TIME PROBE: And He Built a Crooked House; The Wabbler; The Weather Man; The Artifact Business; Grandpa; Not Final; The Little Black Bag; The Blindness; Take a Deep Breath; The Potters of Firsk; The Tissue Culture King Review

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TIME PROBE: And He Built a Crooked House; The Wabbler; The Weather Man; The Artifact Business; Grandpa; Not Final; The Little Black Bag; The Blindness; Take a Deep Breath; The Potters of Firsk; The Tissue Culture King ReviewThere is a specialized branch of science fiction called "hard science fiction". When you write it, you play what Hal Clement called The Game. The Game consists of two players, the author and the reader. The author tries to be as rigorous in his or her science as possible, while the reader tries to poke as many holes in the scientific background as possible.*
Arthur C. Clarke does not use either the terms "hard science fiction" or "the game" in his introduction to _Time Probe_ (1966). But he states that the stories "have all been selected because they illustrate some particular aspect of science or technology" (9). Clarke also notes that the "prime function of a story is to _entertain_-- not to instruct or preach" (9). He states that stories high on scientific accuracy and low on entertainment value were rejected.
Well, now. Let us crank up the Multivak, tighten the rivets, polish the screen, harden the software, fire up the spindizzies, and ask ourselves how well Clarke has done.
There are ten stories: Robert A. Heinlein's "-- And He Built a Crooked House" (_Astounding_, 1940), Murray Leinster's "The Wabbler" (_Astounding_, 1942), Theodore L. Thomas' "The Weather Man" (_Analog_, 1962), Robert Silverberg's "The Artifact Business" (_Fantastic Universe_, 1957), James H. Schmitz's "Grandpa" (_Astounding_, 1955), Isaac Asimov's "Not Final!" (_Astounding_, 1941), Cyril Kornbluth's "The Little Black Bag" (_Astounding_, 1950), Philip Latham's "The Blindness" (_Astounding_, 1946), Arthur C. Clarke's "Take a Deep Breath" (_Infinity_, 1957), Jack Vance's "The Potters of Firsk" (_Astounding_, 1950), and Julien Huxley's "The Tissue Culture King" (_Amazing_, 1927).
Most of the stories originally came from _Astounding/Analog_ under the editorship of John W. Campbell, Jr.
All of the stories are good, but one is outstanding-- the Ted Thomas novella. "The Weather Man" is a model of how to write a hard science fiction story. Thomas starts with the realization that in a world when somebody finally does something about the weather, you will need three branches of weather control: the political, the scientific, and the operational. He then tells three stories about a single person in each branch and what they do to bring snow to a small plot of land in California. But look closer. The people involved are motivated by the impulsive or the irrational in their behavior. And at the close of the story, a dying man reflects that "men had not changed at all, for this was a foolish thing" (78). This is a _human_ story as well as a scientific one. It strikes that balance that Clarke spoke of in his introduction.
Some stories that come close to the Thomas story are the Heinlein, the Schmitz, the Asimov, the Latham, and the Huxley. All are good tales well told, and all have a particularly imaginative scientific background. The Heinlein is the one about the house built in the form of a tessarect and the problems its unlucky tenants encounter. The Schmitz is about the adventures of a young human colonist on an alien planet with an elegantly developed ecosystem. The Asimov is about an unexpected discovery in physics that reminds me of Clarke's dictum: "If an elderly scientist says that something is possible, he is probably right; if he says that something is impossible, he is probably wrong". The Latham is about the "future return" of Halley's Comet in 1987. All right, you say. It didn't _really_ happen that way when the time came. But I defy you to say that Latham's account doesn't make a better tale. The Huxley is about a sinister biological discovery in the darkest jungle that raises some questions about scientific ethics. As Clarke says, this story was written almost twenty years before Hiroshima; but its ending touches on some very modern issues.
The Leinster and the Clarke pieces strike me as stories that are strong on science but which have relatively slight plots. The Leinster is a cybernetics story written long before Norbert Weiner coined the term. (Leinster in fact wrote several computer stories long before they were commonly thought about.) I won't say too much about the Clarke except to note that it later became a scene in the movie _2001: a Space Odyssey_ (1969). The Silverberg, the Vance, and the Kornbluth are all good stories-- especially the Kornbluth. But they are not really what I would call hard science fiction tales. It's not that the science is sloppily done; but it doesn't really form the backbone of the story.
Algis Budrys once noted that few readers today are likely to appreciate hard science fiction because fewer modern readers have the scientific or technical education to play The Game well. But I believe that Budrys overlooked the fact that much modern hard sf is not purely a puzzle. If you look at hard sf stories carefully, you can find other sources of pleasure. Clarke did this, and the result is an excellent anthology.
*_Note_: The manifesto of the hard science fiction philosophy is an article by Clement called "Whirlagig World" (_Astounding_, 1954). It can be found as an appendix in some editions of _Mission of Gravity_.TIME PROBE: And He Built a Crooked House; The Wabbler; The Weather Man; The Artifact Business; Grandpa; Not Final; The Little Black Bag; The Blindness; Take a Deep Breath; The Potters of Firsk; The Tissue Culture King Overview

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