Sci-Fi

RDKirk said:

You're talking about several different things.

1. Well-fleshed, rounded characters...not really an argument about that. Most people do not demand flat characters, but do relish characters with inner conflict when they can get them.

2. Morally acceptable resolutions versus morally unacceptable resolutions. Not really a contest here, either. Although personal morals differ, most people still prefer a story that fits their overall moral context. Good guys--even conflicted good guys--should win; bad guys--even conflicted bad guys--should lose. Notice that the bad guy who repents but must yet die as a consequence of his prior actions is still a morally acceptable resolution, as would also be a happy ending for him--repentance is the morally acceptable resolution, regardless of whether that character lives or dies. As well, the hero (whether conflicted or not) who dies heroically is also a morally acceptable resolution, the idea being that the protagonist could not totally escape the evil of his past even though he had repented.

3. Happy endings. People can accept both comedies and tragedies (by their classical definitions) as long as their morality is not upset. "Shane" did not end happily for the protagonists, but it was still morally acceptable.

This is not to say that there can't be successful stories seem to be morally successful, although those tend to by Dystopian stories which are actually social tragedies. The protagonist of the story is actually society, which has failed to overcome its flaws and ultimately fails...which is still the moral outcome.

"Level 7" and "On the Beach" were nuclear apocalyptic novels in which everyone died...the result of society failing to overcome its tragic flaw, a moral ending. Less apocalyptic was "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep," but still, revealing the Dystopic ultimate failure of a society that was not overcoming its flaws.

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While I generally agree I can think of several classics SF stories where the ending does not seem morally acceptable.

Nightfall (Asimov)
The Star and The Nine Billion Names of God (Clark)
Logic of Empire (Heinlein)
The Ones who Walk away from Omelas (Le Guin)

Come to think of it all save Nightfall in the list I just gave seem to have being morally unacceptable as their main point.

Some of it--realizing that what used to be science fiction, is now reality. Frankenstein is not that far off!!! Of course, the idiot kept going gaga over being God cause He created life--well, He still didn't create the body parts and organs, the guy brought them back to life--which has been done--up to a point--already. And they have drained all blood from a body and replaced with a solution then the blood cleansed and returned--they have transplants quite common now which definitely was science fiction. Not to mention the DNA experiments with animals and the whole chimera thing that are going on now.

keith99 said:

While I generally agree I can think of several classics SF stories where the ending does not seem morally acceptable.

Nightfall (Asimov)
The Star and The Nine Billion Names of God (Clark)
Logic of Empire (Heinlein)
The Ones who Walk away from Omelas (Le Guin)

Come to think of it all save Nightfall in the list I just gave seem to have being morally unacceptable as their main point.

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Any reasons for that?

keith99 said:

While I generally agree I can think of several classics SF stories where the ending does not seem morally acceptable.

Nightfall (Asimov)
The Star and The Nine Billion Names of God (Clark)
Logic of Empire (Heinlein)
The Ones who Walk away from Omelas (Le Guin)

Come to think of it all save Nightfall in the list I just gave seem to have being morally unacceptable as their main point.

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I agree--but SF does explore such things as the morally unacceptable (unsatisfying conclusion) story.

I think these are "the universe does not care one way or another about you" kinds of stories to some extent. There are also stories such as Harlan Ellison's "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" that are anti-God stories, which are also intended to have morally unsatisfying endings.

Trakk said:

Any reasons for that?

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A morally unacceptable ending is often the right one for a morally unacceptable situation. Logic of Empire and The ones who walk away from Omelas both deal with unacceptable situations that are not going to change. Logic shows a bit of hope, one man's eyes are opened, but the end is his efforts to open other eyes fall on deaf ears. Omelas is an allegorical story, just parts of the way things work exaggerated and made clear.

Clarke's stories both deal with the nature of God. The Star if true would confirm a major part of Christian Myth as true, but it hardly puts the Christian God in a good light. [The Nine Billion Names of God[/I] presents an entirely different version of a very different God, clearly not the Christian God and a vision not acceptable to most of us. I think more 'likeable' because it comes off more as wild what if, why not speculation.

keith99 said:

A morally unacceptable ending is often the right one for a morally unacceptable situation.

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Would you include "The Cold Equations" in that category?

