Search Results for: close-to-critical

Shrouded in eternal gloom by its own thick atmosphere, Tenebra was a hostile planet: a place of crushing gravity, 370-degree temperatures, a constantly shifting crust and giant drifting raindrops. Uncompromising – yet there was life, intelligent life on Tenebra. For more than twenty years, Earth scientists had studied the natives from an orbiting laboratory… and had even found a way to train and educate a few of them.

Samuel R. Delany’s The Jewel-Hinged Jaw first appeared in 1977. Its demonstration that science fiction is a special language, rather than gadgets and green-skinned aliens, had an impact that reverberates today in science fiction criticism. Close textual analyses of Thomas M. Disch, Ursula K. Le Guin, Roger Zelazny, and Joanna Russ read as brilliantly today as when they first appeared.

With degrees in astronomy, chemistry and education, it should come as no surprise that Harry Clement Stubbs – better known to SF readers as Hal Clement – produced some of the field’s most compelling, scientifically literate work.

This omnibus contains the clever alien-planet-with-a-twist novel ICEWORLD; the ground-breaking CYCLE OF FIRE, with its 40-year-long seasons; and CLOSE TO CRITICAL, from his celebrated Mesklin sequence.