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Jan 1, 2022

The Sun People

1957 Avon cover
 This is the first of three blog posts here at the start of 2022 about the science fiction stories of Hal Clement [born 30 May 1922]. I waited until the hundredth year after his birth to finally read a Clement novel: Needle. As shown in the image to the right, Needle was also published in book format under the title "From Outer Space". I'll discuss Needle in my next blog post, but first..... 

Warm up. Let's warm things up by taking a look at the Sun People who achieved a strange kind of First Contact with Earthlings in "Proof", which was the first story ever published by "Clement".

"Clement" is in quotes as a reminder that his real name was Harry Clement Stubbs. In 1942, Stubbs was studying astronomy at Harvard. Like Isaac Asimov, Hal Clement took his educational background in science and moved in the direction of being an educator, more specifically in Clement's case, he became a high school science teacher.

cover by Steven Gildea
I have no idea how many folks with an astronomy degree tried their hand at writing science fiction during the 1900s. In the previous generation before Stubbs, there was William Christie who used a pen-name (Cecil B. White) when publishing science fiction. Others include Fred Hoyle, Joe Haldeman, Alastair Reynolds and David Brin. Also, see R. S. Richardson, here.

Hal Clement ends up on lists of "hard science fiction" story tellers. As a fan of hard science fiction, I'm tempted to conclude that only those writers who studied science in college are likely to write hard science fiction. Working astronomers like Christie and Carl Sagan did not have the time to write very many science fiction stories. As far as I know, Hal Clement never worked as a professional astronomer, so he had spare time and was able to publish many science fiction stories. 

a painting by Clement (image source)
Clement also found time to paint and for a short time he was the "science editor" for the short-lived magazine, Unearth. As the science editor, Clement wrote a column called "Science for Fiction". In the spring 1977 issue of Unearth, "Proof" was republished and accompanied by an essay describing how Clement came to be a published author. In that essay, Clement denied being a professional science fiction writer and declared his only true profession to be "high school science teacher". He admitted to having discovered science fiction when he was in his own personal golden age (12) for science fiction.

another paining by Clement

 Hot Times. Clement traced his story "Proof" back to his having read the 1935 story "Islands of the Sun" by Jack Williamson. Isaac Asimov also admitted to having been influenced by the stories that Williamson wrote. For "Islands of the Sun", Williamson imagined that the planet Earth originated inside the sun. In Williamson's story, there is an imaginary form of matter, okal, which is a magical crystalline form of carbon and the secret to atomic power. Using the power of a giant okal crystal, the planets are released from their "etheric spheres", lifted out of the sun's photosphere and placed into their proper orbits around the Sun, exactly where we now know them to reside.

Clement's thoughts were provoked!

the eccentricities of Mesklin
 The Science Fiction Game. In an essay called "Whirligig World", Hal Clement suggested that science fiction should be approached as a game being played by a writer and the readers. What are the game rules? "...for the reader of a science-fiction story, they consist of finding as many as possible of the author's statements or implications which conflict with the facts as science currently understands them." I'm not going to be able to resist dabbling in this game while I read Clement's stories.

cover by Herpai Zoltán
That's Cool Cold. Clement is probably most famous for his novel Mission of Gravity. That story features intelligent alien creatures who can survive on a planet (Mesklin) with high gravity, hundreds of times higher than the gravity on Earth's surface. In addition to getting a degree in astronomy, Clement later got a chemistry degree. Some chemists have a real blind spot when it comes to anything as complex as a living organism and I find it hard to accept Clement's imaginary life forms. Don't get me started on my objections to the silly idea of intelligent life in liquid methane. But who knows, maybe the exoskeleton of a Mesklinite is made of neutronium.

"The Doomsday Machine"

 Neutronium. In "Proof", Clement imagined life arising inside stars. I recently mocked science fiction story tellers who imagined that life could exist on every planet, moon and asteroid. Many writers who enthusiastically imagined life arising on planets even with environmental conditions as harsh as those on Mercury, drew a line at the Sun. If you restrict your imagination to life forms composed of water-containing cells, then it is hard to imagine life on (or inside) the Sun. 

unimaginable neutronium-based life from "Proof"
But wait! What about life based on another physical substrate? How about neutronium? I was first exposed to the science fictional substance neutronium in a Star Trek episode. The neutronium hull of the "Planet Killer" in "The Doomsday Machine" was very stable, having traveled to our galaxy across a vast inter-galactic distance. What are the fictionalized properties of neutronium in Clement's story?

