Harry Clement Stubbs, who wrote science fiction as Hal Clement, died in his sleep on October 29, 2003, at his home in Milton, Mass. Clement, a high school school teacher, wrote quintessential hard SF--science fiction firmly based on established physics, chemistry, and astronomy. His most famous novel, Mission of Gravity, was set on a heavy, fast-spinning planet where the force of gravity is several times greater at the poles than at the equator. His last novel, Noise, was published by Tor earlier this year.

Clement is survived by his wife Mary, two sons, George and Richard, a daughter, Christine Hensel, and a grandson, Jackson.

Since his death, SF Canada members have been remembering and paying tribute to Clement, named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America in 1999.

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Peter Watts

"He was a nice and gentle guy (and ubiquitous at cons).  I always felt kind of a connection with the man, ever since some Ad Astra organizer ridiculed his and my ability to generate interest in a panel on alien sex."

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Dave Duncan

"Not being a great con-goer, I met him only a few times, but a great guy. There was a con somewhere that starred Hal Clement as writer GoH, Harry Stubbs as Science GoH, and (I think) H. Stubbs as artist GoH.  All him, of course.

"Oddly enough, I believe that he never wrote professionally.  He was a teacher, but by the time the market was big enough to support professional writers other than Heinlein et al, Harry Stubbs had retired. Yet he was certainly one of the pioneers."

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Michèle Laframboise

"I met him for the first (and last, alas) time at TorCon when I purchased a collection of his short stories. He looked a bit alone at his signing besides very popular Larry Niven. A very kind man indeed.  As I read his stories, I felt happy to get better acquainted with a classic hard-SF writer.

"He is now another one going exploring the Great Beyond..."

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Edward Willett

"I'm very sad to hear of Hal Clement's death; sadder still because, every time I saw him at a distance at cons, I thought, "I should tell him how much his novel Needle helped turn me into an SF reader and writer." But I never did, and now I can't."

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Caro Soles

"Yes, Hal was a real gentleman. I remember the one time I went to a reading of his, because I had no idea what sort of thing he wrote. I found out.  I was reading next, so I wandered up and said hello and hauled out my books. Hal said he thought he'd sit in and hear what I had to say.  Horrified, since I reading a very raunchy Kyle Stone story, I tried to talk him out of it. But no go. 

"He remained entrenched in the front row. It was the first and only time I edited myself as I read, but it did little good.  It was an S/M gay erotica section that was well nigh impossible to soften. But Hal stayed throughout, then smiled and said 'Intereating piece,' and left. I crawled off into the shadows."

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Sandra (Kate) Riedel

"I think I 'discovered' Hal Clement in a bunch of SF books my favorite uncle gave me a great many years back. While I'm a fantasy rather than SF writer, I was so fascinated by the idea of aliens being the protagonists that over the next few years I bought everything by him I could find, and enjoyed them all.

"I'm sorry to hear of his death, and I'm grateful for his books."

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Jean-Louis Trudel

"It was quite sad for me to hear of Hal Clement's passing. His books held a special place in my heart when I was young, for their unique blend of adventure, adherence to method, and gentle humour. (A reference to his sly brand of humour as "Borgesian" in a French edition of Mission of Gravity was the first time I ever heard of Borges.) Even though I'm fairly sure that I told Hal Clement as soon as I met him how I'd read his books passionately, in two languages, and with great affection, it does not diminish my sadness.

"At this year's Boréal convention in Montréal, Shariann Lewitt told attendees that Joël Champetier was one of the few utterly sane SF writers she knew. Though I never really got to know him, I think Hal Clement was another.

"Committed to sweet reason and patient with the foibles of other... though one of his trademark quips was that the post-war master of literary realism (and Nobel Prize winner to boot), William Golding, was no master of reality, as could be seen from a prominent astronomical blunder in Lord of the Flies!

"I was honoured to moderate panels with Hal Clement at my first cons in the late '80s. I still felt secretly awed to moderate a panel with him at last month's Torcon and he had cogent things to say about his experience as a science teacher over the years.

"He was of a generation that saw the Space Age go from a theoretical problem to a concrete engineering challenge. When Columbia burned up on reentry earlier this year, I looked up one of the early analyses of space flight (by Hermann Noordung; an early version appeared in a 1929 issue of Science Wonder Stories when Hal Clement was seven...). Disbelief in the possibility of atmospheric braking ("an attempt to brake the vehicle by air drag at such high velocities would simply lead to combustion in a relatively very short distance") led the author to advocate Hohmann's landing maneuver, which involved several looping orbits around the Earth.

"My mind brought up the beginning of a book that I think was Needle or its 1978 sequel, which describes such a gentle reentry. I don't know where Hal Clement picked it up, if he did, but I think it is a tribute to hard SF that a book by an author from that era still held such an eerie resonance.

"It was hard SF, but with a humanity that will be missed..."

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Robert Runte

"I remember Needle as a novel that fundamentally transformed who I was, one of four or five books of my youth that turned me into a reader, an SF fan, and triggered my latent sense of wonder. Needle was the first book loaned to me by my oldest brother, and reading that book and realizing that my brother had an entire collection of such books, was a fundamental bonding experience that changed my family dynamic forever. I've re-read Needle several times and have kept that copy as a sentimental cornerstone of my own collection."

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Joël Champetier

"I was very impressed by the French translation of Mission of Gravity when I read it at the school library at Cegep Ahuntsic (I must have been 18 years old), and I think I managed to tell Clement. After all, he was present to almost every English conventions I attended. Gee, he is probably the first 'real' SF writer I met in the flesh.

"Harry Stubbs is dead, but Hal Clement will live in my mind and in my bookshelves."

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Glenn Grant

"I'm very sorry that we will no longer hear Hal's whistled music, pitch-perfect and tuneful, ringing in the halls of (seemingly) every convention on the continent."

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Sansoucy Kathenor Walker

"I too was deeply saddened to hear of Hal Clement's death. He became my all-time favourite author from the first time I read one of his books. I was so enthusiastic that I volunteered to do any work wanted at Maplecon 1, where he was Guest of Honour--even though I had no idea what happened at a con--if I could just be introduced to him. I was assigned to be his personal attendant and chauffeur for the con (and for a number of succeeding ones; he returned as an honoured guest for every Maplecon)--and the thrill never wore off. He was interesting, intelligent, humorous, modest, and always reasonable and polite in argument, even when we set him up against a Creationist. If you caught him up on a matter of science (a very rare occasion), he would concede the point without the slightest bluster. He was always good humored and kindly--a gentle man as well as a gentleman. His paintings are interesting and his books terrific. I am greatly privileged to have known him. I shall miss him."

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Allan Weiss

"I interviewed Hal Clement for SOL Rising, the Merril Collection newsletter, a few years ago. He was friendly, interesting, and very articulate--a pleasure to interview. His never-ending enthusiasm for the genre, and his rigorous stress on the science part of science fiction, impressed me greatly. He'll be missed by all, but especially those of us who had a chance to talk to him at length."