Wiki Fiction: Nereid Time

In the Ekcolir Reality
original art by Henry Clive
and Anita Kunz

This is the third in a series of blog posts about the life and times of science fiction story teller Hal Clement. Previously, I commented on Clement's first published story, "Proof" (from 1942) and his novel, Needle. I read Needle as first published in the May and June 1949 issues of Astounding. Here, on this page, I'm going to attempt to put Clement's writing into context.

In Part 1 of this series, I mentioned that in 1942, Clement wrote a short "Probability Zero" story for Astounding. I've previously suggested that one way to get published by John Campbell was to include an equation in your story. This seemed to have worked for Clement in the case of "Avenue of Escape". Clement was an expert at getting published in Astounding, but in Part 2 of this series, I mentioned a major problem that Clement faced when he wrote Needle. Clement tried to write intelligently about alien biology, but in 1949 even human biology was not yet very well understood.

in the Ekcolir Reality

But then in 1953 the structure of DNA was discovered and in the 1960s the genetic code was deciphered. By 1977 when Clement was handed control of a science column in the science fiction magazine Unearth, he immediately started encouraging writers to create science fiction stories about genetic engineering.

In the Spring 1977 issue of Unearth, Clement took up the challenge of trying to imagine how genetic engineering might be used to create an aquatic human. As a young boy, when I read The Naked Ape I was exposed to the idea that humans might have evolved some adaptations to an aquatic environment, and that is such a fun idea that I eventually imagined the Nereids, the Tequid and the Grendels, three aquatic humanoid species featured in my own stories. In his essay, Clement divided the problem into several parts.

image source

1. Clement first considered the question of why anyone would try to make a human variant that can live underwater. Clement suggested an answer that is the same as for Rossum's Universal Robots and Planet of the Apes; we can manufacture workers. In the case of aquatic humanoids, we could construct them with low intelligence and force them to collect resources for us such as fish harvested from the sea. Jack Vance even wrote a story along these lines: "The Sub-Standard Sardines", published in 1949, so Clement was not exactly breaking new ground there in 1977.

2. Clement then turned his attention to the oxygen problem. For my imaginary aquatic humanoids, I have always made them air-breathers. However, Clement asked if it would be possible to make an aquatic humanoid that obtained oxygen directly from the water that they swim through.

original cover art by Leo Morey

A "solution" to this problem was provided in a 1927 story "Atlantis' Exile" by Cyril Hume. The brilliant scientists of Atlantis discovered SuperOxygen™ which when sprinkled in the sea relieves humans of the need to breath.

However, Clement was not in the market for magical oxygen-replacing chemicals, so he discussed a problem that arises from using gills to obtain oxygen from water. Gills have a large surface area exposed to the surrounding water and would efficiently exchange not just oxygen into an aquatic human's blood but also heat out of the body as well. Clement worried that you could not keep a human brain warm and functioning if you swam through cold water while using gills.

3. The last issue taken up by Clement was what he termed a "professional" consideration.

in the Ekcolir Reality

Having provided readers with several pages of suggestions for how to write a science fiction story about aquatic humans (with emphasis on how to avoid scientific impossibilities) he raised the question of "ownership" of story ideas. Clement felt that there were plenty of opportunities for many different authors to create their own unique stories about aquatic humans. "... neither scientific facts nor basic situation ideas are in any sense private."

Clement expressed his wish that dozens of story writers would create new science fiction stories featuring aquatic humans who had been crafted by genetic engineering.

in the Ekcolir Reality

On the Other Hand. There were several notable or just plain weird and/or interesting items in the May and June 1949 issues of Astounding Science Fiction where Needle was first published. I had been vaguely aware that seven years before the world recieved Philip K. Dick's "The Minority Report" there had already been "Minority Report" by Theodore Sturgeon. However, I never read Sturgeon's story until now.

Anti-matter. Sturgeon's "Minority Report" is a First Contact story with a BOOM! The story reveals a startling fact: that Earth is a true minority planet, one of the few places in the universe inexplicably made of anti-matter, so we can never go visit exoplanets; we'd be annihilated if we touched them. Along the way, Sturgeon made use of one of my least favorite Sci Fi plot elements: the genius inventor.

I want to be a writer.
interior art by Paul Orban

Genius with a Gudge. Earthlings belatedly learn that Humanity and the galaxy got lucky because Mr. Gudge was one of the few humans to ever use Earth's interstellar spaceship drive to visit another star system. He secretly wrote down an account of First Contact that was found centuries after the actual First Contact events.

