Hal Clement’s niche in SF is superb aliens. He creates very real alien personalities that live in very alien environments. He created a strange and compelling race of creatures that lived in a high gravity world in Mission of Gravity, his most famous book. He is considered Hard Science Fiction because the science is often technical and very accurate in a speculative way.

Cycle of Fire is the story of a boy who is stranded on a planet with human-like aliens. They look and act different, but they have  much in common with humans including similar senses, shape and metabolism, and use of sound and ears for communication. They both have language. He bonds with an alien that he rescues and goes on to discover the secret of the planet.

The secret that the boy discovers is the key to understanding how intelligent life arrived on the planet, and how it has survived through periodic seasons of close proximity to the sun, is the mystery part of the book. He finds that the aliens are much stranger than he could have imagined.

Although the alien personalities are well crafted, I found the 16 year old boy lacked depth. Often SF authors use characters as like chess pieces, moving them around in the plot with little attention paid to any deeper motivation. Clement, obviously feels more comfortable with his aliens than his humans. The story is intriguing and I found myself wanting to go out to the truck last night to retrieve the book and find out how it comes out. The scientific mystery is the best part for me. I have always enjoyed Clement. He creates such strange aliens and then makes interesting stories out of them. His humans, on the other hand, are less interesting.

Cycle of Fire is about 90,000 words and an easy read. I’ll finish the last 25 pages on the bus trip home tonight.