It’s refreshing to find stories on the web. Thanks to Baen’s great collection of sf online (and via wikipedia), I was able to read two short stories online recently. No tracking down anthologies!

• Murray Leinster. A Logic Named Joe. Astounding Science Fiction, March 1946.
  There’s also a nice radio adaptation [mp3], aired in 1950.
• Tom Godwin. The Cold Equations. Astounding Science Fiction, August 1954.

Both are stories of the conflict of humans and technology, and I recommend them both. They’re very different, and I don’t know if it’s the difference of a decade, or just happenstance, that humans get the upperhand in one case, and technology dominates in the other.

I discovered A Logic Named Joe from an article about the semantic web, from Issue 4 (September/October 2008), page 23 [PDF] of Talis’ Nodalities.

Folk singer and filk singer Kathy Mar recommended The Cold Equations during an interview [at 3:59 of my interview, MP3]. Kathy also mentions that there’s a song based on the short story. Know any more? The closest song that I can find is really pretty different.