I heard Clement give a lecture^talk at LunaCon many years ago, and damn, I wished that he'd been my teacher. He made the science behind the book he was talking about so clear!
Boskone remembers him by inviting a Hal Clement Science Speaker each year. I was so honored in 2014.
I decided to create a new talk about the science in a science fiction story. Skipping over his better-known novels, I made my topic "The Science of Iceworld." How does the science in a 1951 story look from the year 2014?
There is a surprising amount of detail about mission planning and experiment design for a remotely-operated spacecraft exploring a hostile planetary environment.
As someone a little bored with hearing about the search for Earth-like exoplanets, I went hunting through the Kepler mission data and found Saar-like exoplanets, resembling the protagonist's homeworld, with radii similar to Earth but hot enough to support an atmosphere of sulfur vapor. Was fun.
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I decided to create a new talk about the science in a science fiction story. Skipping over his better-known novels, I made my topic "The Science of Iceworld." How does the science in a 1951 story look from the year 2014?
There is a surprising amount of detail about mission planning and experiment design for a remotely-operated spacecraft exploring a hostile planetary environment.
As someone a little bored with hearing about the search for Earth-like exoplanets, I went hunting through the Kepler mission data and found Saar-like exoplanets, resembling the protagonist's homeworld, with radii similar to Earth but hot enough to support an atmosphere of sulfur vapor. Was fun.