Cold Comparisons

By Michael Hoskin, friend of the blog
Science fiction has long been a genre that is rife with references to previous works. As Jo Walton has noted, the genre is often in conversation with itself.

The new ideas of the genre are often ones that are built upon decades of previous works. As I’ve previously written, to a great extent the genre depends on it; if Karel Čapek’s R.U.R. were the only created work on robots, we would have been denied the works of Asimov, Star Wars, and more.

Some works make no attempt to camouflage the works which inspired them – look at any number of

L. Sprague de Camp at Boskone 9
(Image via NESFA)

the pastiche works in the genre, from Manly Wade Wellman’s Sherlock Holmes’s War of the Worlds to L. Sprague De Camp’s Conan of the Isles.

It is interesting to note however, that some works are written even more directly as a commentary on another piece of speculative fiction. There is value in examining how these works offer direct counterpoints to the works they interrogate. 

Tom Godwin’s 1954 story ‘The Cold Equations’ is among the most heavily criticized works in the genre because so many people are unsatisfied by the very premise of the story. It tells of an astronaut who finds a stowaway aboard his ship; due to the precise fuel calculations of his vessel, he cannot afford to bring the stowaway to his destination – therefore, the stowaway must die.

The dilemma of the story is that the astronaut has no other option but to let the stowaway die. There is no clever solution to the dilemma, no deus ex machina to thwart the dilemma – and so, it has been a subject of great debate over the decades.

In 1991, Don Sakers published his short story ‘The Cold Solution’ as a direct response to ‘The Cold Equations.’ This newer story exists in a universe which explicitly references Godwin’s story as an existing piece of fiction. Once again, an astronaut faces a similar dilemma – but not an identical one – and a solution is found (because of the difference in the nature of the stowaway between stories). Sakers wrote the story because he felt “Just as SF once needed to hear that there were times when the girl had to go out of the airlock, in 1991 SF needed to hear that the girl didn't always have to go out the airlock.” It won the Analog award for Best Short Story of 1991.

L. Sprague De Camp was even more prone to criticizing previous works through his fiction. His best-known novel (Lest Darkness Fall, 1941) and best-known short story (‘A Gun for Dinosaur’, 1956) were each written in response to existing works of speculative fiction that De Camp disagreed with, much like Sakers did to Godwin’s story.

Lest Darkness Fall was written in answer to Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889). Twain’s comedic novel concerns a 19th century man who finds himself in Medieval England and uses his knowledge of the future to alter the past, introducing 19th century inventions hundreds of years in advance. Twain intended to satirize tales of romantic chivalry, but De Camp, at least, was not amused. In De Camp’s Lest Darkness Fall, a 20th century archaeologist time travels to 6th century Rome and uses his foreknowledge to prevent the Roman Empire from collapse.

The Cold Equations by
Tom Goodwin may be
one of the most debated
SF stories of all time.
(Image via Goodreads)

The difference between the two is that De Camp earnestly believed in the romance of the fallen Roman Empire and in the ability of a red-blooded intelligent American to alter history for the better.

Similarly, ‘A Gun for Dinosaur’ was written as a response to Ray Bradbury’s ‘A Sound of Thunder’ (1952), both tales being concerned with time traveling safaris where men hunt dinosaurs using advanced technology. The difference between the two lies in their approach to time paradoxes – Bradbury’s tale is very clear on the rules of time travel and depicts how even a slight inadvertent change to history has unforeseen consequences.

Again, De Camp rejects this; in his version, time paradoxes are impossible, but in a fuzzy sort of way… the forces of time itself prevent one of the hunters from being assassinated via time travel. Yet at the same time, we’re assured that going to the past, massacring dinosaurs and hauling their trophies back to the future does not create any paradoxes. That in itself feels… paradoxical.

Unlike ‘The Cold Solution,’ it is very possible for a reader who has neither read nor even heard of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court to read and enjoy Lest Darkness Fall without being aware of any connective tissue between the two. Likewise for ‘A Gun for Dinosaur’ and ‘A Sound of Thunder’. The story of ‘The Cold Solution’ is not, I think, of any interest to people who are unfamiliar with ‘The Cold Equations’.

Beyond Sakers’ meta-references to Godwin’s story within his text, the dilemma of his tale and its seemingly-simple solution is not liable to be interesting to anyone unless they recognize it as a critical response to Godwin. Lest Darkness Fall and ‘A Gun for Dinosaur’ are proper stories; ‘The Cold Solution’ is a letter to the editor in disguise.