And isn't "The Cold Equations" an allegory for "Just War?"

RDKirk said:

Would you include "The Cold Equations" in that category?

And isn't "The Cold Equations" an allegory for "Just War?"

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I would definitely call the ending of The Cold Equations emotionally unacceptable. I'm not so sure about morally unacceptable. It is the slow motion equivalent of being so excited to see someone close after many years and not looking before crossing the street (that they are on the other side of).

I do not see it as a allegory for just war. I might consider it a commentary on the education gap that has been growing for decades.

For those unfamiliar with the story I'll just say it has become perhaps the most hated story in Science Fiction and for years people have been trying to rewrite it for a happy ending. The problem is it was set up very well. There was no slack in a situation and then there was a complication. The ending was as happy as possible, unless one was willing to repeal the laws of gravity.

keith99 said:

I would definitely call the ending of The Cold Equations emotionally unacceptable. I'm not so sure about morally unacceptable. It is the slow motion equivalent of being so excited to see someone close after many years and not looking before crossing the street (that they are on the other side of).

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Yes, you're right; I didn't think that comment through. "The Cold Equations" is of course an application of Utilitarianism, which is a valid moral philosophy in itself.

I do not see it as a allegory for just war. I might consider it a commentary on the education gap that has been growing for decades.

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Inasmuch as there is a great deal of Utilitarian thought in Just War theory, I'd still say it's got an underlying theory that is also used in Just War.

keith99 said:

Nightfall (Asimov)
The Star and The Nine Billion Names of God (Clark)
Logic of Empire (Heinlein)
The Ones who Walk away from Omelas (Le Guin)

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(all morally unacceptable in some way)

RDKirk said:

I think these are "the universe does not care one way or another about you" kinds of stories to some extent.

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Nightfall -- a total eclipse every 2000 years of an otherwise well-lighted world. Without light, its people set their cities on fire to create light for themselves. Some scientists figure out what is going on, but they do so just before the next eclipse, and they try to ensure that knowledge of their findings survives that eclipse.

The Star -- a civilization is doomed by an exploding star, but in the years before its destruction, its members recorded a history of themselves and put that history in a vault on their most distant planet. One of the vault's discoverers makes a remarkable discovery: that this star's light reached the Earth just in time to be the Star of Bethlehem.

The Nine Billion Names of God -- some Tibetan monks want to record them all, even though doing so will bring the Universe to the end. Some Westerners help them out and they succeed. The stars start going out.

Logic of Empire -- about slavery emerging on a colony as a result of shortages of labor and advanced technology.

The Ones who Walk Away from Omelas -- a very nice society that depends on the tormenting of a child who is selected out for that purpose. As to those who don't go along with that, they walk away -- to where?

As to the premise that "the universe does not care one way or another about you", what's so terrible about that? If there is a God, and that's the sort of Universe that God decided to create, then we must live with that, right?

There are also stories such as Harlan Ellison's "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" that are anti-God stories, which are also intended to have morally unsatisfying endings.

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How is that story anti-God? That story is about a supercomputer that helps mastermind World War III, leaving only a few people left. People that that computer torments for the rest of the story.

keith99 said:

Clarke's stories both deal with the nature of God. The Star if true would confirm a major part of Christian Myth as true, but it hardly puts the Christian God in a good light.

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But one can apply the "Greater Good" theodicy to it, I suppose.

RDKirk said:

Would you include "The Cold Equations" in that category?

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About a stowaway that makes a spaceship exceed its weight limit for landing.

Rather bad engineering, it must be said, though certainly very dramatic.

About a stowaway that makes a spaceship exceed its weight limit for landing.

Rather bad engineering, it must be said, though certainly very dramatic.

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Uh, nope. Both to the summary and the conclusion. it has been decades since I read it, but the story is not that simple and if it were as you say it would not be bad engineering. That is the entire point of the story, the cold equations always "win", you can't magically fit a semi's worth of load in a Volkswagen.

keith99 said:

Uh, nope. Both to the summary and the conclusion. it has been decades since I read it, but the story is not that simple and if it were as you say it would not be bad engineering. That is the entire point of the story, the cold equations always "win", you can't magically fit a semi's worth of load in a Volkswagen.

