JAMES PATRICK KELLY “Think Like a Dinosaur.” First appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, June 1995. Reprinted in Year’s Best SF, edited by David G. Hartwell (Harper, paperback,1996) as well as other Best of Year anthologies. Collected in Think Like a Dinosaur and Other Stories (Golden Gryphon, hardcover, 2003). Nomintaed for both the Hugo and Nebula Awards for 1996.

   First things first. “The Cold Equations,” by writer Tom Godwin (Astounding SF, August 1954), is one of the most famous SF stories of all time. In it a young girl stows away on a space ship taking medicine to a planet that is in severe emergency mode without it. There is no margin for error on the ship, however, and the girl’s extra, unplanned for weight requires a horrible decision to be made: either the girl must be jettisoned from the ship, or the mission must be aborted.

   The choice made by the ship’s crew was immensely controversial, and while no longer no longer as discussed as it once was, the story and its aftermath is still considered one of  the great SFnal masterpieces of all time. (John W. Campbell, editor of the magazine, is said to have a great deal to do with the development of the story, and was frustrated with Godwin when he kept turning the story in with suggestions as to how to solve the problem.)

   In any case, I like to think of “Think Like a Dinosaur” as a companion tale. It is not exactly a sequel. There is no continuation of characters or location, only a common theme. It takes place in a research/relay station operated jointly by a human crew and a race evolved from dinosaur-like creatures. Live beings, presumably from both races, are sent to the far reached of space by disintegrating them and reconstructing them on far planets.

   But on one such attempt something goes wrong, and the girl on this side is still here, when she shouldn’t be, and a decision must be made. The dinos in charge say their way is the only way. The human staffer, more empathetic, thinks differently.

   It’s a good story, very well told, but whether it enjoys the awards it received, well, call me unconvinced. It’s a “been there, done that” sort of tale, and I can’t do better than leave it as that.