve been worried sick. What happened on 4 July, and why are you contacting us now? The next calibration is weeks away. Is something wrong? [MESSAGE TRANSMITTED]

July 4, 2193—LC-E transmission

12:35:22: Smitty, I have no idea what you are talking about. The calibration is going on right now. How could I have missed it? [MESSAGE RECEIVED]

12:57:22: Smitty, you there? I only have a few hours before I need to shut down. Where’s Kate? [MESSAGE RECEIVED]

July 7, 2193—E-LC transmission

19:53:47: Jim, it’s Mars. Sorry I took so long. I have communications locked down due to all these issues, and it took me a while to get here. I just went over the logs, and I am completely lost. Are you saying it’s 4 July right now? [MESSAGE TRANSMITTED]

July 4, 2193—LC-E transmission

13:23:11: Mars, I’m not in the mood for jokes. I’m looking at the computer screen right now, and it’s 4 July. What the hell are you guys up to? Can you get Kate on the line? [MESSAGE RECEIVED]

July 7, 2193—E-LC transmission

19:54:53: I’ll get Kate on the line at ASAP, but right now I need to figure this out. What’s your location? [MESSAGE TRANSMITTED]

July 4, 2193—LC-E transmission

13:24:02: That’s what I can’t understand, Mars. The instruments don’t match up. Acceleration is perfect—constant since launch, but I’ve covered even more distance than the revisions from the last calibration, and way more than our initial estimates. Just checked it three times. Something’s out of whack. And now the clock thing is getting worse. I know there were some unknowns, but this is fucked up beyond all belief. And why is the message frequency now several times a day? With the augmentation to handle the G forces Archer said to expect some disorientation, but this is ridiculous. Hell, I FEEL perfectly normal. [MESSAGE RECEIVED]

July 7, 2193—E-LC transmission

19:57:01: I don’t know, Jim. We need more time to figure this out. Let me get the guys on it until the next calibration. Maybe you went through a particle field or something else we don’t know about, and it has affected some instruments and your perceptions. Look, we can’t stress the QE link any more. Every time we exchange multiple messages, it becomes unstable. I’ll tell Kate we got a short update from you, but let’s not let her know there are any problems. I don’t want to worry you, but she’s been extremely tense after missing the first two comlinks.

I’m just glad you’re okay. [MESSAGE TRANSMITTED]

August 3, 2193—E-LC transmission

19:54:33: James, Mars is making me leave, so if you get the link set up make him get me. MAKE HIM. I NEED to hear from you. I understand that there is something wrong with your instruments or something, so I don’t blame you. But you MUST be here for the September calibration. I desperately miss you. I love you so much. ~Kate [MESSAGE TRANSMITTED]

August 3, 2193—LC-E transmission

13:14:20: Smitty, you there? We clearly have major problems, but that can wait. Get Kate. [MESSAGE RECEIVED]

August 14, 2193—E-LC transmission

02:44:04: Colonel, this is Davis. It’s 3 AM here and everyone is asleep. But don’t worry. General Marsden made it clear—if you contacted us the first call was to your wife and the next one was to him. We’ll get her here for you, sir.

04:08:44: James, are you there? I’ve missed you so much! I can’t believe I get to hear from you early! General Marsden says we only have a couple of exchanges, so I’ll just say a few words and then let you speak. Oh God, how I’ve missed your voice—seeing your words. Are you getting my messages? Are you okay? Can I do anything for you?

Please respond quickly. [MESSAGE TRANSMITTED]

August 3, 2193—LC-E transmission

14:39:23: Kate, I’m here. I love you and miss you, too. More than you can possibly imagine. Yes, I’ve gotten every single one of your wonderful, maddening, crazy, loving messages. I love that Tony and Gwen are expecting. I love that you hate Mars one day and appreciate him the next. (I’m the same way, as if you didn’t know that). I love that on some days you tell me the most wonderful details of your life—our life—and other days you just vent.

I’m fine. I’m perfectly fine, and everything is perfect on this amazing ship. The worst part is being without you and our friends, but other than that I just have to deal with boredom. Being alone can be hard. I can’t deny that. But this is all just temporary. We’re already past a chunk of time. Nine or ten years still seems monumentally long. I know that. But it’s not so long that we’ll miss our lives together. When I get back you’ll be 38, and I’ll be 40. We can still have kids. We can run off to Venice or just sleep in and watch TV.

I wish I had more to say, but you know me—I’ve never [MESSAGE RECEIVED]

14:46:02: Dammit. I hate the character limits on this quantum shit. Anyway, I was going to say that I’ve never been one for lots of talking and here I am running out of characters. I guess I will need to figure this out if we’re only going to talk every 30 days.

I love you, Kate. I miss you. James [MESSAGE RECEIVED]

August 14, 2193—E-LC transmission

04:23:38: I’m crying, James. Damn you, you made me cry and Smith and General Marsden will be in here soon. I hate when people see me cry!

I love you so much. ~Kate [MESSAGE TRANSMITTED]

August 14, 2193—E-LC transmission

04:32:42: Jim, it’s Mars. We’ve pulled in every analyst and expert we could find. It turns out the initial thought of this being due to an astronomical anomaly isn’t possible. We had both engineers and statisticians go through the cosmological data, and there is nothing out of the ordinary. I mean nothing. We did confirm your assessment. One or more of your gauges is out of calibration. That could also account for some of your disorientation.

With that in mind I need to gather more data from you in terms of your perceptions the next time we have a link. Honestly, I’d like to peg you as crazy and call it a day, but with gauges out of calibration you could be right. Maybe we’re the crazy ones. [MESSAGE TRANSMITTED]

August 16, 2193—E-LC transmission

16:32:44: Colonel, we almost lost the QE link on 14 August. We’re still working out the limits, but it looks like we’re going to have to hold the monthly exchanges to 2 incoming/2 outgoing. General Marsden says this will give you one exchange with your wife and one for us. It’s not a lot, but the quantum entanglement is very unstable. We can’t risk breaking the connection. Next message coming 19 August. Smitty [MESSAGE TRANSMITTED]

September 2, 2193—E-LC transmission

12:02:33: Colonel, it’s Smitty. Did you get the link set up? We’re hoping you got your ship clocks calibrated correctly during the last link. I’m standing by. [MESSAGE TRANSMITTED]

September 3, 2193—E-LC transmission

18:00:04: I hate sunspots! I’m so depressed. All I want to do is see your words. Your words! How hard is that? They said you would be able to talk to me every month, and here it is month four, and I’ve heard from you once. ONCE! I tried to get General Marsden to maybe see about setting up the comlink next week instead of the long wait. I even told him I’d swap two weeks of sending messages just to hear from you, but he wouldn’t even consider it.

I don’t know what to do, James. I feel so powerless. I live and speak to you in the vacuum of space, and then—nothing. [MESSAGE TRANSMITTED]

September 4, 2193—E-LC transmission

18:18:14: Jim, it’s Mars. I was afraid you wouldn’t hook up with us on 2 September, but I’m not surprised. All of us are pretty much just waiting until we hear from you, whenever that is. I’m still not telling Kate that we have some kind of unknown problem, but I’m sure she’s already covered that with you multiple times. Needless to say, I’m not her favorite person in the world right now.

I’m assuming that we have a few weeks until we get a link. The physicists want me to ask you to keep very close track of our incoming messages. We need you to log them in the computer and stamp them with your arrival time. Have that handy when we talk. I’ll have Doctor Singh with me next time, and he’ll be asking you about the variations between our time stamps and yours. [MESSAGE TRANSMITTED]

September 5, 2193—E-LC transmission

18:02:32: I’m so sorry about the other day. I NEVER feel like I’m not talking to you, especially after what you said last month. I was just sad and frustrated and not having the best day. I saw Jackie Merriweather holding hands with her new boyfriend, and it made me so intensely jealous. And then I can’t talk to you, so not only can’t I hold your hand, I can’t even read your words.

I’m thinking this is one of those venting messages, so I should just sign off. Why did we ever agree to this?

I do love you so very much. ~Kate [MESSAGE TRANSMITTED]

September 13, 2193—E-LC transmission

18:02:02: Happy thirtieth birthday, my love. We had a celebration at the house, and your dad flew in from Phoenix. Isn’t that great? We thought rehabilitation would take months, but there he was. We let him blow out your candles. He blew out every single one, although he coughed a bit at the end. He laughed and said that he may not be as strong as he once was, but he’d live long enough to see his son return from Gliese 581 d! Isn’t that great?

I read your message at the party. It’s the first time I’ve shared it with anyone. I’ve been kind of keeping it to myself as my special thing, but the time seemed right to share it with others. Your words didn’t leave many dry eyes. Tony said to bank on the sleeping in and watching TV more than Venice, which got a laugh.

I’m getting nervous about October 2, but I’m starting to understand that space travel is something you simply can’t predict. As General Marsden says—there are just so many variables. Still, please be there. Love, ~Kate [MESSAGE TRANSMITTED]

September 2, 2193—LC-E transmission

15:58:13: Anyone there? Of all times to have shit get messed up, it has to be now. Not sure what your time stamp shows, but I’m four hours behind schedule on getting the link up. Sail calibration is almost done, so we have to talk fast. Smitty? [MESSAGE RECEIVED]

September 29, 2193—E-LC transmission

17:13:23: Jim, it’s Mars. Thank God you’re safe. I almost gave up hope when you missed the 2 September calibration and link.

We need to get this problem solved. Do you have the time stamps? I’m calling for Professor Singh. Hopefully he’s nearby. He needs to know how closely they match up. [MESSAGE TRANSMITTED]

September 2, 2193—LC-E transmission

16:09:58: Christ, this is fucked up. Anyway, I have the time stamps. They show incoming at increasing intervals. They started at one per day and are now coming in at nearly twice a day. I also followed up on the doctor’s recommendations and logged my sleep cycle and have done daily cognitive tests. Normal across the board.

Is Kate there? [MESSAGE RECEIVED]

September 29, 2193—E-LC transmission

17:58:55: Colonel Murphy, this is Doctor Singh. Are the time differences random or is there some kind of order to them? Do you have any other things that appear to be out of phase? Also, can you remember feeling any anomalies? It may even be as slight as a flash in your eyes or a tingle on your skin.

Jim, it’s Mars. Kate’s in the other room. I’ll bring her in after you send your answers to Doctor Singh. [MESSAGE TRANSMITTED]

September 2, 2193—LC-E transmission

16:46:09: Hard to tell, Doc. The times appear random, but when I look at them as a whole, they appear to be slowly increasing in frequency. And, yes, the whole fucking flight appears to be out-of-phase. I’m somehow covering more distance without our acceleration calculations being off. I’m starting to think I’m going crazy, because there have been no flashes and no tingling. Nothing like that. Beyond the bizarre data we’re seeing this trip couldn’t be more normal. I guess that’s good for Ollie and his team, but it makes for frustrating troubleshooting. [MESSAGE RECEIVED]

September 29, 2193—E-LC transmission

18:04:49: James, what is happening??? I haven’t heard from you in almost two months! Is everything okay? I’m so afraid for you, James.

General Marsden said you only have a few minutes. I could kill him for making me wait nearly all this time and then telling me you only have a few minutes. I want to hear hours of your thoughts, your dreams, and your words, but I get just minutes. I’ll shut up. Please just let me see your words and imagine your voice as you tell me you’re okay. Please. Quickly. Please. [MESSAGE TRANSMITTED]

September 2, 2193—LC-E transmission

16:51:12: I have just a few moments, but it’s not Mars’ fault. I couldn’t get the comlink initiated until it was four hours late. I loved your birthday message. I must say that Tony was wrong—after ten years apart, I can drag my ass out of bed for a trip to Venice.

You know, I figured the one thing that what would keep me going would be your messages. But now that there have been problems I realize that I want—I need—to have you see MY messages, too. It’s the only way I can make sure you know I exist.

I think of you constantly. I think of our past, and I think of our future. I like to think of the more mature, elegant, and beautiful woman who will be waiting for me when I return. Of course, here is where you ask why you aren’t elegant, mature, or beautiful now, and I don’t have an answer for that, because you are.

I guess the point is that I want to remind you that I think of our future. That’s what gets me through the day—your messages from the present, and my dreams for our future.

