The Event Horizon

2. Voices From The Edge

2.1 To HAL And Back by Nigel Tan

This is an intermittent series highlighting books which I feel are undeservedly out-of-print, or unjustifiably neglected. With this column, I hope that enough people out there reading this will be curious enough to check out these books. -- Nigel

Hal Clement's ``Mission Of Gravity'', first published 45 years ago in Astounding Science Fiction, remains a classic of hard SF. Clement was a teacher with degrees in astronomy and chemistry, and it was this background which allowed him to write hard SF.

``Mission Of Gravity'' is very much a product of its time. It has the same weakness as most of the SF of that period - minimal characterisation, predominantly plot-driven, token female representation (actually, there are no females in this book) and large scientific `info-dumps'. Yet at the same time it maintains a refreshing clarity of prose (no literary embellishments here!) and maintains a good pace for what essentially is a Golden Age-type scientific adventure.

The plot is simple and central to the whole premise of the book. The giant planet of Mesklin is essentially a whirling disk, flattened at the poles. Due to centrifugal force, gravity is least at the equator, and maximal at the poles, ranging from 3 Earth gravities to 700 gravities at the poles. Naturally, the high gravity really cramps the style of the natives, who are flattish scorpion-like aliens who spend all their time crawling on the surface and who cannot conceive of anything particularly tall. Humans exploring the planet need to recover one of their rockets, which has crashed in the high-g area, which makes it near impossible to operate their equipment in. By using the aliens, the humans hope to recover it. The novel is thus the story of how one of the aliens, Barlennan, takes his ship across an epic journey, encountering strange people and situations, in order to help the humans recover their ship. No prizes for originality here.

It is obvious that Clement's strength lies in scientific extrapolation, and here he does pretty well, in physics anyway. He convincingly describes the mechanics of that world, and explains the aliens' morbid fear of having anything above them (with several hundred g of gravity, even a relatively small object falling on you could well prove fatal). He also explains quite neatly why the society there has never evolved projectile weapons, for all objects would fall to the ground well before they hit their intended target. My physics is abysmal, but it sounded quite convincing to me (To paraphrase Star Trek: I'm a doctor, not a physicist!)

Like other SF works of that time, the emphasis was on the plot; nothing else was really fleshed out or explored. The aliens are sketched out poorly: they are basically human - they have human thoughts, human feelings, even human expressions. They're humans on an adventure. The fact that they take the form of scorpion-like aliens is merely a plot device to help set this particular adventure in a strange world. The lack of a convincing exobiology is what I feel is a major flaw in the book - the Mesklinites exist merely to help the plot chug along smoothly. There is no attempt to describe the type of life that would arise in such high-g conditions. Neither is there any indication of the type of society that would develop in such conditions.

To be fair to Clement, such considerations were hardly paramount in the 50's. As opposed to the space opera garbage that was being published at that time, ``Mission Of Gravity'' broke the mould by having the standard space adventure set in a world that had its physical principles logically and completely worked out. It was the earliest example of hard SF, and to be absolutely fair to him, it should also be noted that much of the hard SF currently being produced still suffers from weak characterisation and it still emphasises physics as the cornerstone of hard SF (when will we ever have biology as the basis of a good hard SF story?). As a plot-driven novel, which was its primary intention and the usual novelistic device during that era, ``Mission Of Gravity'' does deliver the goods, remaining engaging throughout.

``Mission Of Gravity'' has dated, and best remains considered as sepia-tinged proto-hard SF. It is still an important novel even now, and makes an enjoyable light read. Just don't go in expecting an awesome novel.

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