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RIP Henry "Hal" Clement Stubbs
Oct. 29th, 2003 03:29 pmI met him several times at science fiction conventions, and loved his writing.
I heard that he went to about 25 sci fi cons a year. You'll note that that's about one every other week. Rumor had it that his wife was fine with this so long as he was able to pay for his con memberships, travel, and hotel out of his writing money -- royalties and so forth. Every once in a while, he'd knock out another book just to get a little more royalty money to make sure he could keep going to cons.
The Oxygen Fix was among the first science fiction novels I read. Needle and Eye of the Needle are on my bookshelf right now. I loved Mission of Gravity and Iceworld.
The main criticism of his work that I heard was that his aliens might have alien biology, but every one of them thought and acted like a middle-class American high school science teacher -- and, heck, in Iceworld, the protagonist IS basically an alien high school science teacher. And the main character in Mission of Gravity might have been a two foot long alien centipede, but it certainly ACTED like the kind of two foot long alien centipede who would live in the suburbs with a white picket fence, and not talk about the Battle of the Bulge, but WOULD show you photographs of his grandlarvae with ANY sort of provocation.
This criticism is valid, but, well, so what? I happen to LIKE his protagonists. They are fundamentally decent, hardworking people, who just happen to live on a 300 G planet, or have sulfur compounds for blood, or are amophous transparent jellies which can live symbiotically inside other creatures.
I'd be much sadder about Hal Clement's death if he hadn't had such a full, productive, long, and happy life. I'm going to miss him, and I am sad that I'm never going to see another worldbuilding panel with him on it, but, y'know, living for eighty one years, publishing a fair number of stories that a lot of people love, teaching high school science for years, being happily married for decades -- there are worse lives.
I heard that he went to about 25 sci fi cons a year. You'll note that that's about one every other week. Rumor had it that his wife was fine with this so long as he was able to pay for his con memberships, travel, and hotel out of his writing money -- royalties and so forth. Every once in a while, he'd knock out another book just to get a little more royalty money to make sure he could keep going to cons.
The Oxygen Fix was among the first science fiction novels I read. Needle and Eye of the Needle are on my bookshelf right now. I loved Mission of Gravity and Iceworld.
The main criticism of his work that I heard was that his aliens might have alien biology, but every one of them thought and acted like a middle-class American high school science teacher -- and, heck, in Iceworld, the protagonist IS basically an alien high school science teacher. And the main character in Mission of Gravity might have been a two foot long alien centipede, but it certainly ACTED like the kind of two foot long alien centipede who would live in the suburbs with a white picket fence, and not talk about the Battle of the Bulge, but WOULD show you photographs of his grandlarvae with ANY sort of provocation.
This criticism is valid, but, well, so what? I happen to LIKE his protagonists. They are fundamentally decent, hardworking people, who just happen to live on a 300 G planet, or have sulfur compounds for blood, or are amophous transparent jellies which can live symbiotically inside other creatures.
I'd be much sadder about Hal Clement's death if he hadn't had such a full, productive, long, and happy life. I'm going to miss him, and I am sad that I'm never going to see another worldbuilding panel with him on it, but, y'know, living for eighty one years, publishing a fair number of stories that a lot of people love, teaching high school science for years, being happily married for decades -- there are worse lives.