I need to go. I have so much I want [MESSAGE RECEIVED]

December 12, 2193—E-LC transmission

18:32:13: Jim, it’s Mars. I’m sorry for all the dead ends, but I think we’ve found something. One of the physicists in Bern remembers a crackpot theoretical physicist from 200 years ago named Albert Einstein. He was an amateur who died during World War One after publishing a handful of theories that no one took seriously. The thing is that they kind of match what we’re seeing here. On the extremely off chance that this guy was actually right, we’re looking into it.

It’s something, at least.

He just gave me the briefing this afternoon, and I don’t understand 90% of it. I’ll have him dumb it down even more and then I’ll explain it to you in the next uplink. [MESSAGE TRANSMITTED]

December 14, 2193—E-LC transmission

18:11:28: Jim, it’s Mars. The physicists are actually excited about this Einstein lead. I still can’t understand half of it, but the essence is that time is not a constant, it’s relative to the speed of light, which is the actual constant. What this means is that the faster you travel and the closer you get to the speed of light, the slower time goes for you.

Okay, here’s the kicker, and here is what is getting all the brainiacs excited. His theory basically says that as you are increasing in speed, time will slow down by a specific ratio, and that’s what we’re seeing with the messages. We have a ton more calculations to run through, and no one is sure how this integrates with quantum physics, but CERN is saying they are going to do some practical tests on this crazy theory, but it looks like the crackpot could actually have been a genius.

This is going to be difficult to grasp, but I want you to think long and hard about what this means for you. I won’t say more than that. I’ll have more later. [MESSAGE TRANSMITTED]

December 16, 2193—E-LC transmission

18:08:00: Jim, it’s Mars. The scientists didn’t screw around. Every test they ran confirmed Einstein’s theory. Hell, you’re a living confirmation of the theory. I hope you did what I asked and thought about this, because the scenario is not good, buddy.

All our calculations anticipated you passing the speed of light to make this trip in ten years. You will not pass the speed of light. You will approach it, but you won’t be able to go faster. Einstein figured it out, and CERN just confirmed it. It’s impossible. I can’t be more blunt than this, Jim: Your mission will now take 41 years from our perspective.

Okay, that’s not all. You mentioned how you are covering more ground than you expected, and you’ve seen these messages come to you faster and faster. That’s because space is warping at the speed you are traveling. I still can’t believe this, but here’s the kicker: From your perspective, the trip will take only 5 years. As I said, time is slowing down for you.

This has a dramatic impact on this project, but it also h [WARNING: CHARACTER LIMIT REACHED—MESSAGE TRANSMITTED]

18:14:47: I’m going to risk another transmission, because this is so important. Jim, this has a dramatic impact not just on the mission but you personally. When you arrive back on Earth, it will be 5 years from now for you, but we’ll all be 41 years older. I’m so sorry.

I’m going to let Kate know over breakfast tomorrow. She’ll have plenty of time before your transmission, which should be in a few weeks. Mars [MESSAGE TRANSMITTED]

December 17, 2193—E-LC transmission

18:00:44: General Marsden told me.

I spent all day thinking about it, and I think it’s a load of shit. Time has no meaning? Space can be stretched? I asked questions. Lots and lots of questions, James. And the scientists all give me the same answers, but their answers don’t scream “time dilation” (which is what they’re calling it) to me. They scream “someone fucked up and is covering their ass.”

Sorry. I just am very frustrated on your behalf. Don’t worry, I’ll push and push until we see something that makes sense.

There is absolutely no way that I’m not going to see you for forty years. [MESSAGE TRANSMITTED]

December 21, 2193—E-LC transmission

18:03:01: James, I did some research on this Einstein fellow. Did you know that he died before quantum physics? The core branch of science for the past 200 years, and this crazy guy didn’t even consider it. THIS is who we are looking to for guidance on a communication issue?

Also, Doctor Singh told me that they still have no idea how our quantum link is working across space and time. He actually told me that you are a “quantum reference point,” and so you are talking to us in the future. After hearing that, how can we take them seriously?

You know me, James. I’ll dig and claw and fight until I get the truth. I know you’re okay, but someone messed up something, and I’ll find out. Next link let’s skip the personal stuff and get to the bottom of the problem. You’re right there and probably know what’s going on. We can solve this even if the scientists can’t.

Your father called, but I haven’t had time to call him back. At your birthday party, he asked if he could talk with you, but I’m not sure General Marsden would allow i [WARNING: CHARACTER LIMIT REACHED—MESSAGE TRANSMITTED]

October 2, 2193—LC-E transmission

12:44:39: Smitty, this is Colonel Murphy. Link is set up. I want you to get Kate on the line ASAP. [MESSAGE RECEIVED]

December 26, 2193—E-LC transmission

14:48:12: Colonel, this is Smitty. Glad to hear from you. I’m going to get General Marsden. Hold tight.

15:13:59: Jim, it’s Mars. Kate is here, but first I’m handing control over to Doctor Archer. She knows she has only one transmission, so pay attention to every word.

15:14:19: Colonel, your initial assessment was for a 10 year mission. While that is now shorter for you, the circumstances on Earth have changed radically. Your expectations on return have to be completely altered. I have confidence that you will be able to handle the strain, but I need you to be honest with us and honest with yourself. Please share any fears, concerns, or other psychological problems or issues you are facing, no matter how small. We will do our best to provide for them, even with this difficult means of communication.

Be strong. But be honest with yourself. When you return, you are not going to see the wife, family, or friends you expect. Some may not be alive. Colonel, I handled your initial screening, and I know you can handle this challenge. [MESSAGE TRANSMITTED]

October 2, 2193—LC-E transmission

13:11:39: No shit, doc. Put Kate on. [MESSAGE RECEIVED]

December 26, 2193—E-LC transmission

15:15:45: James, I have missed you so much! I have nothing to say. You’ve seen my words for months, and I’ve seen nothing from you, so please just tell me you’re okay! [MESSAGE TRANSMITTED]

October 2, 2193—LC-E transmission

13:12:00: Kate, I’m perfectly fine, but please pay attention to this very carefully. I know you don’t believe it, but you must. They explained the theory behind the old equations that the physicists are discussing, and while they are strange, the concepts are clear and make sense. I’m so sorry, Kate, but this is how things are. I don’t want them to be, but they are. Trust me. Relativity is real. I can’t go faster than the speed of light. Time dilation is real. All of it is real. I see it every day. Every day I receive multiple messages from Earth. It is wonderful to have the constant communication, but it is sad to watch time fly by.

Please believe me. It is much better for us to talk about our new plans and how we are going to deal with that than pretending it isn’t real. I love you so much that the last thing I want to do is hurt you, and I know this is probably hurting you. But we can get past this.

We cannot be sad. We cannot be angry. We need to just find a way to deal with what life has dealt us. We WILL see each [MESSAGE RECEIVED]

13:06:44 : We will see each other again, my love. Talk to Doctor Archer or Mars. They can give you perspective. Mars told me that I can’t reply more than twice due to lack of stability of the quantum entanglement, but this is important, Kate. Let’s not look at the problems. Let’s look ahead at the answers. [MESSAGE RECEIVED]

December 31, 2193—E-LC transmission

18:01:03: James, I don’t want you to worry. I was being selfish and I let my emotions get in the way of thinking clearly. I spent a long time talking to General Marsden, and I understand time dilation now. You know me—I’m not one to just sit back and give up. Don’t be mad, but I asked him about abandoning the mission. He wouldn’t even consider it. I don’t want to belabor the point, because I know you won’t agree, but I really think that with everything all screwed up that they should turn you around and bring you home.

Anyway, maybe he told you, but if not—that isn’t going to happen.

Believe me, James, I am thinking. Maybe they can send another ship that I can be on to join you? It’s not that crazy. Maybe we could live on Gliese 581 d as the first colonists. They’ve done husband and wife missions before, right? God, 41 years is so long. That’s longer than I’ve been alive! I’m sorry. I know it is hard for you, too. But will you love me when I’m old? Will you even know me? I’m sorry. Happy New Year, my love, although I k [WARNING: CHARACTER LIMIT REACHED – MESSAGE TRANSMITTED]

January 17, 2194—E-LC transmission

18:00:03: James, Gwen had her baby. They named him James after you, and they asked us to be his godparents. I think that is really nice.

I’m still meeting with Doctor Archer. She helps a lot, but it is still difficult. The press has found out about what is happening, and they are calling me constantly. The headlines are all about how when you finally return, you’ll be 35, and I’ll be almost 70.

It’s hard.

Tony joked that when you return your godson will be older than you, and I started crying and couldn’t stop. I know he felt terrible, but I wanted to just kill him.

Will you still love me when I’m old and gray, and you’re still young and handsome?

I have to go. [MESSAGE TRANSMITTED]

November 1, 2193—LC-E transmission

12:14:23: Smitty, link is established. I’ll wait on instructions. Please make sure Kate is there. [MESSAGE RECEIVED]

February 10, 2194 E-LC transmission

21:32:01: Jim, it’s Mars. Great to hear from you. Listen: You really need to get to Kate. I’m very worried about her. She won’t tell me what’s wrong, but I’m sure it’s finally dawning on her that she won’t see you for 40 years. She’s shut out Archer, too, and they had been talking regularly. If you need to, send a double transmission this once. You know that I need you both strong. I’m going to clear the message buffer. Wait for her message and then reply. [MESSAGE TRANSMITTED]

12:45:03: James, I am so sorry to tell you this, but your father passed away. We’ve kept it very quiet because the press is still looking for every possible angle to write about you. They are horrible.

He died in his sleep. Maybe it was for the best, he was fighting so hard.

All I want to do is hold you and make you feel better, my love. I am so sorry. I feel like the weight of the world is on my shoulders. I need to be strong for you and everyone around me. But I don’t know if I can handle it. It’s hard, James.

And then I think of you and feel guilty. So guilty.

I was at the funeral, and as they lowered your dad’s casket in the ground, I couldn’t help but think that it was like your ship. A metal casket taking you to some unknown beyond. I know that’s grim and sad and not true because I know I’ll see you again, but it won’t be for so long. [MESSAGE TRANSMITTED]

November 1, 2193—LC-E transmission

13:50:01: Kate, please don’t let everything overwhelm you. I am so thankful that you told me about Dad. To be very clear—I never expected to see him again. I know that sounds harsh, and I know he’s a tough old bird, but even he knew that his cancer wasn’t going to give him much time. We said our goodbyes.

I committed my life to this mission. I knew I’d have to leave my life behind and that things would be different when I returned.

This is so hard, because I will be responding to messages I’ve just seen that you sent weeks ago. So bear with me if you can’t remember what I’m talking about.

Yes, I will still find you beautiful. Yes, I will still want to feel you against me as we fall asleep. Yes, I will kiss you with the same passion as when I left, if not more. Yes, I will be there for you always.

Never doubt me, Kate. I don’t doubt you. [MESSAGE RECEIVED]

February 10, 2194—E-LC transmission

12:57:56: I will be strong, James. How sad is this—I’m safe on Earth, and you’re in a dangerous ship sailing to an unknown planet in a far away solar system, and you’re trying to make me feel better. And you just lost your father. I’m ashamed. Mars said I had this one extra message and to make it count, but I don’t know what to say other than you inspire me, James. I miss you. ~Kate

December 1, 2193—LC-E transmission

11:44:32: Smitty, Mars? What is going on? The messages have started to slow down. Is there something wrong? Everything is fine here. I’d wish you Happy Thanksgiving, but you’ve already celebrated Christmas and New Years. Still no problems on my end. Just a bit worried about you guys, actually. [MESSAGE RECEIVED]

May 19, 2194—E-LC transmission

16:58:54: Jim, it’s Mars. I’ve been waiting to hear from you before giving you the bad news. As you’ve noticed, the QE link has become unstable. We’re not sure if it’ll hold up. We’ve cut transmission down to the bare minimum in the hope that the entanglement will restore itself, but I have to be honest, buddy. It doesn’t look good. I don’t know how many more messages we have, but we will most likely lose our link soon.

17:07:32: James, it’s Kate. I haven’t heard from you in over 3 months, but I just want you to know I’m not worried. Smitty told me we’ve seen instability in the link before, so I’m sure everything is fine. So ignore that and just tell me how your Thanksgiving went. Yes, I remembered!

General Marsden tells me we only have this one transmission, so I’ll just say that even if you don’t hear from me every day (or 5 times a day!) I’ll be with you. Love you so much, ~Kate [MESSAGE TRANSMITTED]

December 1, 2193—LC-E transmission

13:03:54: I don’t know what to say, Kate. This is too much to think about. I don’t know if I can survive without hearing from you. As you said, they did have instabilities before. I have to be positive. Tell Mars that if he needs anything from me in the way of working on my half of the quantum pair, that I’ll do anything—anything—to get it stabilized.

