Cold Equations — Tom Godwin

THE UNIVERSE DOESN'T CARE...

A pilot is on an emergency mission to a planet whose colony is doomed if he doesn't get there fast. He has just enough fuel to reach the planet--then he finds that he has a stowaway, a young girl wanting to be with her brother on the colony. If the pilot spaces the girl, the ship will barely make it to the planet. If he does not, the ship will crash and both of them as well as the colony will die. What will he do? This story rocked science fiction when it first appeared.

Also in this volume is Godwin's long-unavailable novel The Survivors, which poses another problem in survival: If hostile aliens have marooned you and hundreds of other people on a nearly uninhabitable planet, how do you not only manage to endure, but to get revenge as well?

This is a massive volume by a master of science fiction adventure, with added dimensions of speculation and cold, hard realism.