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Once again, I'm way behind reading mailing lists, so I'm probably the last person to find out that Hal Clement died last week.
My first con-running experience was when my high school SF club put on a one-day mini-con. We didn't really know what we were doing, and none of us had even been to a full weekend con. Our sole model was the UMass SF Symposium that ran for a few years around 1980. We rented the People's Institute in Northampton, A local film buff brought his collection. A few book and comic dealers huckstered. I don't recall what our attendance was, but I'd be surprised if it was over 100.
And Hal Clement was our featured speaker. One of the more jaded attendess sniffed "If you can't get Hal Clement, you can't get anyone," but Hal treated us as if we knew what we were doing, and he talked to us as if we were intelligent human beings. One thing I still remember from his talk is him explaining that the challenge of writing hard SF was staying connected to current science, while staying far enough ahead that your fictional science isn't already obsolete by the time it's published.
It's hard to imagine a con without Hal. I imagine I'm still going to look for him at Arisia, just as I still look for Robert Sacks at the gripe session.
My first con-running experience was when my high school SF club put on a one-day mini-con. We didn't really know what we were doing, and none of us had even been to a full weekend con. Our sole model was the UMass SF Symposium that ran for a few years around 1980. We rented the People's Institute in Northampton, A local film buff brought his collection. A few book and comic dealers huckstered. I don't recall what our attendance was, but I'd be surprised if it was over 100.
And Hal Clement was our featured speaker. One of the more jaded attendess sniffed "If you can't get Hal Clement, you can't get anyone," but Hal treated us as if we knew what we were doing, and he talked to us as if we were intelligent human beings. One thing I still remember from his talk is him explaining that the challenge of writing hard SF was staying connected to current science, while staying far enough ahead that your fictional science isn't already obsolete by the time it's published.
It's hard to imagine a con without Hal. I imagine I'm still going to look for him at Arisia, just as I still look for Robert Sacks at the gripe session.