I’m glad you remembered Thanksgiving. I haven’t been in space for a full year yet, and already it feels like ages. Hell, it’s been even longer for you. Okay, to be positive—tell Tony I’m proud of his promotion. He knows damn well that running the Mars line is the final step before getting a deep space mission, but tell him I mentioned it anyway. I hope to God he never gets a deep space mission, but don’t say that—he’ll never understand. Can anyone?

We’ll figure the com issue out, Kate. Just remember I love you. I’m the luckiest guy in the world. James [MESSAGE RECEIVED]

August 17, 2194—E-LC transmission

18:00:03: They are only giving me one message every month, James. I don’t know how often you’ll be getting them, but just know that as you wait for my next message I am still thinking of you. I know you’re figuring out what’s wrong. That’s what I love about you. I could always count on you. I’ll wait to hear what you have found out, but I have to tell you that General Marsden has told me that we have only a few messages left. He said that the quantum pair are spinning apart or the link is broken or something like that.

At home there isn’t much to report. Everyone is just a few months older and a few months wiser. The press are finally leaving me alone. I know I vent at you about them all the time, but they are vultures. Anyway, it’s better, thank God.

I don’t know what else to say, James. How sad is that? I have only one message a month for you, and I have nothing to say. I guess life goes on. Love you. ~Kate [MESSAGE TRANSMITTED]

December 31, 2193—LC-E transmission

11:44:34: Mars, you know what I’m going to say: This is total bullshit. How can you guys fuck up something as simple as the comlink while a sail the size of the moon is working like a charm? Skipping messaging today to do live diagnostics on my transmission quanta. [MESSAGE RECEIVED]

September 23, 2194—E-LC transmission

13:04:03: Jim, I understand your anger. I’m so sorry. I got the final report from Ollie. The QE link is slowly breaking apart. How long we have I don’t know. The brainiacs are shocked we’ve kept it up this long. Anyway, we’ve given up on maintaining our transmission link with the LEWIS & CLARK and are just now trying to give you guidance on keeping your link alive. We don’t know if it’s the volume of messages, the rate of messages, or time that is breaking the link. Hell, the CERN guys think that it’s the distance, our particles are simply moving to a new, stronger entanglement. Anyway, I’m sure you don’t give a shit about this.

We are going to keep the link alive until it breaks apart. It may take a long time if we only send one message every few months. No one knows for sure.

Kate is calm. I don’t know what you’ve been saying to her, but keep it up. Everything else is normal. You’ll be back on Earth in another 40 years or so. And although I’ll be over 100 then, trust me, I’ll still able to beat you into shape. Mars [MESSAGE TRANSMITTED]

January 30, 2194—LC-E transmission

12:04:04: Christ, the time difference is hard. Okay, I have some thoughts. I know the QE is untangling, but perhaps we can turn my transmission particle into a two-way link? Hell, just make it transmit from your side. I don’t need to talk, I just need to hear from you guys. You don’t know how hard it is to wait even a few days for a message.

Can the physicists work on that? I know it’s too late for this calibration, but I could spend the next one doing anything they needed me to do.

Mars, I hate to say this, but if that doesn’t work, perhaps we could turn the sail around? You know there is an abort plan in place with catastrophic failure. Damn, I can’t believe I’m writing that, but we need to get this fixed.

I’m worried about my link, so I’ll just add my message to Kate here.

Kate, please don’t worry! You know we have two links. Even if the one breaks down, we’ll fix the other one. And if that doesn’t work, we’ll turn this damn ship around. I’m not sailing into fucking space with nothing but a bunch of holos for company. Anyway [MESSAGE RECEIVED]

February 19, 2196—E-LC transmission

14:09:11: Jim, it’s Mars. My God, it was great to hear from you a few days ago. I’m sorry you haven’t heard from us in a long time. I told everyone to hold off and make one last try to get a message to you when you finally contacted us, and it has taken monumental calculations to get this message through. Nothing you are suggesting will work. Once the particles are entangled, we can’t make the kind of changes you are suggesting. Just keep your link alive so we can make sure you are okay.

I’m sorry, but this is the last message you’ll hear from us until you get back. I never said this, Jim, but you were the son I never had. So just be safe. I don’t think anyone else could do what you’re doing. I’m incredibly proud of you.

James, it’s Kate. I talked to Ollie and he said he can’t guarantee that the link won’t ever be back for short periods of time. So I will be sending you a message every day. Every day, James. You may never see them, but know they’ll be there floating in space. Just my messages to you. I love you and miss [WARNING: CHARACTER LIMIT REACHED—MESSAGE TRANSMITTED]

March 1, 2194—LC-E transmission

12:38:18: I will assume that my messages are going through, even though yours have stopped. So I am going to make this more like a monthly mission log than anything.

Sail calibration is normal. Acceleration is normal. Life support systems are normal. Everything is fucking normal.

I’ve watched about 40 holos this month. I liked BREAKDOWN. The woman in that reminded me of Kate. I’ve done some research on physics, but find it just as maddening as I did in college. I examined the abort system, even though Mars was kind enough to ignore my request to abort the mission, but I guess I’m too good a soldier to abort the mission without orders. So I sail on.

Kate, your final message inspired me, but it is so hard to sit here and just wait. And wait. And wait. I’ve kept the QE link from Earth open, even though nothing ever comes through. Still, I hope. And wait.

And wait.

Special thanks to Mike Brotherton, who provided invaluable assistance on the science in the story. Assistance can only go so far, however, and any errors are entirely due to the author.

Jake Kerr got his start in writing during the grunge rock era, spending those years kicking around Los Angeles as a columnist for music publications. He not only wrote about rock music, he sat on panels with Stone Temple Pilots lead singer Scott Weiland, he slept in Henry Rollins’ tour bus, and he experienced the hedonism of a Van Halen tour—among other things he’d prefer not to mention.

Looking for a bit more sanity, he moved to Dallas, where he transitioned his writing and career toward digital media. Working for a digital services company, he couldn’t keep his fingers from the keyboard, ending up writing articles for publications like Venturebeat and Mashable.

Through it all, however, Kerr never could shake the writing that inspired him from his youth—the soaring imagination of Edgar Rice Burroughs, the reality-bending novels of Philip K. Dick, the stories from Stephen King that kept him up at night . . . These and countless others led him to finally turn his pen to fiction. He recently attended the Viable Paradise SF and Fantasy writers workshop, where John Scalzi told him to drink more Coke Zero and Jim Macdonald showed him a garden of iron crosses.

Author Spotlight: Jake Kerr
Robyn Lupo

How did “The Old Equations?” come about?

“The Old Equations” evolved in the wake of my previous story being rejected from a lot of different places. I knew why it was being rejected—its connection to science fiction was ephemeral. You could take the story and move it to practically any era, and it would still work.

It wasn’t science fiction; it was fiction with science as window dressing. I resolved myself to write a hard science fiction story, where the science was critical to its emotional depth.

I looked to the history of science fiction for inspiration, and the story that immediately came to mind was Tom Godwin’s “The Cold Equations.” Here was a story with gut-wrenching emotional turmoil linked directly to its central science fiction premise. As far as I am concerned, it defines the genre of hard science fiction. I decided to write an homage to the story.

Was it difficult to write your story while keeping “The Cold Equations” in mind?

At first. the initial genesis of “The Old Equations” was to take the plot of “The Cold Equations,” complete with stowaway, and overlay a different set of cold scientific facts to fuel the tragedy, in this case the stowaway’s ignorance of Einstein’s theories and time dilation. I really liked the tragedy of someone stowing away on a ship for kicks and then finding out in horror that all of her family would be dead of old age when the ship returns. But after I started writing it, I realized that it wasn’t so much an homage as theft. I was simply writing “The Cold Equations” with a different bit of science.

That’s a far different story than what you ended up with. How did you change things to end up with your final draft?

I pulled back and decided to look at a different scenario but with the same central tension of “The Cold Equations.” I also decided to use different literary techniques than Godwin, from my use of the epistolary format to my weaving in of the Kubler-Ross five stages of grief. But while the story and how it is told are perhaps unrelated to the plot and prose of “The Cold Equations,” the tragic spirit of real people facing the cold harsh reality of a science they don’t understand is there.

Some of the missives in the story get cut off because of the word limit in the transmission process. Did anything in particular influence this narrative choice?

Communication was the biggest challenge in “The Old Equations.” When I used traditional radio technology, the delays due to the vast distances of space undermined the tension. There is something much more visceral when James says, “No shit, Doc, put Kate on” than if he knew there was an hour or even longer delay. So I researched a communications system that would operate with immediacy. The only real choice with a modicum of scientific legitimacy was quantum entanglement. As I settled on quantum entanglement as the technology, I realized that by adding small pieces that revealed frustrating limitations I could further underscore the Godwin homage of “cold equations” and that it significantly added to the tension.

Thematically, here was a science that was unstable, cold, and almost cruelly arbitrary. Hence the one kilobyte character limit, and the fact that you can’t really just hit “send” when you hit that limit. At our most basic level we are social animals, and a critical part of that is communication. But when that communication between people who care for each other is marked by arbitrary rules and uncertain reliability, our whole social connection breaks down, even more so for a husband and wife.

In terms of the narrative, that arbitrariness, instability, and powerlessness obviously becomes a key plot point and provides us a glimpse at the cold equations of which Tom Godwin wrote about so eloquently.

What would you like a reader to take away from ‘The Old Equations’?

Of course, more than anything, I’d like the reader to be touched by the story. We all face loss, and we all face how cold and harsh reality can be at times. To see or feel that this is shared by all of us is powerful, even through as simple a vehicle as a science fiction story. I hope that my story was able to be that vehicle. Tom Godwin’s “The Cold Equations” certainly did that for me, and if all I achieved in writing this story is to have others read Godwin’s story—well, then I did what I ultimately intended to do. Because this has always been intended to be, first and foremost, an homage.

Robyn Lupo has been known to frequent southwestern Ontario with her graduate student husband and elderly dog. She writes, reads, and plays video games. She is personal assistant to three cats.

The First Step to Enlightenment is Abject Failure
Jeff Hecht

Philosophers like to think science works in an orderly way, in which scientists propose hypotheses, conduct experiments to validate their ideas, then emerge triumphantly from the laboratory to publish their results. Sometimes that happens.

But some very important breakthroughs have come after scientists stared in slack-jawed dismay at entirely unexpected experimental results. Their predictions had flopped, and it wasn’t merely Murphy’s Law taking its toll. Their experiments had stumbled upon something unexpected that turned out to have a much larger impact than what they had been looking for.

The Lingering Death of the Ether

If the ether was the fabric of space, as classical physicists believed, it must be stationary, so measuring the speed of light going in different directions should reveal how fast the Earth was moving through space. Albert A. Michelson invented a dandy little optical system that seemed just fine for the job. It split a beam of light into two beams at right angles to each other, then reflected them back to the source for comparison. If the Earth was moving through the ether, there would be an “ether wind” that would affect the two beams differently, because of their different directions, and would make the two pulses arrive at slightly different times. He figured that this experiment would reveal the Earth’s velocity through the ether, but his 1887 experiment failed to show any sign of the expected ether wind.

Michelson and other physicists went off scratching their heads. Their results didn’t fit with two centuries of classical physics, and they couldn’t find any mistakes. George FitzGerald and Hendrik Lorentz, two prominent physicists, separately suggested that the Earth’s movement through the ether might somehow conceal the ether wind. But that didn’t solve the problem; they were only adding fudge factors to save the ether. To see reality, scientists had to look past the ether, and that required the genius of Albert Einstein. His theory of relativity cracked the case by showing that the speed of light was constant for all observers—except for Michelson, who remained a firm believer in the ether. Relativity didn’t just dispose of the ether or the idea of stationary space. It transformed people’s view of the universe to reveal matter in a continuum of space and time. A quest for ether that yielded no detectible effects led to a revelation.

Let There Be Light: Whatever That Is

Undetectable effects are far from the only experimental problem that can lead to a new understanding of the world. Different measurements of the same thing can yield disconcertingly different results. That was the case with light. Isaac Newton thought light consisted of a series of tiny particles, but others thought light was made of waves. The wave versus particle debate raged for a century until Thomas Young scored what seemed a decisive victory for waves in 1807.

