Thursday 28 September 2017

Hal Clement

In Poul Anderson's Technic History, Adzel studies at the Clement Institute of Planetology on Earth and, in Anderson's Genesis, Christian Brannock works in Clement Base on Mercury.

Poul Anderson referred to:

"...Hal Clement's marvelously detailed and believable fictional worlds."
-Poul Anderson, Afterword to The Man Who Counts IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, 2009), pp. 513-515 AT p. 513.

In his SFWA Bulletin article, Anderson described The Man Who Counts as a Hal Clement-style novel and stated that Clement's works brilliantly hinted at the variety, strangeness and wonder of the universe.

Clement is to fictional planetology what Harry Turtledove is to alternative histories or Asimov is to robots. Anderson excels at all these themes. I read Mission Of Gravity once in the 1960s but have gone no further with Clement.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I too have read Hal Clement's MISSION OF GRAVITY and at least one of his other novels. But I seemed to have lost, discarded, or mislaid my copy of MISSION. And I only wish I had understood the Hal Clement allusions when I read "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" and GENESIS. Drat!

Sean