Mission of gravity
From back cover Del Rey paperback January 1978: CAPTAIN COURAGEOUS For a profit -- and adventure -- Barlennan would sail the Bree thousands of miles across uncharted waters, into regions where gravity itself played strange tricks. He would dare the perils of strange tribes and strange creatures -- even dicker with those strange aliens from beyond the skies, though the concept of another world was unknown to the inhabitants of Mesklin. But in spite of the incredible technology of the strangers and without regard for their enourmous size, Barlennan had the notion of turning the deal to an unsuspected advantage for himself... all in all a considerable enterprise for a being very much resembling a fifteen-inch caterpillar!
Stats for nerds
9recommend
10mentions
10people
2009–2026years
90% recommend10% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Speaking of hard SF with imagination, Hal Clement's "Mission of Gravity" is a good example.
- You should try the old master, Hal Clement. Mission of Gravity is a classic "start from first principles" story.
- Yeah, I am a speedreader, and I did used to be able to do circa 3000wpm at a push. Good to know that even as a myopic 55YO I can still do half that without trying.
Points of comparison: I originally read Hal Clement's classic Mission of Gravity in about 25min, and Joseph Conrad's Victory in about 3 hours.
- MISSION OF GRAVITY by Hal Clement.
Addresses this very scenario.
A fine fine bit of scifi.
- From an excellent list, I'm going to hightlight a couple of lesser known works
> Sheckley, Robert "Specialist" in Keyes, N., ed. Contact. 1963, Paperback Library. Proposes the idea that life in the universe is all specialized by function, except on Earth.
Scheckley's short stories are uniformly excellent.
> Clement, Hal Mission of Gravity. 1962, Pyramid. Life on a massive, rapidly rotating planet. Clement is a high-school science teacher. . (A new edition of all his stories about this planet was issued in 2002 by TOR, under the title Heavy Planet.)
Fantastic book.
- I thought the Dune series was most excellent.
Also any Asimov books.
I also quite enjoyed Hal Clement's Mission of Gravity.
As for lighthearted...you can't go wrong with The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