Young passed light through two closely spaced slits, producing alternating light and dark bands on a screen behind them. The only way to explain that pattern, he said, was if light was waves which rose and fell in strength like ripples on a pond. Whether the waves produced a bright band or a dark one depended on how the waves from the two slits overlapped. If the peaks of one wave matched the peaks of the other, the two peaks formed a bright band, but if the peaks of one matched the valleys of the other, they cancelled, leaving a dark band. Newton’s little particles clearly couldn’t do that.

For decades, the wave theory held sway; but nothing is ever completely settled in physics. Scientists keep trying new experiments to probe the limits of nature, or just to look for something interesting to explore. And in 1887, while Michelson was trying in vain to find the ether wind, Heinrich Hertz noted something odd while fiddling around with electrically charged metal objects. Illuminating them with ultraviolet light caused their charges to drain away. Inserting a glass window to block the ultraviolet light stopped the leakage.

Hertz didn’t stop to explore the effect in much detail. He was too busy proving Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetism and demonstrating radio transmission. But others were intrigued, and tried to make sense out of what is now called the “photoelectric effect.” They were puzzled that the wavelength of the light was crucial. Bright visible light produced no electrons, but faint ultraviolet light did produce some. Cranking up the ultraviolet produced more electrons. Yet the wave theory predicted that the number of electrons produced should depend on the light intensity, not the wavelength. The two-slit experiment had showed that light was a wave, but the photoelectric effect showed light doing something that no wave should do.

Again, Einstein came to the rescue. He explained the photoelectric effect, and it earned him the Nobel Prize. Essentially, light has a split personality. In Young’s experiment, it acted like waves. In Hertz’s, it acted like little chunks of energy called photons. Ultraviolet photons had enough energy to blast electrons free from the metal; visible photons didn’t have enough. In other words, when asked if light is made of waves or particles, Einstein said “both.” And again, an experiment that defied previous theories led the way to a new understanding of one of the universe’s most important phenomena.

The Next Mystery

The photoelectric effect was only the beginning. Judging by light’s behavior, it seemed to want to frustrate physicists. When they tried an experiment designed to look for light waves, they saw waves. When they were looking for photons, they saw photons. When they tried something that might show both, they saw one or the other, but never both. This cosmic frustration has not gone away. It seems like an inherently perverse law invented by some cosmic Murphy.

Quantum mechanics is one rather large impossible-to-believe thing. In fact, Einstein himself complained that some parts of quantum mechanics just didn’t make sense. One notion he found particularly troubling was that the quantum-mechanical properties of pairs of particles could remain linked even when they were far apart. He conducted one of his famous thought experiments to show the problem. Suppose someone created a pair of particles so their spins were equal and opposite, and they sped away in opposite direction. Quantum mechanics says no one can know the spin of either particle until they measure the spin of one of them—and making that measurement will instantly give the other particle the opposite spin, no matter how far apart they are.

Nonsense, thought Einstein, and in 1935 he and his colleagues Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen concluded that the quantum entanglement thought experiment revealed the logical fallacy of quantum mechanics. Einstein later scoffed at linked spin as “spooky action at a distance.” Yet even Einstein’s thought experiments can go wrong. Three decades later, Irish physicist John Stewart Bell showed Einstein’s had its own logical flaw—it assumed that objects could be affected only by nearby objects, something not inherent in quantum mechanics. In 1972, physicists Stuart Freedman and John Clauser devised a physical experiment, which showed Bell was right. The quantum-mechanical spins of particles could remain entangled when far apart. Spooky action at a distance might not make sense, but it works.

So now we have quantum entanglement, a way to generate pairs of photons which remain entangled as they go their separate ways through the universe until one is called upon to reveal its secret property—thereby determining the property of the other. No one can fiddle with one photon without affecting its partner. Or so we think, until someone else has their own surprising moment in a laboratory.

Jeff Hecht is a science-fact writer who contributes regularly to New Scientist magazine and Laser Focus World. His specialties range from lasers and fiber optics to paleontology. His books include Understanding Lasers, Beam: The Race to Make the Laser, Understanding Fiber Optics, and Beam Weapons: The Next Arms Race. He has had short fiction published in venues ranging from Analog and Asimov’s to Nature. More at his web site: http://www.jeffhecht.com

Sweet Sixteen
Kat Howard

Her entire life, Star had known that on her sixteenth birthday, she would choose to be a Tiffany.

She shifted in her seat, rolled her eyes at her home-mom, Martha Peace. “I just don’t see what the point of this is. I know what I want to be. I don’t need to be counseled on my options.”

“That’s not how the process works, dear. You know that.” Martha Peace turned back to her knitting.

Star slumped lower in her seat, because she did know. She would get to make a choice, but so would her moms, and so would the community. And she had to endure the counseling, so everyone could sign off on her choice as being mature and considered. As if she hadn’t been considering for almost sixteen years. As if a sterile conversation and a couple of weeks to consider would change her mind.

The thing was, Tiffanies weren’t needed. They were the girls who were cute, who entertained, who were B-list and gossip fodder. They weren’t like the Marthas, who became home-moms, and raised daughters, and knitted. They weren’t like the Hillaries, who ran school boards and cities and countries, or the Carolines, who worked in physics and astronomy, and drove shuttles to Mars. Most especially, Tiffanies weren’t like her career-mom, Elizabeth Sky. Elizabeths were doctors, and so were never home because they were always dealing with someone else’s more important problems.

Star didn’t care about any of the other choices, or want to hear yet again the official reminder that the restructuring would set her path, but it would be her choice how far she walked on it. When it came time for her restructuring on her sixteenth birthday, she was going to walk into the room, and ask to be made a Tiffany.

A woman stepped through the sliding door. White coat, glasses, hair scraped back from her face. An Anna, Star guessed, but of course she would be, to work here.

“Star? I’m Anna Poetry. Will you come with me, please?”

Star followed Anna Poetry through airy hallways, past frosted glass doors where other girls—girls just like Star, almost sixteen, almost old enough for restructuring—were being counseled by their Annas about their options.

Anna Poetry led Star into an empty exam room. Her competent hands weighed and measured Star, checked her vision and hearing, drew three vials of blood. “The data I’ve just gathered will be matched against your birth profile, and used to help determine what kind of woman you’re suited to be.”

“I’m going to be a Tiffany,” Star said.

Anna Poetry smiled. “That’s an interesting choice. Do you know any Tiffanies?”

“I met one once. When they were filming that Reality at school last year. She was sweet.”

“Is that why you want to be a Tiffany? Because you think they’re sweet?” Anna Poetry made a notation on her touch screen.

“Yes. But also because everyone watches them and loves them and talks about them. I want people to pay attention to me.”

“Why not be a Meryl, or a Hillary, then? Or a Theresa, if you want to be loved?”

“Because those are all serious. Tiffanies are fun.”

Another notation. “Have you discussed your choice with your moms?”

“Martha Peace knows. She thinks I should want to be something useful, like an Anna or a Marie. But I think entertaining people is useful.”

The Anna’s fingers flicked across Star’s file. “Your career-mom is an Elizabeth at the hospital, isn’t she? What does she think of your choice?”

“She likes law, so I think she wants me to be a Sandra, but we haven’t really talked about it. She’s busy. You know how Elizabeths are.”

“We all appreciate the sacrifices Elizabeths make for our health, but it’s very important that she speak with you about this decision. I’ll ping her with a reminder.”

Star didn’t think that would go over well at all, but she smiled and nodded thanks.

“When you come in to undergo the restructuring, you’ll be asked to declare your top three choices, in order, to help align your preferences with the community’s needs. Have you thought about the other two?”

“Martha Peace says I’m a good cook, so I’ve thought about being a Julia. And I like to write, so maybe a Virginia, but I don’t really like being alone, so I’m not sure about that one. Can’t I just write Tiffany three times? It’s the only thing I’ve ever really wanted to be.”

“No, you need to have three discrete choices. If you want to meet anytime between now and your birthday to discuss your options, just ping me. Do you have any other questions?”

“Did you want to be an Anna?” Star blushed. “I’m so sorry. I know that’s a rude question. I’m just worried about the procedure. I mean, if I don’t get to be a Tiffany, will remembering I wanted to, like, screw up the rest of my life?”

“You don’t need to worry. The restructuring is total. When the procedure is finished, your DNA will be so perfectly tuned to your role that you won’t remember ever wanting to be anything other than what you are.”

Anna Poetry must have pinged Elizabeth Sky as soon as Star had left her office. When Star and Martha Peace arrived home, Elizabeth Sky was waiting in the kitchen. “I picked up dinner from Julia Cupcake’s.”

Julia Cupcake’s career-mom was also a Julia. Star wondered if Julia Cupcake had wanted to be a Julia before she was restructured, back when she was just Cupcake.

Dinner was delicious, and when it was over, Martha Peace put on a pot of tea, kissed Star on the cheek, and excused herself. Star wished she had stayed. She didn’t know her career-mom well, and talking to Elizabeth Sky always felt like taking an exam Star hadn’t known to study for.

“It’s cruel, what happens. That the decision comes so early,” Elizabeth Sky said.

Star blinked. She had been expecting a lecture. Confused didn’t begin to cover how she felt. “If deciding now is cruel, why don’t we get to wait?”

“Because the restructuring doesn’t always take, if we wait longer. Up until sixteen, it works, and works perfectly. After that, the DNA becomes resistant. The process only takes in bits and pieces, and you can have someone with the ability of a Julia forced into being a Hillary. It leads to all the pain and frustration restructuring was designed to avoid.”

“I had always thought that we had the procedure when we turned sixteen because that was when we were old enough to decide.”

“No. It’s because that’s the last possible moment when you are still young enough for choice to be possible. I just wish it could be later, so you had more time to know yourself.”

Here it comes, Star thought. The lecture about how being a Tiffany was a frivolous choice, how if she were more responsible, more of a grown up, she would choose to be a Marie, or a Scholastica, or something equally boring.

“I wanted to be a Tiffany,” Elizabeth Sky said.

Star sloshed tea across the table. “Anna Poetry said we don’t remember what we wanted to be after the restructuring.”

“That’s true. Unless you get your first choice. Then they leave your memory intact.”

“But if you wanted to be a Tiffany, how do you remember that now?”

“My career-mom had a conversation very similar to this one with me before I went in for my restructuring. She was a Rosalind.”

A geneticist. Like the ones who would make up a vial full of Star’s new DNA as a sixteenth birthday gift. Like the ones who designed the restructuring to begin with.

“What did she tell you that made you change your mind?”

“That she wished I could have had the time to be all of the things I wanted. I knew I didn’t have that time, but I thought maybe if I became an Elizabeth, I could find a way to let the choice happen later. For other girls.”

“Why do we have to choose to get restructured at all, then? Can’t I just be a Tiffany?”

“The process was designed to blend desire and ability with need. Things don’t work if everyone is a Meryl and no one is a Martha. And you know what happens when I try to cook,” Elizabeth Sky said. “What if I had wanted to be a Julia?”

Star snickered.

“Exactly. So the choice is the price we pay for happiness, for a functioning community. It’s an easy price, I think. I just wish it could be paid later.

“I failed in my hope, Star. I couldn’t give you any more time. Because of that, Martha Peace and I are giving you our votes. Since you have to choose now, we want the choice to be as much yours as we can make it. Happy birthday.”

Both of Star’s moms went with her on the day of her restructuring, her sixteenth birthday. She hugged and kissed them. Martha Peace wiped a tear from her eye, and told Star how grown up she looked.

“Do you know what you want to be?” asked Elizabeth Sky.

Star nodded.

“Then be her proudly.”

Star wrote down three names on her touch screen, then stretched out on the bed. After a time that seemed both like forever, and not nearly long enough for the rest of her life to have been decided, Anna Poetry came in with the pressure syringe full of Star’s future.

“You look very calm,” Anna Poetry said. “Are you ready?”

Star was. Anna Poetry pressed the syringe to her shoulder, and Star closed her eyes.

When she awoke, Rosalind Star remembered that she had once wanted to be a Tiffany. Maybe, she thought, every girl did.

Kat Howard is a former competitive fencer and current university professor. Her short fiction has previously appeared in the anthology Stories, and in Fantasy Magazine and Weird Tales. She is a 2008 graduate of Clarion (UCSD). Her heroes are Buffy and Joan of Arc, and she only speaks of herself in the third person when writing bios.

Author Spotlight: Kat Howard
Robyn Lupo

Can you tell us what inspired “Sweet Sixteen?”

