Through the Eye of a Needle

About the Author

Hal Clement (Harry Clement Stubbs) was born in Massachusetts in 1922. He has been a science lover from early childhood, at least partly as a result of a 1930 Buck Rogers panel in which villains were "headed for Mars, forty-seven million miles away." His father, an accountant, couldn't answer the resulting questions, and led little Hal to the local library. The result was irreversible brain influence.

He majored in astronomy at Harvard, and has since acquired master's degrees in education and in chemistry. He earns his basic living as a teacher of chemistry and astronomy at Milton Academy, in Massachusetts, and regards science-fiction writing and painting as hobbies. His first two stories, "Proof" and "Impediment," were sold when he was a junior in college; their impression on Harvard's $400 yearly tuition secured family tolerance for that crazy Buck Rogers stuff.

He has since produced half a dozen novels, of which the best known are Needle and Mission of Gravity. His reputation among science-fiction enthusiasts is that of a "bard" writer-one who tries to stick faithfully to the physical sciences as they are currently understood; like Arthur C. Clarke and the late Willy Ley, Clement would never dream of having a space ship fall into the sun merely because its engines broke down. He can do his own orbit com puting, and does.

He leads a double life, appearing frequently at science fiction conventions as Hal Clement and spending the rest of his time in Milton as Harry Stubbs, the rather square science teacher with a wife of twenty-five years and three grown children. He does occasional merit badge counseling for the Boy Scouts, has served on his town's finance committee, and is an eleven-gallon Red Cross blood donor.