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True, one can't reasonably expect to go over a nominal weight limit by a factor of 10 or 100, but to go over a nominal weight limit by 1% or less is another story. That would be well within a reasonable safety factor like 10% or more.

Trakk said:

True, one can't reasonably expect to go over a nominal weight limit by a factor of 10 or 100, but to go over a nominal weight limit by 1% or less is another story. That would be well within a reasonable safety factor like 10% or more.

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The point of the story was to present a classic "lifeboat scenario" Utilitarianism problem and that--as I said about some of the other stories--the universe does not care about you. As set up, the craft was carrying every last ounce it could possibly carry--reducing the medical supplies in order to leave a "10 percent safety factor" (why? Just in case of a stowaway?) would have meant hundreds or thousands more deaths on the planet.

Pilot: "The ship is loaded to maximum capacity."
Administrator: "Don't you have a safety factor above that?"
Pilot: "Yes, we do. Ten percent above the stated maximum."
Administrator: "Then use it! People are dying--load ten percent more medicine!"

The military operates in wartime well into its safety factors all the time. I suspect carrier launches have pretty close to zero safety factor on their best days.

The real error would have not been engineering, but procedure: The pre-flight checklist did not include an eyeball of every area of the ship.

RDKirk said:

The point of the story was to present a classic "lifeboat scenario" Utilitarianism problem and that--as I said about some of the other stories--the universe does not care about you. As set up, the craft was carrying every last ounce it could possibly carry--reducing the medical supplies in order to leave a "10 percent safety factor" (why? Just in case of a stowaway?) would have meant hundreds or thousands more deaths on the planet.

Pilot: "The ship is loaded to maximum capacity."
Administrator: "Don't you have a safety factor above that?"
Pilot: "Yes, we do. Ten percent above the stated maximum."
Administrator: "Then use it! People are dying--load ten percent more medicine!"

The military operates in wartime well into its safety factors all the time. I suspect carrier launches have pretty close to zero safety factor on their best days.

The real error would have not been engineering, but procedure: The pre-flight checklist did not include an eyeball of every area of the ship.

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I said before he had it wrong, this time I'll make it explicit. The issue was NOT structural integrity, it was delta V, how much acceleration the craft would have. It was made quite clear that was zero safety factor. This wasn't a planned situation, it was a disaster and this was a high risk solution. To make it possible they had stripped the craft. If I recall correctly backup radio and even the spacesuit for the pilot. He was going to have to land and then wait for someone from the mining colony to bring him a suit. The story was written to make it clearer than clear there was no slack at all.

Generically there are 2 ways to increase delta V, more fuel or less weight. Perhaps it would be possible to add fuel capacity, but it would be far more than putting a 5 gallon can in a car, days would have been an awesome timeframe for that. They didn't have hours.

I earlier mentioned the story has a happy ending in a way. The flight path was such that there was a minimal burn to separate and then just drift until it was time for the entry burns. It did not make any difference if the stow away, a spoiled rich girl who just wanted to see her brother one of the miners, exited right away or 10 seconds before the next burn. The Cold Equations are as firm on that as all the rest. That meant she could remain until that point, that she had one short chance to talk to her brother and say goodbye.

keith99 said:

I said before he had it wrong, this time I'll make it explicit. The issue was NOT structural integrity, it was delta V, how much acceleration the craft would have. It was made quite clear that was zero safety factor. This wasn't a planned situation, it was a disaster and this was a high risk solution. To make it possible they had stripped the craft. If I recall correctly backup radio and even the spacesuit for the pilot. He was going to have to land and then wait for someone from the mining colony to bring him a suit. The story was written to make it clearer than clear there was no slack at all.

Generically there are 2 ways to increase delta V, more fuel or less weight. Perhaps it would be possible to add fuel capacity, but it would be far more than putting a 5 gallon can in a car, days would have been an awesome timeframe for that. They didn't have hours.

I earlier mentioned the story has a happy ending in a way. The flight path was such that there was a minimal burn to separate and then just drift until it was time for the entry burns. It did not make any difference if the stow away, a spoiled rich girl who just wanted to see her brother one of the miners, exited right away or 10 seconds before the next burn. The Cold Equations are as firm on that as all the rest. That meant she could remain until that point, that she had one short chance to talk to her brother and say goodbye.

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You remember in far more detail than I do (I was a kid at the time when I read it).