Half Life
Reviewed by Adrienne Martini, Fri., Jan. 28, 2000
Half Life
by Hal ClementTor, 256 pp., $23.95
Science fiction writers don't become legends by accident; they do it through dogged determination, skill, and grand ideas. And Hal Clement (aka Harry C. Stubbs) has all three in his latest book Half Life. Sure, parts of it read like a college biochem lab report, which is to be expected since Half Life is the hardest of the hard sort of science fiction, but Clement is also able to give his characters chemistry and his chemistry character. The plot is more than an excuse to extrapolate current trends in genetic engineering; it becomes a gripping struggle in which a terminally ill crew of a ship orbiting Saturn must determine the exact chain of events that will create life in order to save their own. Gripping stuff, even for us former humanities majors.