Unimaginable Life. I get nervous when Sci Fi story tellers try to describe unimaginable things. As shown in the excerpt (image above and to the right), Clement imagined intrastellar life-forms with a core of neutrons surrounded by an electrostatic field being sustained by a "matrix of electrons". 

neutron star
 The Matrix, 1942. I suppose Clement learned about neutron stars and degenerate matter in an astronomy course at Harvard, but what was he thinking when he imagined a "matrix of electrons" that could convert radiation into neutrons? Not only does the "skin" of these Sun creatures (the hero of the story is named "Kron") surround a core of neutronium (held in the creature's "nucleus"), but the "skin" can convert energy from the environment into new "particles of neutronium" that are then guided by magnetic fields towards the body core. Yummy! Apparently, this process for creation of new neutronium is how a creature like Kron "feeds".

photosphere
Force Fields. Spacecraft can carry Kron from city to city in the Sun's photosphere and even to distant stars, but there must be a "mini-sun" inside these sorts of craft to provide the passengers with the "fierce energy" they need to survive. Kron can use the stored neutrons in his body's core as an energy source, much like humans using glycogen. To interact with and control objects in his environment, Kron taps some neutrons from his core and converts the stored energy into "projected beams and fields of force".

interior art for "Proof" by Paul Orban

 Alien Thought. Mr. Kron has senses that can detect electromagnetic fields, but Clement also told his readers about a whole bunch of additional senses of the Sun People that were used for detecting other "energies still undreamed of by human scientists" that exist inside the Sun. Mr. Kron and his people now live in the Sun's photosphere because deeper inside the Sun are dangerous sand Sun worms creatures that like to eat the Sun People. However, Kron's species originally evolved deep inside the Sun where, according to Clement, there is a good supply of neutronium. Much of the backstory for "Proof" is provided during a conversation between Kron and an alien visitor from Sirius

in the Ekcolir Reality
Clement told his readers that this conversation between Kron and the scientist was made possible by beams of energy that could carry "clear thought" from person to person. Maybe this was a form of technology-assisted telepathy.

B Sirius! The visitor from Sirius is a scientist who has conceived a startling theory. The Sirian scientist tells Kron about a strange hypothesis: that at low temperatures (lower than the temperatures found inside stars), collections of atoms might form solids, much like neutronium. Kron then tells the tale of how a spaceship was once destroyed under inexplicable circumstances. 

Neutronium: it even brightens teeth! The flying craft of the Sun People and the buildings of their photosphere cities are composed of neutronium. During interstellar voyages, neutronium is also used as a fuel to power the spaceships of the Sun People. 

the speed of thought
Near the end of one interstellar voyage, the returning spaceship crashed into an object with mass, but it was a mysterious object that did not emit any radiation that could be detected by the senses of the Sun People.

an alternate universe
The narration of "Proof" shifts at this point from Kron to the perspective of a man on Earth who is witness to the neutronium spaceship from the Sun as it crashes into Earth. Then, for the end of the story, we return to Kron's account of the lost spaceship, which is actually proof of the strange hypothesis of the scientist from Sirius.

 Game Score. Part of the rules for Clement's science fiction game is that (in the interest of creating a fun story) science fiction story tellers are allowed to include imaginary future science in their stories. For example, even if most physicists believe that faster-than-light travel or time travel are physically impossible, a science fiction story can be set in a future time when Dr. Miracle from Cal Tech has invented the hyperdrive... so off we go lickity-split to the far stars.

cover art by Don Dixon
What about changing the physical properties of the universe (the "laws of physics"), is that also "fair game" for science fiction story tellers? In the first science fiction novel I ever read (The Gods Themselves) Asimov imagined an alternate universe which had its own laws of physics. However, Clement did not mention any alternate laws of physics for his story "Proof". The danger of using know particles such as neutrons, electrons and positrons in your science fiction story is that you take on the baggage of everything that scientists know about such things.  

in the Asimov Reality
The Cure-all: Neutronium. In the case of neutronium, there is no evidence that neutrons can exist all packed together as a solid mass except possibly inside big stars where a powerful gravitational force contains the neutrons. Should I view Clement's use of neutronium to make possible his imaginary Star People as a variation of Williamson's trick, with "okal" simply renamed to "neutronium"? Maybe Clement should have explicitly paid tribute to Williamson by calling his imaginary stellar solid "okalonium".

probability 0 in the Asimov Reality
I often imagine alternative science fiction stories that might have been written in an alternate Reality such as the Asimov Reality. Here in our Reality, late in 1942, Clement published a "Probability Zero" very short story called "Avenue of Escape". In that story, Clement used "alternate reality math" to prove that it is safe for soldiers to walk through machine gun fire. Alternatively, he could have simply equipped his soldiers with neutronium uniforms.

First Contact from "The Green Sphere"
 In Case You Missed It. In that same issue of Astounding was "The Green Sphere" by Dennis Tucker, a story set in the year 2021. Dennis only went as far as to say that the mysterious green sphere was composed of "very dense matter"; clearly this was another story "crying out" for neutronium.

in the Asimov Reality
Selecting a specific date in the future for the setting of your science fiction story is another way of tempting fate, just like using a known particle like the neutron for your magical stellar solid. Eventually the real world and real science can make your story obsolete.

Is "Proof" obsolete or can a Sci Fi fan of 2022 still enjoy the story? I'm glad that I read "Proof" simply for Clement's sheer audacity of trying to imagine an ecosystem inside a star. My next destination: investigating the strange morphing aliens in Clement's novel Needle.

Tetrahedra of Space

 Related Reading: Fred Hoyle's 1957 novel The Black Cloud has more impossible space aliens who can't imagine life on planets And an Asimov story set in 2021.

Related Social Media: #VintageSciFiMonth  

Also: a red sphere-shaped creature in Fredric Brown's "Arena"

Next: Clement's novel Needle.


cover art by Richard Hescox

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