What these examples hold in common proves Walton's thesis on science fiction's conversation with itself. Science fiction is richer for the interplay between different authors' works, like what a jam session between rival jazz artists or a rap response are to music. The art of science fiction is richer for having a sense of one-upmanship.

Hollywood has a mixed history adapting Hugo-shortlisted works

Last week, Apple announced that it has greenlit a high-budget TV series based on Isaac Asimov’s

For us, this series of covers
is one of the best works based
on the Foundation novels.
(Image via michaelwhelan.com) 

Foundation novels.

Should this announcement be greeted with trepidation or enthusiasm? After all, Hollywood has a long and storied history of screwing up adaptations of Hugo-shortlisted works.

By our count, there are 15 movies, eight television series, and two standalone television episodes based on Hugo-Award-winning textual works. There are an additional five television series and 14 movies based on textual works that were shortlisted, but did not win the Hugo Award. (The list we’ve compiled is here. It was woefully incomplete when this article was written, and has been updated significantly over the past two years.)

These dramatic presentations are at best a mixed bag and few have aged well. While a handful of adaptations of Hugo winners have themselves been shortlisted for a Hugo Award, no movie or television show based on a Hugo winner has itself won a Hugo for dramatic presentation.

The earliest of these adaptations is “The Two Worlds of Charlie Gordon,” an episode of The United States Steel Hour that aired in February of 1961, based on Daniel Keyes’ 1958 Hugo-winning short story Flowers For Algernon. The episode is actually well-made for the time, hews closely to the original work, and keeps the emotional core of the story (though it adds a happy ending). It was on the shortlist in 1962.

Flowers For Algernon is probably the Hugo-winning work that has been adapted most often. On top

Even Mick Jagger can't make the
costumes in Freejack look cool.
(Image via Yahoo.co.uk) 

of various stage productions, there were four movies including one that won an Academy Award, a Tony-nominated musical, and a video game. Several of these adaptations — such as the 1968 movie Charly — seem to have been produced with an understanding of what made the original resonate with audiences.

But for every decent Flowers For Algernon adaptation, there’s a Bicentennial Man: The Movie.

One of Asimov’s robot stories, Bicentennial Man won best Novella in 1977, and in 1999 was turned into a maudlin Robin Williams vehicle complete with Celine Dion soundtrack. Unfortunately the film ignored Asimov’s meditations on whether or not mortality makes us human, and on what rights a sentient non-human might have. The film is largely a failure.

There’s 1997’s Freejack (based on Robert Sheckley’s 1959 shortlisted novel Immortality, Inc.), and Kevin Costner’s The Postman. There’s the 2013 adaptation of Ender’s Game. There’s Millennium, based on John Varley’s shortlisted novel of the same name. This is not a list that fills one with confidence about Hollywood’s ability to adapt great works of science fiction.

At least Bicentennial Man was a more
faithful adaptation than I, Robot.
(Image via Youtube.com) 

It could be that the Hugo-shortlisted works that have worked best as adaptations (Slaughterhouse Five, American Gods, Arrival as examples) are the ones that are smaller in scope and focus on personal stories of self-discovery. The great works of science fiction that are more epic in scope – Dune, To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Three-Body Problem – have often been Hollywoodized into mindless action-adventure works, stripped of what made them great.

Which brings us back to Isaac Asimov’s most epic work: Foundation. Winner of the Hugo Award for Best Series in 1966. Winner of a Best Novel Hugo in 1984. Winner of a Retro Hugo for best short story at the most recent Worldcon. This is a work that has enduring value to the science fiction community. It continues to draw in new readers from outside the community and is credited by Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman with inspiring his career. If ever there was a work that deserved a faithful and respectful adaptation, this is it.

But Foundation presents at least one major challenge for screenwriters: selecting a focal point. Producers can choose to focus on the classic trilogy or on the novels that were published later. The main stories (the original trilogy) tell a cohesive story but use an ever-changing cast of characters. More recent Foundation novels offer a cohesive cast of characters, but tell a story that is unlikely to engage the typical Hollywood consumer. Both options seem to have their quandaries.

