THERE ARE PHASE DIAGRAMS TOO

[james_davis_nicoll]

Comments

[kylinn]

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!

[beamjockey]

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.