Interview: SF Author Hal Clement
The Father of Hard Science Fiction Talks About His Last Novel
Sep 16, 2009
[The following interview was conducted in May 2003.]
When veteran “hard” science-fiction author Hal Clement (a pseudonym used by writer Harry Clement Stubbs) begins a new book, he doesn’t wonder whether he should start by creating intriguing characters or outlining an entertaining plot.
Where other authors might see chicken-or-egg choices, Clement takes one step back: He focuses on building an interesting barnyard.
Planet Building
“My usual writing trick is to think up the most unusual world as possible,” Clement says. In his September 2003 Tor release, Noise, that world is “a water world to end all water worlds. I worked out its details as carefully as I could.”
It helps that Clement holds an honors degree in astronomy from Harvard and has established a reputation for emphasizing the science in his science fiction. As a result, critics have chided him for his lack of emphasis on character development, narrative style, and engaging, engrossing story lines.
“Other people have plots in mind, of course, and arrange a planet where what they want to happen can happen. Instead, I cook up a system, then think of characteristics a particular planet might have. I think of each of the things that could happen on such a planet, and each one goes on a 3 x 5 card.”
Eventually, that resulting stack of planetary possibilities gives rise to considerations about characters and how they would interact in this unique physical environment.
Given the amount of work that goes into creating a wholly new planet, it’s surprising that Clement hasn’t made it a point to wring multiple books from his worlds. “I've always said that I was going to go back,” he admits, “but I always think of new planets.”
It looks like he might finally be ready to revisit an earlier creation. “I wrote a story in the Winter 1999 issue of Absolute Magnitude, and I just started a full-length novel that will be a sequel to that story set in that world. I’ve written about 6,000 or 7,000 words so far.”
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Unfortunately, the full-length novel mentioned in this interview was not to be. Hal Clement / Harry C. Stubbs passed away on October 29, 2003, five months after this interview – and just one month after Noise was published.
In its entry on Clement, published prior to his death, the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (edited by John Clute and Peter Nicholls) called him “a figure of importance to the genre,” noting that Hal Clement “brought a new seriousness” to hard science fiction and praised his “vividness of imagination – his sense that the Universe is wonderful.”
Some of the Best of Hal Clement
Noise, Hal Clement’s final completed novel, is available in print and Kindle editions. To discover more of what this hard-SF pioneer has to offer, check out any of following titles:
- Mission of Gravity
- Close to Critical
- Star Light
- Iceworld
- Cycle of Fire
There are also two story collections that are particularly representative of Clement’s work:
- Natives of Space
- Small Changes
Because most of these titles are older – Mission of Gravity, for example, originally appeared in the early 1950s – readers will not find them on new bookstore shelves. They can, however, be found in used-book stores both online and off, often in quite inexpensive paperback editions. (Of these older titles, Mission of Gravity is currently the only one available for Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader.)
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Read more behind-the-scenes stories from science-fiction authors David Weber and Linnea Sinclair.
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