I have a strong academic interest in hagiography—writing about saints—and in the way holy women in particular are written about. One of my colleagues at Stony Brook University had written an article that touched on this topic. One of the specific areas he wrote about was the idea of “requickening,” which, to vastly oversimplify, was the thought that by taking on a saint’s name, a convert also took on a part of that saint’s identity. I really loved this idea, and wanted to see if I could make it work outside the area of medieval literature and hagiography.

The major issue in “Sweet Sixteen” seems to be the problem of personal identity. What made you choose the technology of re-making an individual to address this issue?

Technology is amazing. I know, we’re sort of supposed to be grumpy that we don’t have our jetpacks and flying cars yet, but I look around at what science and technology have achieved, and are achieving, and I am amazed. At the same time, I think that no matter how advanced technology becomes, some questions—like “Who am I now?” and “Who am I going to be?”—are pretty universal. So I wanted to show that even if it seems like technology gives us an answer, we’re still going to find a way to ask the question.

You are silent when it comes to the masculine in this story. What prompted this choice?

It was a gentle push back at all of the stories that erase women.

Role models seem essential to this story. Do you have a role model as life-altering as the ones in Star’s life?

I feel very lucky, because I’ve had a tremendous amount of people in my life that I look up to, and admire. Many of those people, I am also honored to call friend. But for the purposes of brevity, I’ll limit myself to mentioning Caroline Walker Bynum, without whom my field of study would not exist, and my sister Elizabeth, who is one of the most extraordinary people I know.

Even though each child in “Sweet Sixteen” has input into who she will be, and the choice itself is pushed to as late as physically feasible, there’s still a lot of anxiety about the change. Do you think there would be any time where there wouldn’t be that sort of anxiety?

I still feel anxious about who I’m going to be when I grow up, and I’m definitely not sixteen! I think people are always anxious about making big decisions, and I think that’s good, because ideally, that means we consider those decisions carefully. But since we don’t ever have perfect knowledge, there’s always the chance of making a mistake, and not being able to correct it. So you think, and you worry, but eventually, you have to choose.

Robyn Lupo has been known to frequent southwestern Ontario with her graduate student husband and elderly dog. She writes, reads, and plays video games. She is personal assistant to three cats.

The Superpowered Potential of Epigenetics
Ekaterina Sedia

In the past few years, something very exciting happened in the field of human genetics: After decoding the human genome and marveling at how few genes we actually have, scientists began to realize that the old paradigm of genes as the sole player of inheritance has to be modified. As it turns out, the way in which genes are expressed could be more important—especially heritable changes of gene expression, known collectively as epigenetics.

Once the Human Genome was deciphered, we were ecstatic at the possibilities of curing diseases, at the prospect of gene therapies…until we realized that gene therapy almost never works, and tracking down genes responsible for anything but the most straightforward Mendelian inheritance is an existential nightmare. Instead, it seems that genes don’t function (or fail to function) all by themselves. Epigenetic regulation of gene expression offers the key to understanding how do we manage to chug along with fewer genes than most plants, as well as treatment of disease and possibly, just possibly, actual physical modification.

The Rise of Epigenetic Understanding

Epigenetics refers loosely to the heritable changes of gene expression—such as methylation, histone modification, and probably a few other mechanisms we know little to nothing about—without actual change to the DNA sequence. Of course, we knew about gene regulation all along: For example, DNA in all our cells is the same. It’s the gene expression that makes a skin cell different from a spleen cell or a pituitary cell. But understanding of the extent of this phenomenon is fairly new—as well as the shocking realization that epigenetic changes are heritable.

A famous study of the Dutch famine in 1944 shows that individuals who were conceived during the famine had less methylation on a certain gene. Methylation happens when a methyl group, a precise group of three hydrogen atoms and a carbon atom, is attached to DNA. It suppresses gene expression, so even if a gene has DNA blueprints to do a certain thing, it won’t put those plans into action. The epigenetic changes of the famine were associated with impaired glucose tolerance, higher rates of obesity, and high blood pressure. Moreover, these changes persisted over generations—for example, having a same-sex grandparent who was a famine survivor (grandmother for women, grandfather for men) increased the mortality risk for the grandchildren. This shows that epigenetic changes can be passed down through generations, and unlike individuals who were exposed to famine conditions, these results cannot be attributed to intrauterine conditions. (So think of your grandchildren instead of crash-dieting!)

The effect of the source of epigenetic changes based on the sex of the grandparent is most likely attributed to genetic imprinting. We all have two copies of each chromosome (with the exception of X and Y chromosomes in men), one coming from each parent. As it turns out, they come pre-labeled. Even though now that these chromosomes are in your cell, they know whether they came from your mother (maternal chromosome) or father (paternal chromosome), and for normal functioning we need both.

The more we learn about epigenetics, the clearer it becomes that nature versus nurture is a false dichotomy—environment has more influence over our gene expression that we imagined, and in turn these changed genes can now be passed down to the next generation.

Using Epigenetics to Gain Superpowers

It’s no wonder that even though we still know little about epigenetic control, we see so much potential in it for curing diseases. Genetic diseases may be more treatable with epigenetics than gene insertion or deletion: While changing every gene in every cell via gene therapy is daunting, epigenetic regulation is likely to be much more achievable, since it can be altered by reversing methylation or relaxing imprinting of certain genes rather than inserting brand new ones. But what does it mean for genetic modification of humans?

It seems to me that the fantasy of superheroes or mutant X-Men should give way to possibilities of epigenetic control. Rather than asking, “Which gene could give us super strength?” We can instead say, “Can we epigenetically regulate genes we already have to make us stronger?” For example, myostatin (GDF8, or growth differentiation factor 8) is the protein responsible for stopping our muscle growth and differentiation. We know of a few cases where babies born with two copies of a mutation that makes an inactive version of this protein achieve remarkable muscle growth and strength. But it seems that suppressing this gene’s expression by encouraging its methylation would be a lot easier than knocking out two copies of the gene in each cell. After all, all the mechanisms for methylation are already contained in our cells—we just need to learn how to encourage it in specific sites. You can imagine the dramatic impact it would have in young people who are still experiencing growth—but even in adults (especially the ones doing weight training) it could cause fairly dramatic changes in a span of just a few months.

Myostatin also has an effect on speed. While human examples might be lacking (besides anecdotal evidence that individuals with one defective copy of myostatin gene tend to be pretty good sprinters), there is a well-documented dog example: Bully whippets. In those dogs, myostatin leads to development of extraordinary speed and agility.

Endurance can be similarly tweaked by modifying the gene expression of erythropoietin (epo) receptors. Normally, epo is only produced at low oxygen environments (such as high altitudes). At normal oxygen levels, epo receptors shut down its production. However, by inactivating these receptors, we can achieve an abnormally high level of red blood cells—and as a result, the individual would be able to supply their muscles and other tissues with oxygen at a much higher rate than normal. Practical result: ability to run (or bike, or perform any other physical activity) for hours, while experiencing less fatigue. Better yet, inactivation of the receptors would result in an almost instantaneous endurance gain.

If werewolves are more your thing—well, we already have genes responsible for hair production; surely we can promote their expression!

We can even turn up our endorphins to make ourselves pain-resistant. After all, how hard can it be to either increase endorphin production or simply decreasing the rate of neurotransmitters’ breakdown? We could manage it by histone modification. Histone modification can take many forms, but basically histones are proteins around which eukaryotic chromosomal DNA is wrapped. By changing histones we can change how loosely or how tightly DNA adheres to them—and as the result, how accessible genes are. Genes of the DNA wrapped tightly will be less available for RNA synthesis and thus gene expression, compared to the genes in a looser formation. A little epigenetic magic and we’ll all be walking around with smiles on our faces.

The Limits of Epigenetics

Of course, such modifications eventually run afoul of biological limitations: Some things are simply not possible (such as a predator running 400 mph that has a machine gun rack mounted on its back), and humans are no exception. For example, a recent paper in Journal of Applied Physiology argues that the limitations on human speed are imposed simply by the time required for a limb to make contact with the ground and apply necessary force. Because of that, human running speeds above 30-40 mph are likely to be biologically impossible.

Biological limitations are likely to be present everywhere: Strength might be limited by the ability of our bones and joints to withstand the stresses generated by the muscles, and so on. So we probably won’t be able to outrun locomotives or lift entire buildings. But if we want to make ourselves faster, smarter, stronger and healthier, learning more about epigenetic control can surely help!

Ekaterina Sedia holds a PhD in Ecology and Evolution, and her popular science articles have appeared in Clarkesworld. She works as an associate professor of biology at a state liberal arts college in New Jersey, and in her spare time she writes fantasy novels and short stories, and edits anthologies. Visit her at www.ekaterinasedia.com.

Face Value
Karen Joy Fowler

It was almost like being alone. Taki, who had been alone one way or another most of his life, recognized this and thought he could deal with it. What choice did he have? It was only that he had allowed himself to hope for something different. A second star, small and dim, joined the sun in the sky, making its appearance over the rope bridge which spanned the empty river. Taki crossed the bridge in a hurry to get inside before the hottest part of the day began.

Something flashed briefly in the dust at his feet and he stooped to pick it up. It was one of Hesper’s poems, half finished, left out all night. Taki had stopped reading Hesper’s poetry. It reflected nothing, not a whisper of her life here with him, but was filled with longing for things and people behind her. Taki pocketed the poem on his way to the house, stood outside the door, and removed what dust he could with the stiff brush which hung at the entrance. He keyed his admittance; the door made a slight sucking sound as it resealed behind him.

Hesper had set out an iced glass of ade for him. Taki drank it at a gulp, superimposing his own dusty fingerprints over hers sketched lightly in the condensation on the glass. The drink was heavily sugared and only made him thirstier.

A cloth curtain separated one room from another, a blue sheet, Hesper’s innovation since the dwelling was designed as a single, multifunctional space. Through the curtain Taki heard a voice and knew Hesper was listening again to her mother’s letter—Earth weather, the romances of her younger cousins. The letter had arrived weeks ago, but Taki was careful not to remind Hesper how old its news really was. If she chose to imagine the lives of her family moving along the same timeline as her own, then this must be a fantasy she needed. She knew the truth. In the time it had taken her to travel here with Taki, her mother had grown old and died. Her cousins had settled into marriages happy or unhappy or had faced life alone. The letters which continued to arrive with some regularity were an illusion. A lifetime later Hesper would answer them.

Taki ducked through the curtain to join her. “Hot,” he told her as if this were news. She lay on their mat stomach down, legs bent at the knees, feet crossed in the air. Her hair, the color of dried grasses, hung over her face. Taki stared for a moment at the back of her head. “Here,” he said. He pulled her poem from his pocket and laid it by her hand. “I found this out front.”

Hesper switched off the letter and rolled onto her back away from the poem. She was careful not to look at Taki. Her cheeks were stained with irregular red patches so that Taki knew she had been crying again. The observation caused him a familiar mixture of sympathy and impatience. His feelings for Hesper always came in these uncomfortable combinations; it tired him.

“‘Out front,’“ Hesper repeated, and her voice held a practiced tone of uninterested nastiness. “And how did you determine that one part of this featureless landscape was the ‘front’?”

“Because of the door. We have only the one door so it’s the front door.”

“No,” said Hesper. “If we had two doors then one might arguably be the front door and the other the back door, but with only one it’s just the door.” Her gaze went straight upward. “You use words so carelessly. Words from another world. They mean nothing here.” Her eyelids fluttered briefly, the lashes darkened with tears. “It’s not just an annoyance to me, you know,” she said. “It can’t help but damage your work.”

“My work is the study of the mene,” Taki answered. “Not the creation of a new language,” and Hesper’s eyes closed.

“I really don’t see the difference,” she told him. She lay a moment longer without moving, then opened her eyes and looked at Taki directly. “I don’t want to have this conversation. I don’t know why I started it. Let’s rewind, run it again. I’ll be the wife this time. You come in and say, ‘Honey, I’m home!’ and I’ll ask you how your morning was.”

