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The Essential Hal Clement Volume 2: Music of Many Spheres

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The title of this series is pretty clear: each book in this series contains the most important stories from a particular segment or portion of Hal Clement's long career. This volume focuses on short stories, although many of them are fairly long. Clement is known primarily for his hard SF stories with plausible science as the background for many stories.

An example in this volume would be "Raindrop", which has an ecosystem in a huge orbiting blob of water. Clement's writing is prototypical of the era preceeding the New Age SF of the 60's, if a cut (way) above what most authors can achieve. Characters inner emotional development is not the point here, but this isn't as important as it sounds. Clement always grabs you with really amazing setups: the classic "what-if" story.

If I had to pick two authors that he most reminds me of, it would be "James Tiptree Jr." and Larry Niven. The former is his contemporary and the latter is more of his heir. If you like their works, then Clement is probably for you.

This book is very solid, filled with readable, engaging, and sometimes truly classic stories. Many of his concepts are truly ground-breaking. No doubt a future volume will contain his famous "Needle" (John Campbell famously said an SF detective story could not be written... and Clement not only wrote one, he created a detective--and alien--so memorable it is still being ripped off, er, paid homage to).

But this volume... this volume is marvelous and belongs on any serious SF fan's shelf.

"The Essential Hal Clement, Volume 2: Music of Many Spheres" is the second in a three volume set which introduces a new generation of readers to Hal Clement's unique style. Hal Clement is the pseudonym of Harry C. Stubbs a scientist who first used this pseudonym because he didn't want his professor to think he was wasting his time; later he found out that the same professor was also writing science fiction stories, although with less success. Clement's stories are hard science fiction, using the science of the day to create futuristic stories involving mystery or problem solving.

This volume was published in 2000, and features a nice selection of his short fiction. This collection includes his first story, "Proof", which was first published in "Astounding Science Fiction" in June of 1942. It also includes his four Laird Cunningham stories, and 12 other stories spanning his career. There doesn't seem to be any organization to this particular collection. The stories are not put in chronological order, or even alphabetically. While the Laird Cunningham stories are grouped together at the end of the collection, even those are not put into any kind of logical order.

Despite the lack of organization, this is still an enjoyable collection of stories. Some of these stories have become out-of-date as a result of scientific learning, but thanks to Clement's storytelling ability, the reader is still entertained. In 1996, "Uncommon Sense" was awarded the Retro Hugo for best Short Story written in 1945, which is a testament to Clement's ability to craft a story that stands the test of time.

I am afraid that the few rave reviews had duped me in buying this collection of fairly tedious science-lectures told in the shape of stories. A book by Michio Kaku, or the non-fiction compilations of Arthur C Clarke is much-much more entertaining, educative, and thought-evoking compared to this collection.

The Essential Hal Clement 2 offers seventeen of Clement's shortscience fiction, from stories about the outer edges of Earth'satmosphere to deep space exploration, and demonstrate the range of a writer perhaps best known for his alien invasion story 'Needle'. This demonstrates an even wider range to his talents and makes for an excellent collection especially recommended for prior fans of Clement's novels.

Clement may have been a great guy, a great scientist and a great SF conventioneer as Bova suggests in the Intro, but, gad zukes! these 'stories' are not really stories at all. They are science lectures delivered by cardboard cutout characters in space suits.

The first story, 'Cold Front' is, I swear this is true, a meteorological story where the weather is the main focus. I kid you not. I tried a few more and, finding them the same, returned the book.

If you read SF for a science puzzle then this will send you into orbit. I have no doubt his science is correct, but had I wanted to read a science text I would have bought one.

If, like me, you prefer your fiction with vivid characters, exciting plot, fresh dialog and most of all...conflict, then avoid this author.
Try instead Silverberg, Poul, Triptree or Leiber.