Today I learned that the hideous story The Cold Equations was sent back by John Campbell three times because he didn't like that the girl was saved. The criminally negligent underengineering in the story is there to make the original ending impossible.
And so a story that was probably about the triumph of human ingenuity in saving lives while operating on the razor's edge of scarcity and danger became cruel capitalist snuff porn.
I've said this before, but: keeping each other alive is what makes us humans. It's the reason we're the top of the food chain. It's the reason for human advancement.
This "dog eat dog world", "nature red in tooth and claw", "survival of the fittest" nonsense... that's propaganda. Our fitness for survival is chiefly located in our ability to look after each other, keep each other alive, look out for each other, save each other.
Yeah, having just re-read the story with this knowledge, the part where the young woman quizzes the pilot about everybody involved and how none of them want her dead and all of them want to save her... it lands very differently now.
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