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.
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.
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a painting by Clement (image source)
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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.
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another paining by Clement
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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.
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Clement's thoughts were provoked!
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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.
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.
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.
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unimaginable neutronium-based life from "Proof"
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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".
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".
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".
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.
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.
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.
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an alternate universe
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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.
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.
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".
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probability 0 in the Asimov Reality
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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.
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First Contact from "The Green Sphere"
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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.
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in the Asimov Reality
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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.
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.
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