Three Antis. Sturgeon's story is highly contrived: discovery of the interstellar spaceship drive was made by a genius working in his garage, so there were only ever two interstellar spaceships built. I despise science fiction stories in which a lone genius makes a major technological advance and then there is never anyone else who can replicate that miraculous break-though. Such miracles are anti-scientific.

anti-matter interstellar empire; interior art by Paul Orban

Anti-Singularity. What I find interesting in Sturgeon's "Minority Report" is the transformation of Earthly society that takes place after humans discover that space travel is futile. Earthly culture undergoes a systematic de-industrialization. This is a rather explicit expression in a science fiction story of what I call "anti-singularianism".

In the June 1949 issue of Astounding there was also a review of "Slaves of Sleep" by L. Ron Hubbard, which had just come out in book format. The next year, Hubbard published "The Masters of Sleep" which was part of his launch of Dianetics.

Campbell on telepathy (July 1939)

Fake Drive
Also in the July 1939 issue of Unknown where "Slaves of Sleep" was originally published, there was an essay called "To Drive Men Mad" by John W. Campbell (published under the fake name 'Arthur McCann'). In that short essay he stated that Rhine had demonstrated the existence of telepathy. This was one of many scams that Campbell tried to force down the throats of Sci Fi fans while editing pulp magazines.

The June 1949 issue of Astounding also contained a "joke" article called "The Aphrodite Project" by astronomer R. S. Richardson. Campbell was so comfortable ~~lying to~~ fooling his readers that the cover for that issue showed a fake illustration depicting very tall mountains penetrating the cloud tops of Venus. Richardson used the fake name 'Philip Latham' when publishing science fiction and fake astronomy.

interior art for "Mother Earth"

Logic of Empires. In the May 1949 issue of Astounding was "Mother Earth" by Isaac Asimov which tells some of the history of conflict between Earth and the first 50 exoplanets colonized by humans. "Mother Earth" is a good story to read during the pandemic because it features the residents of planet Aurora who live on their private estates and who have no need to have physical contact with anyone outside of their immediate family. And their robots. Related Reading: The Surrogates, also Surrogates

interior art for "The Fires Within"

The Fires Within. Back in June I commented on how Arthur Clarke became established as a well-known science fiction story teller in the late 1940s. Before adjusting our time travel controls and departing from 1949, I need to mention Clarke's story "The Fires Within". Apparently the story first appeared in the 3rd and final issue of Fantasy: The Magazine of Science Fiction, a British magazine edited by Walter Gillings. I read "The Fires Within" as published on this side of the Atlantic Ocean in the September 1949 issue of Startling Stories.

fragment from "The Fires Within"

I would not be surprised if Clarke heard people talk about both "condensed matter" and "degenerate matter" while attending a physics class at Kings College and was inspired to write "The Fires Within". But what is "partially condensed" matter? Imagine the diversity of states of matter from plasma to conventional gases to solids and liquids to degenerate matter.

fantasy #3

Life as we know it exists on or near Earth's surface and is dependent on liquid water and solid constituents such as chromosomes. Many fantasy stories about mysterious underground civilizations assume that there are relatively cool subterranean spaces where life-as-we-know-it might exist (see this blog post for examples). Clarke went in a different direction for "The Fires Within" and tried to imagine a different type of life that would be at home 15 miles down inside the Earth at high temperature and high pressure.

Fantasy Life. Sadly, as was the case for Clement's 1942 story "Proof", Clarke's creatures of Earth's interior are actually composed of handwavium. There is no known way to stabilize complex solid structures like a chromosome at the high temperatures found inside the Earth or the Sun. Sounds like a job for hierions.

cover art by David Mattingly

Hail Hal. Hal Clement's early science fiction stories were all published in John Campbell's Astounding magazine. I'd be interested to know what Clement thought when Campbell used pages in his science fiction magazine to popularize fraudulent science like the Dean Drive and scams like Dianetics. Clement will always stand as a pillar of the science fiction genre because of his style of hard science fiction story which requires an author who thinks seriously about known science and fictional adventures among the stars in the presence of space aliens.

Since I grew up during the MAD era of Mutually Assured Destruction, I find it impossible to ignore stories that involve the Sci Fi issue of technological catastrophes. I'll probably have to read Clement's novel The Nitrogen Fix just to see how he destroyed Earth's ecosystem while still making it possible for a few humans to survive.