His first books were very well received he fell out of favour in his middle years, but his last decades saw him enjoy an Indian summer. He held degrees in astronomy, chemistry and education, and was long employed as a high-school science teacher. Krabs from 'Spongebob' but maybe a character who communicates with farts is a bit advanced for Disney's shareholders.Working name used for his sf by US author Harry Clement Stubbs (1922-2003) he used his full name for science articles, and painted as George Richard. I wonder why “Mission of Gravity” hasn't been optioned by Pixar. And the male pronouns applied to Barlennon and 'his' crew by Lackland/the narrator might not apply. 'Noise' and 'Still River' off the top of my head. Then someone pointed out to me - after I had read a few of his novels without noticing it - that his novels contained no female characters at all. NB: I always enjoyed the SF of Hal Clement. It was much the same with Verne and Wells, where Weena in “The Time Machine” is the only female character I can think of. Clarke's “Earthlight” the hero's wife is mentioned a few times, but never appears on stage. Eric Frank Russell was much the same, though in racial matters he was quite advanced. Well, the hero of “Needle” had a mother, though she only got a bit part.īut this wasn't unique to Clement. On the other hand, 'Through the Eye of the Needle' is, if anything, more filmic than the first book. Who knows how many stories like that were spiked because of John W.

A space-mission with a few women would have been a good premise for a story (see the cover-story for that first issue of 'Universe' I mentioned in a post a while back) but akin to something like a woman accompanying Shackleton to the Pole. The humans are there as a backdrop for the Mesklinites and have to be as schematic as they are to fit the word-count. If it had been the point of the book, a space-mission with fewer than 40% female crew would have been a different story and, concomitantly, much longer if added to the voyage to Mesklin. and (spoiler alert) given that the aliens are just amorphous blobs that live inside the body of a human host, it wouldn't be that expensive to make. I think 'Needle' would be an interesting book to make a film from. There are female characters in “Iceworld”, and also in “Needle”, but those are set on Earth (with the aliens visiting us), where a complete absence of female characters would be a bit glaring.

Show More writing, 'group of scientists' largely meant 'group of male scientists'.

Needle by Hal Clement