Using the panel discussions of the most
recent World Science Fiction Convention in Kansas City in August 2016 (to which
I was invited and had a friend pay my membership! [Thanks, Paul!] but was
unable to go (until I retire from education)), I will jump off, jump on, rail
against, and shamelessly agree with the BRIEF DESCRIPTION given in the pdf copy
of the Program Guide. This is event #2501.
The link is provided below…
Punishment by
Airlock: Death by airlock. Spacing. Stepping through the Moon Door. What is it
about this trope that holds fascination? What is the science behind it and
would it really be a good idea to create yet more space debris?
Lettie Prell – a
novel and short SF in ANALOG, APEX, ANDROMEDA SPACEWAYS, and etc…
Susan BetzJitomir
J.D. – Bath, NY lawyer, no fiction credits I can see
William Frank –
speculative fiction poet
Mr. Guy Lillian –
dedicated fan of speculative fiction
Not sure why I
thought this was interesting – except I think it gave me an idea to explore
“torturing characters” to advance the story…which is what all writers DO.
But is it
effective? Throwing someone through the airlock to kill them? Pushing them out
of a Lunar airlock? Is it that even possible?
TV Tropes explains
explosive decompression like this: “…they'll pop like a turkey with a grenade
stuffed inside…reality is quite different…you've got about 15 seconds before
you pass out from anoxia…minutes…until you die from the same…exposed areas
swelling up, body fluids boiling off…outermost layer of capillaries…holding
your breath would be worse than useless; the difference in pressure would cause
a…fatal embolism even from the smallest amount of air in the lungs...pulmonary
barotrauma is possible, but not guaranteed…it can happen in real
life if you get a really high pressure gradient – eight or
nine atm to 1 atm (normal)…[The term] refers to the speed at which the
decompression occurs, not the result or cause…however, space it cold…A really unlucky character might
suffer as they're blown into space, then undergo Explosive
Decompression…”(http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ExplosiveDecompression)
How often is a
character affected by this? According to TV Tropes again, about 76 times. Not a
lot. What are some other ways to threaten a character – or, if you think about
it, you’re not threatening the character. The “evil” person tosses a victim out
the airlock, they explode in a shower of blood, thereby establishing the
villain as a really “evil” person – which gives the heroine someone to fight
against. If they didn’t act fast enough, we have an angsty, self-flagellating,
introspective monologue. If they were held back after arriving at the last
second, begging to replace the victim’s fate – then it makes the villain appear
monstrously villainous.
But is it
necessary? If “throwing them out the airlock” is done to help innocent
bystanders, then it’s sacrifice – and gives the heroine the moral high ground
(unless you have no morals, in which a person who sacrifices their life for
another is plain stupid…) to do anything to pay back the deed. If “spacing” is
done as a punishment – then you have the loud argument against capital
punishment, and it puts your sympathy firmly on the side of your first victim.
If the hero opposes it, then you know who to root for.
So – punishing prisoners…how
well does it work? How many former prisoners are there as heroes in SF? THE
GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY springs to mind.
GALAXY QUEST shows
the villain about to space all sorts of innocents!
Suggested many times,
threatened countless others, and executed (so to speak) several times well, according
to that fount of trivia, TV tropes, I THINK this might be symbolic of something
else? I think it might be an attempt to justify whatever a writer wants his or
her audience to feel. Realistically, throwing someone out an airlock into open
space is about as exciting as smothering them with a pillow to the face.
Certainly it’s horrible. But it lacks in real drama. Imagine replacing all
those space murder scenes with one of a spacesuit mask filling with foam rubber…ugly
to watch, but hardly high drama. It might even be why we continually turn to
the Nazis as villains.
There’s no doubt
that they SHOULD be villainized, but other nations do what they did – just without
the high drama. For example, how about the Tuskeegee syphilis experiments? Or
feeding mentally handicapped boys radioactive oatmeal to see what would happen?
(Google Walter E. Fernald School and Quaker Oats…)
“Spacing people”
has become our go-to signal of villainy at its lowest – despite the fact that
it would demonstrably slow and anticlimactic in a story.
I wonder if anyone
said anything about that in this discussion? Hmm…
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