Taki began to suggest that this was a scene from another world and would mean nothing here. He had not yet framed the sentence when he heard the door seal release and saw Hesper’s face go hard and white. She reached for her poem and slid it under the scarf at her waist. Before she could get to her feet the first of the mene had joined them in the bedroom. Taki ducked through the curtain to fasten the door before the temperature inside the house rose. The outer room was filled with dust and the hands which reached out to him as he went past left dusty streaks on his clothes and his skin. He counted eight of the mene, fluttering about him like large moths, moths the size of human children, but with furry vestigial wings, hourglass abdomens, sticklike limbs. They danced about him in the open spaces, looked through the cupboards, pulled the tapes from his desk. When they had their backs to him he could see the symmetrical arrangement of dark spots which marked their wings in a pattern resembling a human face. A very sad face, very distinct. Masculine, Taki had always thought, but Hesper disagreed.

The party which had made initial contact under the leadership of Hans Mene so many years ago had wisely found the faces too whimsical for mention in their report. Instead they had included pictures and allowed them to speak for themselves. Perhaps the original explorers had been asking the same question Hesper posed the first time Taki showed her the pictures. Was the face really there? Or was this only evidence of the ability of humans to see their own faces in everything? Hesper had a poem entitled “The Kitchen God,” which recounted the true story of a woman about a century ago who had found the image of Christ in the burn-marks on a tortilla. “Do they see it, too?” she had asked Taki, but there was as yet no way to ask this of the mene, no way to know if they had reacted with shock and recognition to the faces of the first humans they had seen, though studies of the mene eye suggested a finer depth perception which might significantly distort the flat image.

Taki thought that Hesper’s own face had changed since the day, only six months ago calculated as Traveltime, when she had said she would come here with him and he thought it was because she loved him. They had sorted through all the information which had been collected to date on the mene and her face had been all sympathy then. “What would it be like,” she asked him, “to be able to fly and then to lose this ability? To outgrow it? What would a loss like that do to the racial consciousness of a species?”

“It happened so long ago, I doubt it’s even noticed as a loss,” Tali had answered. “Legends, myths not really believed perhaps. Probably not even that. In the racial memory not even a whisper.”

Hesper had ignored him. “What a shame they don’t write poetry,” she had said. She was finding them less romantic now as she joined Taki in the outer room, her face stoic. The mene surrounded her, ran their string-fingered hands all over her body, inside her clothing. One mene attempted to insert a finger into her mouth, but Hesper tightened her lips together resolutely, dust on her chin. Her eyes were fastened on Taki. Accusingly? Beseechingly? Taki was no good at reading people’s eyes. He looked away.

Eventually the mene grew bored. They left in groups, a few lingering behind to poke among the boxes in the bedroom, then following the others until Hesper and Taki were left alone. Hesper went to wash herself as thoroughly as their limited water supply allowed; Taki swept up the loose dust. Before he finished, Hesper returned, showing him her empty jewelry box without a word. The jewelry had all belonged to her mother.

“I’ll get them when it cools,” Taki told her.

“Thank you.”

It was always Hesper’s things that the mene took. The more they disgusted her, pawing over her, rummaging through her things, no way to key the door against clever mene fingers even if Taki had agreed to lock them out, which he had not, the more fascinating they seemed to find her. They touched her twice as often as they touched Taki and much more insistently. They took her jewelry, her poems, her letters, all the things she treasured most, and Taki believed, although it was far too early in his studies really to speculate with any assurance, that the mene read something off the objects. The initial explorers had concluded that mene communication was entirely telepathic, and if this was accurate, then Taki’s speculation was not such a leap. Certainly the mene didn’t value the objects for themselves. Taki always found them discarded in the dust on this side of the rope bridge.

The fact that everything would be easily recovered did nothing to soften Hesper’s sense of invasion. She mixed herself a drink, stirring it with the metal straw which poked through the dust-proof lid. “You shouldn’t allow it,” she said at last, and Taki knew from the time that had elapsed that she had tried not to begin this familiar conversation. He appreciated her effort as much as he was annoyed by her failure.

“It’s part of my job,” he reminded her. “We have to be accessible to them. I study them. They study us. There’s no way to differentiate the two activities and certainly no way to establish communication except simultaneously.”

“You’re letting them study us, but you’re giving them a false picture. You’re allowing them to believe that humans intrude on each other in this way. Does it occur to you that they may be involved in similar charades? If so, what can either of us learn?”

Taki took a deep breath. “The need for privacy may not be as intrinsically human as you imagine. I could point to many societies which afforded very little of this. As for any deliberate misrepresentations on their part—well, isn’t that the whole rationale for not sending a study team? Wouldn’t I be farther along if I were working with environmentalists, physiologists, linguists? But the risk of contamination increases exponentially with each additional human. We would be too much of a presence. Of course, I will be very careful. I am far from the stage in my study where I can begin to draw conclusions. When I visit them . . . ”

“Reinforcing the notion that such visits are ordinary human behavior . . . ” Hesper was looking at Taki with great coolness.

“When I visit them I am much more circumspect,” Taki finished. “I conduct my study as unobtrusively as possible.”

“And what do you imagine you are studying?” Hesper asked. She closed her lips tightly over the straw and drank. Taki regarded her steadily and with exasperation.

“Is this a trick question?” he asked. “I imagine I am studying the mene. What do you imagine I am studying?”

“What humans always study,” said Hesper. “Humans.”

You never saw one of the mene alone. Not ever. One never wandered off to watch the sun set or took its food to a solitary hole to eat without sharing. They did everything in groups and although Taki had been observing them for weeks now and was able to identify individuals and had compiled charts of the groupings he had seen, trying to isolate families or friendships or work-castes, still the results were inconclusive.

His attempts at communication were similarly discouraging. He had tried verbalizations, but had not expected a response to them; he had no idea how they processed audio information although they could hear. He had tried clapping and gestures, simple hand signals for the names of common objects. He had no sense that these efforts were noticed. They were so unfocused when he dealt with them, fluttering here, fluttering there. Taki’s ESP quotient had never been measurable, yet he tried that route, too. He tried to send a simple command. He would trap a mene hand and hold it against his own cheek, trying to form in his mind the picture which corresponded to the action. When he released the hand, sticky mene fingers might linger for a moment or they might slip away immediately, tangle in his hair instead, or tap his teeth. Mene teeth were tiny and pointed like wires. Taki saw them only when the mene ate. At other times they were hidden inside the folds of skin which almost hid their eyes as well. Taki speculated that the skin flaps protected their mouths and eyes from the dust. Taki found mene faces less expressive than their backs. Head-on they appeared petaled and blind as flowers. When he wanted to differentiate one mene from another, Taki looked at their wings.

Hesper had warned him there would be no art and he had asked her how she could be so sure. “Because their communication system is perfect,” she said. “Out of one brain and into the next with no loss of meaning, no need for abstraction. Art arises from the inability to communicate. Art is the imperfect symbol. Isn’t it?” But Taki, watching the mene carry water up from their underground deposits, asked himself where the line between tools and art objects should be drawn. For no functional reason that he could see, the water containers curved in the centers like the shapes of the mene’s own abdomens.

Taki followed the mene below ground, down some shallow, rough-cut stairs into the darkness. The mene themselves were slightly luminescent when there was no other light; at times and seasons some were spectacularly so and Taki’s best guess was that this was sexual. Even with the dimmer members, Taki could see well enough. He moved through a long tunnel with a low ceiling which made him stoop. He could hear water at the other end of it, not the water itself, but a special quality to the silence which told him water was near. The lake was clearly artificial, collected during the rainy season which no human had seen yet. The tunnel narrowed sharply. Taki could have gone forward, but felt suddenly claustrophobic and backed out instead. What did the mene think, he wondered, of the fact that he came here without Hesper. Did they notice this at all? Did it teach them anything about humans that they were capable of understanding?

“Their lives together are perfect,” Hesper said. “Except for those useless wings. If they are ever able to talk with us at all it will be because of those wings.”

Of course Hesper was a poet. The world was all language as far as she was concerned.

When Taki first met Hesper, at a party given by a colleague of his, he had asked her what she did. “I name things,” she had said. “I try to find the right names for things.” In retrospect Taki thought it was bullshit. He couldn’t remember why he had been so impressed with it at the time, a deliberate miscommunication, when a simple answer, “I write poetry,” would have been so clear and easy to understand. He felt the same way about her poetry itself, needlessly obscure, slightly evocative, but it left the reader feeling that he had fallen short somehow, that it had been a test and he had flunked it. It was unkind poetry and Taki had worked so hard to read it then.

“Am I right?” he would ask her anxiously when he finished. “Is that what you’re saying?” but she would answer that the poem spoke for itself.

“Once it’s on the page, I’ve lost control over it. Then the reader determines what it says or how it works.” Hesper’s eyes were gray, the irises so large and intense within their dark rings, that they made Taki dizzy. “So you’re always right. By definition. Even if it’s not remotely close to what I intended.”

What Taki really wanted was to find himself in Hesper’s poems. He would read them anxiously for some symbol which could be construed as him, some clue as to his impact on her life. But he was never there.

It was against policy to send anyone into the field alone. There were pros and cons, of course, but ultimately the isolation of a single professional was seen as too cruel. For shorter projects there were advantages in sending a threesome, but during a longer study the group dynamics in a trio often became difficult. Two were considered ideal and Taki knew that Rawji and Heyen had applied for this post, a husband and wife team in which both members were trained for this type of study. He had never stopped being surprised that the post had been offered to him instead. He could not have even been considered if Hesper had not convinced the members of the committee of her willingness to accompany him, but she must have done much more. She must have impressed someone very much for them to decide that one trained xenologist and one poet might be more valuable than two trained xenologists. The committee had made some noises about “contamination” occurring between the two trained professionals, but Taki found this argument specious. “What did you say to them?” he asked her after her interview and she shrugged.

“You know,” she said. “Words.”

Taki had hidden things from the committee during his own interview. Things about Hesper. Her moods, her deep attachment to her mother, her unreliable attachment to him. He must have known it would never work out, but he walked about in those days with the stunned expression of a man who has been given everything. Could he be blamed for accepting it? Could he be blamed for believing in Hesper’s unexpected willingness to accompany him? It made a sort of equation for Taki. If Hesper was willing to give up everything and come with Taki, then Hesper loved Taki. An ordinary marriage commitment was reviewable every five years; this was something much greater. No other explanation made any sense.

The equation still held a sort of inevitability for Taki. Then Hesper loved Taki, if Hesper was willing to come with him. So somehow, sometime, Taki had done something which lost him Hesper’s love. If he could figure out what, perhaps he could make her love him again. “Do you love me?” he had asked Hesper, only once; he had too much pride for these thinly disguised pleadings. “Love is such a difficult word,” she had answered, but her voice had been filled with a rare softness and had not hurt Taki as much as it might.

The daystar was appearing again when Taki returned home. Hesper had made a meal which suggested she was coping well today. It included a sort of pudding made of a local fruit they found themselves able to tolerate. Hesper called the pudding “boxty.” It was apparently a private joke. Taki was grateful for the food and the joke, even if he didn’t understand it. He tried to keep the conversation lighthearted, talking to Hesper about the mene water jars. Taki’s position was that when the form of a practical object was less utilitarian than it might be, then it was art. Hesper laughed. She ran through a list of human artifacts and made him classify them.

“A paper clip,” she said.

“The shape hasn’t changed in centuries,” he told her. “Not art.”

“A safety pin.”

Taki hesitated. How essential was the coil at the bottom of the pin? Very. “Not art,” he decided.

“A hair brush.”

“Boar bristle?”

“Wood handle.”

“Art. Definitely.”

She smiled at him. “You’re confusing ornamentation with art. But why not? It’s as good a definition as any,” she told him. “Eat your boxty.”

They spent the whole afternoon alone, uninterrupted. Taki transcribed the morning’s notes into his files, reviewed his tapes. Hesper recorded a letter whose recipient would never hear it and sang softly to herself.

That night he reached for her, his hand along the curve at her waist. She stiffened slightly, but responded by putting her hand on his face. He kissed her and her mouth did not move. His movements became less gentle. It might have been passion; it might have been anger. She told him to stop, but he didn’t. Couldn’t. Wouldn’t. “Stop,” she said again and he heard she was crying. “They’re here. Please stop. They’re watching us.”

“Studying us,” Taki said. “Let them,” but he rolled away and released her. They were alone in the room. He would have seen the mene easily in the dark. “Hesper,” he said. “There’s no one here.”

She lay rigid on her side of their bed. He saw the stitching of her backbone disappearing into her neck and had a sudden feeling that he could see everything about her, how she was made, how she was held together. It made him no less angry.

“I’m sorry,” Hesper told him, but he didn’t believe her. Even so, he was asleep before she was. He made his own breakfast the next morning without leaving anything out for her. He was gone before she had gotten out of bed.

