Golden Age Sci-Fi 75 (33)

By: Joshua Glenn
August 16, 2016

One in a series of 75 posts about the best science fiction novels published during the genre’s so-called Golden Age (from 1934–63, according to HILOBROW’s Josh Glenn’s periodization schema). For the complete Golden Age Sci-Fi 75 list, click here.

Hal Clement’s Mission of Gravity (1953, as a book 1954).

Perhaps not one of the best-written or most exciting stories of the period, but Mission of Gravity — whose title is a pretty good pun — is well worth revisiting as an influential midcentury example of “hard” sci-fi world-building. The action takes place on Mesklin, a planet whose shape is an “oblate spheroid,” which results in a situation where gravity’s pull differs between the planet’s poles and its equator. (The planet’s name, FWIW, makes me think of Aldous Huxley’s experiments with mescaline, which coincided exactly with the serialization of Clement’s book; Huxley’s 1954 account, The Doors of Perception, quotes Goethe on the startling “gravity of Nature.”) The planet’s intelligent species are built low to the ground, like centipedes or caterpillars; they are terrified of height, and the concept of flight is unimaginable. Visiting Earthmen lose a valuable scientific probe, somewhere on Mesklin, so Barlennan, an adventurous Mesklinite sea trader, is recruited to go on a dangerous voyage in order to retrieve it; they are guided in their quest by the god-like voice of the Earthmen, orbiting above them. The story is mostly told from Barlennan’s perspective, which adds to the fun.

Fun fact: The novel was serialized in Astounding Science Fiction in April–July 1953. As the action proceeds, Clement, a high-school science teacher, rather unsubtly reminds readers of the importance of the scientific method.

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Golden Age Sci-Fi 75 (33)

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