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A review by editor_b
Heavy Planet: The Classic Mesklin Stories by Hal Clement
3.0
Note: This review concerns Mission of Gravity, a 1953 novel which is out of print except for this anthology.
The story concerns a huge planet which spins very fast on its axis; gravity is three times Earth normal at the equator but something like 700 times at the poles. There are some humans visiting, but they are offstage or peripheral for the most part, with the main players being the small centipede-like natives who are perfectly at home in gravity that would crush us. One might assume such creatures would be very strange and alien, but in Clement’s story they play out like humans in disguise. That seemed rather unlikely to me, but this is not a work of great psychological depth. Indeed, many traditional literary elements such as character and style are somewhat underdeveloped; the plot chugs along and unfolds at a steady pace, but it’s all in service to something else, namely, scientific speculation. Clement is mainly interested in high-gravity physics.
This is one of the geekiest books I’ve ever read. (Slide rules are deployed with reckless abandon.) It’s somewhat charming, rather strange, even quaint. While I can’t recommend the novel solely on its merits, I have no reservations recommending it to anyone interested in the history of science fiction. It’s a seminal work. It represents an early effort to distinguish science fiction as something more than adventure fiction with ray guns, something more than space opera. Clement injects a healthy dose of intellectual rigor into the genre. I especially enjoyed his essay “Whirligig World” (included in this volume) which is about the process of writing Mission of Gravity, and reveals his underlying motives.
The story concerns a huge planet which spins very fast on its axis; gravity is three times Earth normal at the equator but something like 700 times at the poles. There are some humans visiting, but they are offstage or peripheral for the most part, with the main players being the small centipede-like natives who are perfectly at home in gravity that would crush us. One might assume such creatures would be very strange and alien, but in Clement’s story they play out like humans in disguise. That seemed rather unlikely to me, but this is not a work of great psychological depth. Indeed, many traditional literary elements such as character and style are somewhat underdeveloped; the plot chugs along and unfolds at a steady pace, but it’s all in service to something else, namely, scientific speculation. Clement is mainly interested in high-gravity physics.
This is one of the geekiest books I’ve ever read. (Slide rules are deployed with reckless abandon.) It’s somewhat charming, rather strange, even quaint. While I can’t recommend the novel solely on its merits, I have no reservations recommending it to anyone interested in the history of science fiction. It’s a seminal work. It represents an early effort to distinguish science fiction as something more than adventure fiction with ray guns, something more than space opera. Clement injects a healthy dose of intellectual rigor into the genre. I especially enjoyed his essay “Whirligig World” (included in this volume) which is about the process of writing Mission of Gravity, and reveals his underlying motives.