Hal Clement Page

Curriculum Vita -
Real Name: Harry Clement Stubbs
Lived: 1922 - 2003
Nationality: United States
Occupations: Writer & Chemistry Teacher
Some Major Works:
Mission of Gravity (1954: his most popular story)
Needle (1950)
Iceworld (1953)
Cycle of Fire (1957)
Close to Critical (1964)
Star Light (1971)
Best of Hal Clement(1979)
Half Life (1999)

Pictures here are of science fiction Grand Master Hal Clement at a RoVaCon sci-fi convention in Salem, Virginia, in 1991. He is discussing Mars as seen in Stanley Weinbaum's classic short story "A Martian Odyssey" (1934). To his right in above picture is NASA public relations man Richard Preston.

In 1999, Hal Clement was named a "Grand Master" sci-fi writer by the Science Fiction Writers of America, thus joining the elite group of about a dozen other Grand Masters. One recent novel is Half Life, a quite technical account of a deadly virus and a trip to Jupiter to search for a cure. For more info on Hal (no relation to HAL 9000), check his home site!

Update: Mr. Clement died in his sleep on October 29, 2003. The SFWA has a tribute section, to which you can add your comments.

"On occasion, (Hal) has pointed out errors in my science essays, but does so with such kindness and even diffidence that it would be impossible to be annoyed over it, even if I were the sort of person who got annoyed at being corrected. And any time he corrected me, I took it seriously, for he was always right." - Isaac Asimov, in his 1994 autobio I. Asimov

From The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction byNicholls &Clute: "his work has from the first been characterized by the complexity and compelling interest of the scientific (or at any rate scientifically literate) ideas which dominate each story.......He is a figure of importance to the genre."

Photos by Bill Testerman