The mene were gathering food, dried husks thick enough to protect the liquid fruit during the two-star dry season. They punctured the husks with their needle-thin teeth. Several crowded about him, greeting him with their fingers, checking his pockets, removing his recorder and passing it about until one of them dropped it in the dust. When they returned to work, Taki retrieved it, wiped it as clean as he could. He sat down to watch them, logged everything he observed. He noted in particular how often they touched each other and wondered what each touch meant. Affection? Communication? Some sort of chain of command?

Later he went underground again, choosing another tunnel, looking for one which wouldn’t narrow so as to exclude him, but finding himself beside the same lake with the same narrow access ahead. He went deeper this time until it gradually became too close for his shoulders. Before him he could see a luminescence; he smelled the dusty odor of the mene and could just make out a sound, too, a sort of movement, a grass-rubbing-together sound. He stooped and strained his eyes to see something in the faint light. It was like looking into the wrong end of a pair of binoculars. The tunnel narrowed and narrowed. Beyond it must be the mene homes and he could never get into them.

He contrasted this with the easy access they had to his home. At the end of his vision he thought he could just see something move, but he wasn’t sure. A light touch on the back of his neck and another behind his knee startled him. He twisted around to see a group of the mene crowded into the tunnel behind him. It gave him a feeling of being trapped and he had to force himself to be very gentle as he pushed his way back and let the mene go through. The dark pattern of their wings stood in high relief against the luminescent bodies. The human faces grew smaller and smaller until they disappeared.

“Leave me alone,” Hesper told him. It took Taki completely by surprise. He had done nothing but enter the bedroom; he had not even spoken yet. “Just leave me alone.”

Taki saw no signs that Hesper had ever gotten up. She lay against the pillow and her cheek was still creased from the wrinkles in the sheets. She had not been crying. There was something worse in her face, something which alarmed Taki.

“Hesper?” he asked. “Hesper? Did you eat anything? Let me get you something to eat.”

It took Hesper a moment to answer. When she did, she looked ordinary again. “Thank you,” she said. “I am hungry.” She joined him in the outer room, wrapped in their blanket, her hair tangled around her face. She got a drink for herself, dropping the empty glass once, stooping to retrieve it. Taki had the strange impression that the glass fell slowly. When they had first arrived, the gravitational pull had been light, just perceptibly lighter than Earth’s. Without quite noticing, this had registered on him in a sort of lightheartedness. But Hesper had complained of feelings of dislocation, disconnection. Taki put together a cold breakfast, which Hesper ate slowly, watching her own hands as if they fascinated her. Taki looked away. “Fork,” she said. He looked back. She was smiling at him.

“What?”

“Fork.”

He understood. “Not art.”

“Four tines?”

He didn’t answer.

“Roses carved on the handle.”

“Well then, art. Because of the handle. Not because of the tines.” He was greatly reassured.

The mene came while he was telling her about the tunnel. They put their dusty fingers in her food, pulled it apart. Hesper set her fork down and pushed the plate away. When they reached for her she pushed them away, too. They came back. Hesper shoved harder.

“Hesper,” said Taki

“I just want to be left alone. They never leave me alone.” Hesper stood up, towering above the mene. The blanket fell to the floor. “We flew here,” Hesper said to the mene. “Did you see the ship? Didn’t you see the pod? Doesn’t that interest you? Flying?” She laughed and flapped her arms until they froze, horizontal at her sides. The mene reached for her again and she brought her arms in to protect her breasts, pushing the mene away repeatedly, harder and harder, until they tired of approaching her and went into the bedroom, reappearing with her poems in their hands. The door sealed behind them.

“I’ll get them back for you,” Taki promised, but Hesper told him not to bother.

“I haven’t written in weeks,” she said. “In case you hadn’t noticed. I haven’t finished a poem since I came here. I’ve lost that. Along with everything else.” She brushed at her hair rather frantically with one hand. “It doesn’t matter,” she added. “My poems? Not art.”

“Are you the best person to judge that?” Taki asked.

“Don’t patronize me.” Hesper returned to the table, looked again at the plate which held her unfinished breakfast, dusty from handling. “My critical faculties are still intact. It’s just the poetry that’s gone.” She took the dish to clean it, scraped the food away. “I was never any good,” she said. “Why do you think I came here? I had no poetry of my own so I thought I’d write the mene’s. I came to a world without words. I hoped it would be clarifying. I knew there was a risk.” Her hands moved very fast. “I want you to know I don’t blame you.”

“Come and sit down a moment, Hesper,” Taki said, but she shook her head. She looked down at her body and moved her hands over it.

“They feel sorry for us. Did you know that? They feel sorry about our bodies.”

“How do you know that?” Taki asked.

“Logic. We have these completely functional bodies. No useless wings. Not art.” Hesper picked up the blanket and headed for the bedroom. At the cloth curtain she paused a moment. “They love our loneliness, though. They’ve taken all mine. They never leave me alone now.” She thrust her right arm suddenly out into the air. It made the curtain ripple. “Go away,” she said, ducking behind the sheet.

Taki followed her. He was very frightened. “No one is here but us, Hesper,” he told her. He tried to put his arms around her but she pushed him back and began to dress.

“Don’t touch me all the time,” she said. He sank onto the bed and watched her. She sat on the floor to fasten her boots.

“Are you going out, Hesper?” he asked and she laughed.

“Hesper is out,” she said. “Hesper is out of place, out of time, out of luck, and out of her mind. Hesper has vanished completely. Hesper was broken into and taken.”

Taki fastened his hands tightly together. “Please don’t do this to me, Hesper,” he pleaded. “It’s really so unfair. When did I ask so much of you? I took what you offered me; I never took anything else. Please don’t do this.”

Hesper had found the brush and was pulling it roughly through her hair. He rose and went to her, grabbing her by the arms, trying to turn her to face him. “Please, Hesper!”

She shook loose from him without really appearing to notice his hands, continued to work through the worst of her tangles. When she did turn around, her face was familiar, but somehow not Hesper’s face. It was a face which startled him.

“Hesper is gone,” it said. “We have her. You’ve lost her. We are ready to talk to you. Even though you will never, never, never understand.” She reached out to touch him, laying her open palm against his cheek and leaving it there.

© 1986 by Karen Joy Fowler.

Originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.

Reprinted by permission of the author.

Karen Joy Fowler is the author of five novels and three short story collections. Her first novel, Sarah Canary, won the Commonwealth medal for best first novel by a Californian; her third, Sister Noon, was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner; and The Jane Austen Book Club was a New York Times bestseller. She has two Nebulas for short fiction, one being for the title story in a new collection, What I Didn’t See. Another story, “The Pelican Bar,” recently won the Shirley Jackson and the World Fantasy Award. She lives in Santa Cruz, California with her husband.

Author Spotlight: Kat Howard
Robyn Lupo

Can you tell us what inspired “Sweet Sixteen?”

I have a strong academic interest in hagiography—writing about saints—and in the way holy women in particular are written about. One of my colleagues at Stony Brook University had written an article that touched on this topic. One of the specific areas he wrote about was the idea of “requickening,” which, to vastly oversimplify, was the thought that by taking on a saint’s name, a convert also took on a part of that saint’s identity. I really loved this idea, and wanted to see if I could make it work outside the area of medieval literature and hagiography.

The major issue in “Sweet Sixteen” seems to be the problem of personal identity. What made you choose the technology of re-making an individual to address this issue?

Technology is amazing. I know, we’re sort of supposed to be grumpy that we don’t have our jetpacks and flying cars yet, but I look around at what science and technology have achieved, and are achieving, and I am amazed. At the same time, I think that no matter how advanced technology becomes, some questions—like “Who am I now?” and “Who am I going to be?”—are pretty universal. So I wanted to show that even if it seems like technology gives us an answer, we’re still going to find a way to ask the question.

You are silent when it comes to the masculine in this story. What prompted this choice?

It was a gentle push back at all of the stories that erase women.

Role models seem essential to this story. Do you have a role model as life-altering as the ones in Star’s life?

I feel very lucky, because I’ve had a tremendous amount of people in my life that I look up to, and admire. Many of those people, I am also honored to call friend. But for the purposes of brevity, I’ll limit myself to mentioning Caroline Walker Bynum, without whom my field of study would not exist, and my sister Elizabeth, who is one of the most extraordinary people I know.

Even though each child in “Sweet Sixteen” has input into who she will be, and the choice itself is pushed to as late as physically feasible, there’s still a lot of anxiety about the change. Do you think there would be any time where there wouldn’t be that sort of anxiety?

I still feel anxious about who I’m going to be when I grow up, and I’m definitely not sixteen! I think people are always anxious about making big decisions, and I think that’s good, because ideally, that means we consider those decisions carefully. But since we don’t ever have perfect knowledge, there’s always the chance of making a mistake, and not being able to correct it. So you think, and you worry, but eventually, you have to choose.

Robyn Lupo has been known to frequent southwestern Ontario with her graduate student husband and elderly dog. She writes, reads, and plays video games. She is personal assistant to three cats.

Feature Interview: Mary Doria Russell
Kat Howard

Mary Doria Russell is a writer of extraordinary range and talent. Her first novel, The Sparrow, won the 1997 BSFA, Clarke, and Tiptree awards, and Russell herself won the 1998 Campbell award for Best New Writer. Children of God, the sequel to The Sparrow, was a 1999 Hugo finalist in the Best Novel category. Russell next turned her hand to mimetic fiction. A Thread of Grace tells of the Italian resistance to the Germans during the last two years of World War II, and was a 2005 Pulitzer nominee. Dreamers of the Day takes place during the Cairo Peace Conference, and was a 2008 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award nominee.

Russell’s most recent book, Doc, is already garnering rave reviews. Set in Dodge City, Kansas, Doc is the story of John Henry “Doc” Holliday, and his friendship with Wyatt Earp. Eloquent and lyric, Doc makes the residents of Dodge fully human, rather than mythologized, and draws its power from grace and tragedy of lived stories.

Russell was kind enough to answer some questions about world-building, myth and storytelling, researching first contact scenarios, as well as the similarities between a space-traveling Jesuit from the future, and a twenty-six year old tubercular dentist in Dodge.

Rakhat, from The Sparrow, is a world of your own creation. Dodge City, Kansas is a historical place, and you as a writer made it real in Doc. Can you talk a little about the delights and challenges of each type of world-building?

Well, I begin by reading travelogues and biographies and histories, to immerse myself in the culture and times. If I’m writing about 1944, or 1878, I read the novels of the era, and listen to the popular music. What was common knowledge? What things would characters take for granted? I try to immerse myself in the lives of the main characters—sort of method acting—so I can begin to hear them think and react to things. What’s novel and surprising in their time?

That done, I try not to let the “world” be too intrusive while I’m writing. I don’t mention physical surroundings unless the characters themselves would notice them. People notice weather when they’re getting dressed (sleeveless blouse or sweater?) or when they’re about to leave a building. They notice ambient sounds, but only when there’s a lull or awkward pause in a conversation. I rarely describe clothing in detail unless that’s part of a character’s self-presentation.

Usually we notice landscape when we’re seeing a place for the first time, but only if it contrasts markedly with what we’re used to. To build a picture of, say, the Kansas prairie in the reader’s mind, I choose a POV character who’s used to rolling hills or mountains. That character’s reaction to the plains provides an economical way to reveal the character’s past environment and his present state of mind while describing the current setting.

And the technology of the time? How deeply do you delve into that?

As for the technological or cultural environment—I don’t do much with those unless they’re really something a character would be thinking about. Would Henry James stop and explain to his readers how a telephone worked? No! So, for example, in The Sparrow, Sofia Mendes simply checks her messages. When I wrote that line in 1991, she’d have checked the telephone answering machine. By the time the book was published in 1996, she’d have checked her email. Now, she’d check her iPhone. The important thing is that she’s never really checking her technology—she’s checking her messages!

In Doc, however, the story emphasizes John Henry Holliday’s excellence as a dentist and his dedication to that honorable profession as he attempts to establish a practice in Dodge City, Kansas. At one point, he’s leafing through a dental supply catalog. He notices a motor-driven drill, but decides it’s too expensive to order. That’s a nice detail because it tells you something about dentistry in 1878 and that Doc is strapped for cash. There’s also hotel owner who’s very proud of having a room service bell, “just like in Chicago and San Francisco,” but the remark is what a proud proprietor would point out to a newly arriving guest.