The quality of an adaptation matters because a mediocre – or wildly divergent – film adaptation

A surprising number of people know our genre primarily
through Hollywood's adaptations of the classic works.
Mediocre adaptations make it easier  for non-fans
to dismiss the great works of science fiction.
(Image via Facebook)

can undermine the cultural value of a great work. For example, some fans of the movie Starship Troopers are unaware that it is based on a novel, while others believe it’s loosely adapted from Ender’s Game. When speaking to everyday non-fans about the work Bicentennial Man, how many of them are likely to believe that it’s actually an excellent novella, given that they’re probably familiar with the Robin Williams movie?

Those concerns aside, there is some room for hope with the adaptation of Foundation. Of the Hugo-winning or shortlisted works that were adapted into a TV series in the past decade, several have arguably lived up to the original works — American Gods, Game of Thrones, and Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell come to mind as examples of this. It is possible that television is a better medium for science fiction adaptations than cinematic releases.

We are cautiously hopeful for Foundation: The TV Series and will attempt to judge it as it comes. We are also hopeful that irrational exuberance about the prospect doesn’t get in the way of seeing the series for what it is.

Who owns the robot?

Guest post by Michael Hoskin, Calgarian friend to the club

Metropolis (1927) by Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou is one of the greatest films of the silent era and perhaps the first truly great science fiction film.

The film’s robot is the most widely-circulated image of the film, despite its brief appearance in robotic form. Despite this — from All-Star Squadron’s Mekanique to Star Wars’ C-3PO — the Metropolis robot has endured as an icon.

Yet in its time, the world’s nascent science fiction community did not entirely appreciate the film. H.

Instantly recognizable, the robot from
Metropolis has influenced generations
of Science Fiction movie designers.
(Image via metropolis1927.com )  

G. Wells wrote a blistering review of the picture for the New York Times, opening by stating: “I have recently seen the silliest film. I do not believe it would be possible to make one sillier.” I encourage you to seek out Wells’ review – not simply to witness one of the medium’s great masters behaving curmudgeonly, but to consider the matter he raises concerning intellectual property.

In the review, Wells objected to Metropolis’ robot on the grounds that robots were the invention of Karel Čapek, playwright of R.U.R. (1920). Wells wrote: “Rotwang, the inventor, is making a Robot, apparently without any license from Capek, the original patentee.”

Some would perhaps argue the concept of a robot goes back much earlier than 1920, pointing to various ‘mechanical men.’ Other scholars point to the robot being a direct descendant of the Jewish lore about Golems or Hephaestus’ golden women in Greek myth.


Wells admitted Čapek owed at least a little to Frankenstein: “Čapek’s Robots have been lifted without apology, and that soulless mechanical monster of Mary Shelley's, who has fathered so many German inventions, breeds once more in this confusion.”

In certain corners of the world there are arguments being made about intellectual property, particularly where copyright is concerned. Due in part to vigorous lawmaking on behalf of the Walt Disney Company, the period in which it takes before a work enters the public domain seems to grow larger and larger.

Even the Killbots from Chopping Mall
owe a debt to Karel Capek's R.U.R.
(Image via Pastemagazine.com)

One argument is that copyright enables property to be properly curated; as counterpoint, Mike Masnick argued in Do Bad Things Happen When Works Enter the Public Domain? The Data Says... No that copyright was actually working to prevent the circulation of ideas rather than encourage it.

The argument of copyright versus public domain is too large to delve into here, but as a thought experiment, let us consider what Wells had to say about Metropolis. Suppose Karel Čapek were the only person permitted to tell stories about robots. What would science fiction look like today were that the case? Do not presume to tell me it is an unreasonable idea – using a Harlan Ellison concept without crediting him will net you one angry lawsuit. If you wrote a story containing ‘transporters,’ ‘phasers,’ and ‘photon torpedoes,’ Paramount would take you to court. Write a story wherein your energy weapon is called a ‘lightsaber’ and the House of Mouse will send you a zip-a-dee-do-deposition.

Would Metropolis still have worked without the robot? Suppose the antagonists had simply surgically altered an agent to resemble Maria rather than a robot doing the work – how would it have changed the story?

Without the robot, whither the android? The cyborg? The cyberpunk? Would we be bereft of Robby the Robot? No wisecracking droids in Star Wars? Would Isaac Asimov have died penniless in an alley? Would life be worth living without Heartbeeps? Has science fiction not flourished from the lack of provincialism surrounding ideas in Karel Čapek’s R.U.R.? And if this is so, where else has the genre benefited from the free trade of concepts?