Автор - Hal Clement

Cold Front

Hekla – an ice-age planet in Cold Front (short story, Astounding July 1946).

Das Nadelöhr

Er ist ein Allen, und er ist ein Jäger. Sein Körper besteht aus einem vier Pfund schweren Gallertklumpen aus einer äußerst feinstrukturierten Sustanz, die in jede andere Materie eindringen und mit dieser eine Symbiose eingehen kann. Seit über sieben Jahren lebt der Jäger auf der Erde im Körper des 22-jährigen Bob. Die ganze Zeit über hat er seinen „Gastgeber“ vor Infektionen bewahrt und seine Verletzungen geheilt Trotzdem wird Bobs Körper von Tag zu Tag schwächer; der Jäger ist machtlos. Er weiß nur einen Ausweg: Spezialisten seiner Spezies müssen Bob behandeln. Nach der College-Ausbildung in den USA kehren Bob und der Jäger auf Bobs Heimatinsel im Pazifik zurück. Sie beginnen nach dem gesunkenen Raumschiff des Verbrechers zu suchen, auf dessen Spur der Jäger einst auf die Erde gekommen war. Vielleicht könnte der Jäger über das Wrack Kontakt mit seinen Leuten aufnehmen. Doch Bob und seinen Freunden passieren die merkwürdigsten Unfälle. Befindet sich ein Forschungsteam der Jäger-Spezies schon auf der Erde? Oder hat der Verbrecher überlebt und treibt weiter sein Unwesen?

Een zaak van gewicht

Estrella brillante

Dhrawn era un planeta que, entre otros inconvenientes, tenía una gravedad aplastante, cuarenta veces superior a la terrestre. Era evidentemente imposible para los terrícolas explorarlo. Por lo tanto, para llevarlo a cabo necesitarían colocar sobre aquella superficie a alguien dotado de inteligencia e iniciativa, pero psicológicamente más apropiado que los humanos. Los seres vivientes que mejor se ajustaban a esas exigencias eran los pequeños mesklinitas, dotados de una constitución resistente. Aunque se encontraban en un estadio cultural inferior, los humanos pensaban que no convenía suministrarles una elevada ayuda tecnológica para su cometido. En cambio, deberían controlar la exploración desde su seguro satélite en órbita a seis millones de millas de Dhrawn. Hasta el momento de descender allí, los tenaces, valientes e inteligentes mesklinitas estaban decididos a no ser contratados y deseosos por sí mismos de aceptar el fantástico desafío que las fuerzas de Dhrawn les presentaban. Nominado por el premio Hugo en 1971.

Expedition zur Sonne

Fossil

The blockbuster new novel by science fiction great Hal Clement, set in an alien-run universe created by Isaac Asimov himself. This is the story of six vastly different starfaring races coexisting under a precarious truce — an interstellar community to which the human race has recently been added.

Heavy Planet

Discover MESKLIN — Gravity: 3g at the equator, 700g at the poles! Hal Clement is a Grand Master of SF, and the one most associated with the subgenre of hard SF. From his classic stories in Astounding in the 1940s through his novels of the 1950s and on to the recent Half Life, he has made a lasting impression on SF readers, and on writers, too. For many of them, Clement’s work is the model of how to write hard SF, and this book contains the reasons why. Here are all the tales of bizarre, unforgettable Mesklin: the classic novel Mission of Gravity and its sequel, Star Light, as well as the short stories “Under” and “Lecture Demonstration.” Also included is “Whirligig World,” the famous essay Clement published in Astounding in 1953. It describes the rigorous process he used to create his intriguingly plausible high-gravity planet, with its odd flattened shape, its day less than eighteen minutes long, and its many-limbed, noble natives. Come to Mesklin and learn why The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction called Mission of Gravity “one of the best loved novels in SF.”

Hot Planet

An expedition team of scientists is exploring the planet Mercury. The constant rumblings of earthquakes and wind have shaken their ship, the Albireo. A small explorative party departs on tractors. It’s then when the volcanic reaction starts. And it looks like the end of the team unless man’s intelligence can beat the malevolent nature of a fiery planet!

Iceworld

Iceworld is a humorously pointed novel of clashing perspectives, which we may designate as hot versus cold. Even for readers who have not seen H. R. van Dongen's fine cover painting for the novel's first installment in Astounding, Hal Clement does not keep us long in suspense that the planet which is unaccessible because of its climate of extreme cold is our own Earth. In contrast, the dismayed observer, the alien Sallman Ken (also on the cover, not to scale!), is truly hot-blooded. Clement genially introduces mitigating circumstances: Earth, really, is not as bad as all that. Some people are even quite fond of it. Ken, of course, was prejudiced, as anyone is likely to be against a world where water is a liquid — when he has grown up breathing gaseous sulfur and, at rare intervals, drinking molten copper chloride. The mitigating circumstances are mutual, because we have two viewpoint threads alternating here, that of Sallman Ken who is evolved to live comfortably on his quite hot home-planet; Ken is a science teacher, not a scientist or expert but possessing a good general scientific knowledge. The other viewpoint is that of several members of a Terrestrial family who of course are evolved to live comfortably on our quite cold planet. The characters all are engaging, and Iceworld weaves their viewpoints, thoughts, and actions very well. The family on Earth includes young people of various ages, so this is a fine novel for teenagers as well as adults. Sallman Ken has been brought to Earth — or at least as close to it as the Iceworld’s destructive climate will allow — to solve a technical problem for a criminal syndicate of his race. They want a product found on Earth, one which is extremely valuable but so far unsynthesizable. What is it, in its natural state? How to boost their profits by getting or creating more of it? As defined, a general scientific problem, which is why the syndicate has engaged a schoolteacher with an all-around scientific knowledge. This in fact is Clement's own background and profession, so despite Ken's alienness, his character is drawn true to life. The obvious physical barrier and scientific challenge is the scarcely imaginable temperature contrast between the aliens and the world of their interest. A differently tricky difficulty is that the rather unadventurous Ken has been talked into acting as an undercover investigator for his homeworld police. Naturally, the humans on the ground have their own motivations.

Noise

Hal Clement, the dean of hard science fiction, has written a new planetary adventure in the tradition of his classic Mission of Gravity. It is the kind of story that made his reputation as a meticulous designer of otherworldly settings that are utterly convincing because they are constructed from the ground up using established principles of orbital mechanics, geology, chemistry, biology, and other sciences. Kainui is one of a pair of double planets circling a pair of binary stars. Mike Hoani has come there to study the language of the colonists, to analyze its evolution in the years since settlement. But Kainui is an ocean planet. Although settled by Polynesians, it is anything but a tropical paradise. The ocean is 1,700 miles deep, with no solid ground anywhere. The population is scattered in cities on floating artificial islands with no fixed locations. The atmosphere isn’t breathable, and lightning, waterspouts, and tsunamis are constant. Out on the great planetary ocean, self-sufficiency is crucial, and far from any floating city, on a small working-family ship, anything can happen. There are, for instance, pirates. Mike’s academic research turns into an exotic nautical adventure unlike anything he could have imagined.

Ocean on Top

Persecución cósmica

Un detective alienígena sigue el rastro de un malvado asesino de su misma raza; durante su persecución, se estrella junto a una isla solitaria de la Tierra de 1949. Estos seres necesitan de otra raza para ocupar sus cuerpos, ya que no poseen uno propio. Nuestro “héroe” consigue encontrar un anfitrión: el cuerpo de un joven que vive en la isla.