That kind of thing gives the reader a cultural or technological hook, but doesn’t feel like a Wiki grab. The idea is to anticipate what the reader will fill in mentally about “the world,” and then either confirm it with an allusion, or contradict expectation in a way that feels fresh and surprising. “Oh,” you think. “They had motor-driven drills back then? I’ll be damned . . . ”

In Children of God, in response to a question about how things were explained, one of your characters says, “Ha’anala understood the difference between God and science, that there were different ways—parallel ways—to think about the world.” I love this idea that there are parallel ways of thinking about the world.

Did I write that? It’s been thirteen years since I last looked at that book!

Anyway, it’s a pretty standard observation for an anthropologist like me, or for a psychologist, I’d presume. Neither individuals nor groups have a single point of view about anything, when you think about it.

In my mind, 60-degree days in January in Cleveland are surprising and enjoyable, but also kind of creepy and disturbing because they’re evidence of climate change. In somebody else’s mind, the very same weather is evidence of God’s love for a bride who was praying for a nice weekend for her wedding, and also a good omen for the couple’s future, which is a pagan notion. We’re always seeing things kaleidoscopically.

I suppose the most consistent theme in my work is the fact that people see things differently—not just in parallel ways, but in conflicting ways. One person’s indisputable fact is another’s foolish delusion, and another’s fraud, and another’s half-truth, and another’s ambiguity. I rarely let any character’s interpretation of an event stand unchallenged. Somebody else will see things differently, within a page or two. If my personality had a theme song, it would be “It Ain’t Necessarily So,” from Porgy and Bess!

What did this fascination with seeing things from many different perspectives stem from?

I was an outsider in my natal family—the only Democrat among a hundred or more Republicans! From earliest childhood, I had the challenge of understanding how people I loved and admired could be so . . . well, wrong! I was forced to understand how they saw the world while also sharpening and articulating my own views. I wasn’t willing to dismiss them or their views as stupid or evil. To be a member of my family, I needed to understand how others felt and how they came to think and act the way they do. That’s good training for a novelist.

So I am drawn to telling stories that challenge my own beliefs and which force me to articulate those of people I don’t agree with. That pushes me to take on characters like the Nazi doctor in A Thread of Grace, or Winston Churchill in Dreamers of the Day. When writing Doc, for example, I had to try to see the Civil War from the Southern perspective, and that wasn’t easy for an Illinois girl—I grew up thinking of Lincoln as a secular saint. The Holliday family of Georgia did not see things that way! My job is to make every character’s attitudes and beliefs comprehensible, though not necessarily sympathetic.

And I like borderlands, because those regions of life can be observed and noticed as foreign from at least two perspectives. That’s why John Henry Holliday was so interesting to me: He was born in the South and educated in the North for a life in the East, only to be exiled to the West by tuberculosis. He was out of place everywhere—even at home in Atlanta, where he’d been raised for the life of a minor aristocrat in a world that ceased to exist at the end of the Civil War. That biography gave him a distanced and ironic perspective, which allows him to see things in ways that nobody around him perceives them.

In Doc, you mention the idea of a “ghost life”—a life that is the way things might have been, had a choice been made differently. How does this life shape characters steered by chance in Doc, or characters like Emilio Sandoz, in The Sparrow and Children of God, who is given the blessing and curse of seeing a greater than normal span of time on Earth?

The line “That’s your ghost life, Wyatt,” came to me as I was writing the story, and thinking in Doc’s character. But in real life, any decision, whether made in haste or well considered, can change everything, often suddenly, and usually in ways we don’t or can’t anticipate.

When my son was small, I had to balance my fears for his safety with my desire to bring up a confident and competent young man. Often this required me to imagine worst case scenarios to allay my own anxieties before I inflicted them on Dan. Should I allow him to go to day camp? He might be in a bus accident on the way! On the other hand, if I kept him home, a car might come flying around that bend in the street and kill him in his own front yard.

You took your real-life fears and put them into fiction?

When I started writing The Sparrow I was thinking aboutthe unintended but tragic consequences of simple decisions made in good faith. During these admittedly neurotic internal debates, I came to realize that we never know what disaster we unknowingly averted, nor could we blame ourselves for the unintended consequences of perfectly ordinary decisions. Shit, after all, happens.

There are always things that we regret or wish we’d done differently, but it’s not like you get up in the morning, look in the mirror and say, “I’m really going to screw things up today! I’m going to go out there and make a really massive mistake!”

In my observation, people always do what they think is the right thing (though not necessarily the moral thing) at the time. The important part of that observation is “at the time.”Kierkegaard was right: life is lived forward but understood backward. Wisdom requires the long view, and that long view is something that comes naturally to me while writing about decisions people make before they have the benefit of hindsight.

At a certain level, it seems to me that both The Sparrow and Doc deal with the process of turning a myth back into a person, stripping away the fictions that surround Emilio Sandoz and the mission to Rakhat, as well as around Doc Holliday, the Earps, and the other residents of Dodge. How to you balance the need to speak the truth about their stories with the need to write a story that shows how those myths grew up in the first place?

Well, I do an immense amount of editing. The first choice is always to stay within characters’ points of view, but sometimes there are places in the story when it feels permissible to use a more noticeably omniscient narrative voice.

In both The Sparrow and Doc, that narrator has a distinctive tone. In The Sparrow, I imagined a Jesuit historian who had not only had access to records of the events, but also the kind of long view that comes from a century or more of consideration and reconsideration. With Doc, I could hear the voice of the real historian Shelby Foote: slow and low and Southern.

The narrators of The Sparrow and Doc have a sort of dispassionate compassion for the people they’re telling us about. Those people are now long dead, but the historian believes it’s important that we not judge them as harshly as their contemporaries did.

This style of Ken Burns documentary narration is not always an easy authorial trick to pull off in the context of a novel; there are moments in all my books where I’ve failed. I console myself with the recognition that the novel is really a 19th century art form. There are many examples of writers from that century intruding on their stories and commenting quite directly about what’s going on among the characters. So I reserve the right to speak directly to the reader now and then. There’s ample precedent.

Many of us think of works of science fiction when we hear “first contact stories.” Of course, another genre of first contact stories can be found in the diaries and records of various religious missions in Earth’s own history. Did you rely on those records in creating the Jesuit mission to Rakhat? If so, are there any you found particularly interesting, and could recommend?

I drew on my own experiences overseas as an anthropologist. I also had a shelf full of ethnographic and ethological studies—a doctorate in anthropology is pretty good training for a novelist, it turns out.

Among Jesuits, Riccardo Ricci’s missionary work in China was particularly fascinating. Ricci actually converted maybe three guys, but he practically invented cultural anthropology in the 1600s. I wasn’t able to use any detail directly in my writing, but reading about China in that era it was a good way to break out of a 20th century American mindset.

That said, first contact is constant: It’s all around you. Watch children! They haven’t been on this planet for long, and it’s all new to them. Get out of your own culture. Travel. Be confused. Be out of your depth. Be dependent on the kindness of others. Read widely, and read autobiographies of people you loathe. Listen to NPR and AM talk radio. Be revolted. Be thrilled. Be delighted. Pay attention to your own reactions to novel situations, and to the reactions of strangers. It’s all grist.

Because of the unique temporal realities of space travel, the events of The Sparrow and Children of God occur in a fairly complex time line. Did that ever cause difficulties in the pacing of the events of the book? Can you talk a little about what you did to keep track of when each of the characters were in relation to events and to each other?

I wrote The Sparrow in the order in which you read it, with one exception. There was one big chapter that I cut in half while editing—I realized that if I separated the halves and moved the first half up, then the structure would alternate between time lines more rhythmically. Beginner’s luck!

Children of God, by contrast, was a bear to structure. I reorganized the chapters in that book close to 20 times. A Thread of Grace stalled in the spring of 1944, when I just couldn’t quite see how to get my characters to the summer of that year. (I was also dealing with three terminally ill relatives and my own health went to hell, so it took nearly two years to get back on track.) I finally found a way to bring two story lines together in a way that felt natural, but it took months of false starts and blind alleys.

When I get completely confused about character arcs and story lines, I cut up a lot of little squares of paper and write each character’s moves out, and then lay the pieces of paper on our big dining room table, trying to figure out how to pace the story by physically moving the pieces of paper around. Sometimes I try color coding character notes, trying to keep the dates straight.

Does any particular system work best?

All my systems break down pretty quickly, but they’re worth the effort. When I abandon a system of organization, it’s because the work of developing it made me focus better and see connections. Time lines work like that: I will do something quite formal for a while, and then it stops being necessary as I absorb the dates and places and events.

When the story is completed, I reread and re-edit dozens of times, to make sure I haven’t left something in that should have been cut, or that a minor change early in the book is followed through consistently. Along the way, I’m finding ways to cut unnecessary moments and find poetry in others. Characters deepen. Motives get clearer. Voices become more distinctive. Editing is the best part of the job, for me. The story is there, and all I need to do is make it better.

Music plays a key role in these two books. Why did you choose to work with that particular art form?

Music is a thread through the center of everything I write. Not sure why, except that I react very strongly to the emotion of music. In Contact, Carl Sagan wrote about an alien group that communicated with us by sending a series of prime numbers, and I thought, “Personally, I wouldn’t walk across the street to meet someone who thought prime numbers were enticing.” But music? That has such a direct emotional pull—across cultures, across time. We are literally moved by music. We sway to it, we dance, we make love, we pump our fists and bang our heads. We weep.

I could imagine being pulled across space by music, and that became the premise for The Sparrow. Opera runs through Children of God and A Thread of Grace. There is a short consideration of Mahler in Dreamers of the Day. While writing Doc, I spent three years immersed in the 19th century piano repertoire because John Henry Holliday played classical piano. The entire novel is structured around the Emperor Concerto, and a series of pieces by Chopin.

When I sent in the manuscript for Doc, I celebrated by buying a piano. I’ve been taking lessons for about a year and love it. There’s something quite wonderful about feeling completely incompetent at the age of sixty—I recommend it!

One of the things that most attracted me to these books, especially The Sparrow, was that it allows for the coexistence of faith and science, both at very high and intellectually rigorous levels. Yet I think many people find religion and science to be anathema to each other. What made you choose to blend the two together?

There are two cultural elements that exist in all human cultures, all the way back into the Neandertal era: music and religion. Some people are tone deaf and some people are atheists, but music and religion are as diagnostic of our species as opposable thumbs and bipedal locomotion. Science, by contrast, came late to the species, and it is still a foreign way of thought for most people. Any accurate portrayal of human beings in fiction has to reflect that.

I am a hardcore biological anthropologist schooled in Popperian logical positivism, but for me, religion is very much like music. Nobody would argue that music is the opposite of science. Nobody would expect a scientist to reject music simply because it is not a collection of empirical observations organized into a body of theory that produces testable hypotheses. Nobody would ask if music is scientifically accurate, or if music less true than science. Comparisons like that are simply meaningless.

Consider this: when a stroke destroys the ability to speak and understand spoken language, the ability to sing and to recite prayers remains intact. We store language and rationality on the left sides of our brains, and we store music and religion on the right side.

In health, we are not required to choose between the right side and the left. In wholeness, we can avail ourselves of both. I find majesty in Moses, in Beethoven, and in Darwin. I see no compelling reason to choose among them.

What we now call science fiction is actually one of the oldest forms of storytelling. As Stanley Schmidt once observed, we have always speculated about alien beings, but in the past we called them centaurs and nymphs, elves and goblins, angels and demons. At the heart of religion, at the heart of science—and right in the middle of science fiction—there is always one question. What does it mean to be human in a large and frightening and beautiful universe? That’s an immense question, and there are many kinds of answers.

Kat Howard is a former competitive fencer and current university professor. Her short fiction has previously appeared in the anthology Stories, and in Fantasy Magazine and Weird Tales. She is a 2008 graduate of Clarion (UCSD). Her heroes are Buffy and Joan of Arc, and she only speaks of herself in the third person when writing bios.

Coming Attractions

Coming up in August, in Lightspeed, we have original fiction from Hugo Award-winner Will McIntosh (“The Defenders”) and Genevieve Valentine (“The Nearest Thing”), plus reprints by John Varley (“Just Another Perfect Day”) and Connie Willis (“Nonstop to Portales”). All that plus our usual assortment of nonfiction and author spotlights. It’s another great issue, so be sure to check it out. And while you’re at it, tell a friend about Lightspeed!

Thanks for reading!