I would first like to say that I thought that “It’s Great to be Back” was a boring story. I’ve heard and experienced several different iterations of it. It was nothing new or shocking, and the message wasn’t a particularly potent one. Of course I’ve felt the way that Josephine and Allen felt in the story, so in that sense I thought that their plight was relatable, but I also didn’t really find it all that interesting. The greatest conflict in the story seemed to be that people didn’t quite understand each other, and not even at the level that would cause serious issues, just enough to make the MacRae family feel mildly uncomfortable on Earth. Although, it also seemed like the people of Luna City had the same luke-warm prejudices about the so called Groundhogs. That being said I absolutely consider myself a Groundhog, and would no doubt find myself feeling claustrophobic beneath the surface of the moon. All of the comforts that modern technology and 1/3 Earth gravity can provide cannot replace the comfort of “home”. I think that the most important theme in this story, if there is one, is that hindsight is not always 20-20. We tend to remember things with a fondness that does not necessarily reflect the actual circumstances that were present. I think that for some people, where their home is never changes no matter how much they move around, wherever they go, they will always feel a certain comfort when they return home that they’ll realize was always missing. Other people adapt fast and can make home wherever they are. All in all, nothing happened. They went to Earth, realized they didn’t like it, and then they left.
On the topic of stories in which nothing of consequence happens, “The Cold Equations” gave me chills. I absolutely believe in a Kobayashi Maru type no win scenario and I think that this story perfectly encompasses one of those. On the frontier, there is no room for mistakes. It seems harsh to say that nothing of consequence happened in this story, especially because someone’s life was forfeit, but I think that that is what was so great about the story. It was made quite clear that for all of the characters involved (Marilyn excluded) after the event, life continued as normally as it had before the event. That, in my opinion, is twisted and is also what makes “The Cold Equations” different from “It’s Great to be Back”. We get a glimpse into such an emotionally charged event and a tragedy, and then we get to see that it didn’t affect the main character in that significant of a way. In a sense, this story can be summarized as, a man has to do a job, someone almost ruins it but he fixes it by following protocol. Except that it is actually written in an interesting and engaging way that makes you care.
