Plug: The Ideaphiles Book List

[packbat]

A few of you may be acquainted with kirabug of kirabug's idea files - but then, you may not be. A few of you may also have seen the latest 100-book meme floating around the LJ-o-sphere in the halcyon days of two weeks ago.

Anyway, kirabug filled out the meme, and in our shredding of "Big Read"'s list I and her other fans began to put together a list of a few items which were rather notable in their absence - and Kirabug suggested making a list of our own. So when she, a few days ago, set up a Wordpress forum on her site, she made sure to include an "Ideaphiles Book List" subforum.

The rules are pretty straightforward - one thread ("topic") per author, or a thread called "[your name here]'s book list", and no calling each other names.

C'mon - I know the lot of you are inveterate readers; here's your chance to make a case for your top lists. And if you need inspiration, here's a bit I wrote on my first book-crush, Hal Clement:

Hal Clement (born Harry Clement Stubbs, 1922-2003 - my goodness, I didn't even know he was gone!) was the very model of a "hard" science fiction novelist. "The main difference between science fiction and the rest of literature is science fiction's higher standards of realism," he is quoted in his obituary - in an article he wrote about his famous "Mission of Gravity", he spoke of SF being a game, where the author tries to make as few mistakes as possible and the readers try to catch him out every time they can.

On that point, the very first book that must appear on a Hal Clement reading list is that very novel, his most famous, "Mission of Gravity". This book is renown for showing just how captivating a story could be formed while writing with the greatest scientific rigor. The planet Mesklin (inspired by a proposed exoplanet orbiting 61 Cygni - a convenient spot, as it is only 11 light years off) is a strange, interesting place - massive, but rotating at a tremendous rate, and therefore possessed of an extraordinary gravitational field at the poles, but only approximately three gees at the equator - and its curious properties originate its remarkable inhabitants and drive the curious, fascinating incidents occurring in the story.

(This motif - of inventing a strange, unfamiliar place and exploring it through the novel - is a common motif in Clement's novels. Other examples include "Cycle of Fire", "Close to Critical", and the sequel to "Mission of Gravity": "Star Light".)

My second recommended Hal Clement for the list is "The Nitrogen Fix". Clement here demonstrates his worldbuilding chops with a Earthlike planet possessed of a nitrogen atmosphere - one which the humans cannot breathe, although they live there by using greenhouses of oxygen-producing plants and oxygen tanks to support themselves. This novel introduces one of his most interesting and unhuman alien species.

Third, but not least, of his books on my list is "Needle". This novel is yet another demonstration (if one were needed) that a science-fiction mystery is no paradox - here we follow an extraterrestrial police detective tracking a dangerous fugitive to a remote, low-technology planet, where the detective must obtain somehow the assistance of the natives to find and neutralize his quarry. The tricks being: the low-technology planet is (of course) our native Earth, and the detective and fugitive are both members of a species of intelligent symbiotes - amorphous creatures living within the bodies of other sentients, supporting and being supported by them. So our detective faces quite a challenge: how does one find such a creature when it does not wish to expose itself?

Hal Clement was not a prolific author, like Asimov or Heinlein. But his books were both entertaining and influential, and these three are representative of both properties of his writing.

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