Intuit cover

NESFA Press

Out of Print!

ISBN: 0-915368-35-8
Boxed ISBN: 0-915368-90-0
LC: 87-61826
Page count: xx+164
Book Size: 5-1/4" x 7-1/4"
Published: September 1987

Edited by Andy Cowan
Cover art and four interior illustrations by Bob Eggleton

Other NESFA Press books by Hal Clement:
The Essential Hal Clement, Volume 1: Trio for Slide Run and Typewriter
The Essential Hal Clement, Volume 2: Music of Many Spheres
The Essential Hal Clement, Volume 3: Variations on a Theme by Sir Isaac Newton

NESFA Press
PO Box 809
Framingham, MA 01701
fax: 617-776-3243
email: sales@nesfa.org

Intuit was published by NESFA Press on behalf of CactusCon, the 1987 NASFiC to celebrate Hal Clement as Guest of Honor.

Intuit is a collection of Hal Clement's Laird Cunningham stories, about a problem-solving interstellar traveler in the far future of some of Clement's other novels like Close to Critical, Mission of Gravity and Star Light. In each of the four stories, Cunningham is faced with a unique problem — marooned by hijackers outside his spaceship on a hot, airless planet, drifting across a sunless sea in a boat with an alien, trying to talk an ancient, alien AI into not killing him — and uses his head to solve it. These stories are a descendent of — a perfection of — the old SF problem story. Not only do they present a genuine, plausible problem, but the solution is genuine also.

One story "Status Symbol" and the long introduction "Intuition: The Guide Who Needs Steering" are new to this book. Another story, "Uncommon Sense" won the Hugo for Best Short Story of 1945.

The book was published in a limited edition of 800, of which 225 are a numbered, boxed state and 25 are a lettered, boxed state. It is out of print.

Table of Contents

[Hal Clement photo]

Hal Clement

Hal Clement was the pseudonym of the exemplar of hard science fiction, Harry C. Stubbs. He created the pseudonym while working for his Master's degree in Astronomy at Harvard, fearing his professor would not want him to be "wasting" his time. He did not know that this same professor submitted science fiction to Hugo Gernsback's magazines. Hal's first published story was "Proof" which appeared in the June 1942 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. Then, like many other sf writers, the War intervened.

Following bomber combat duty in Europe with the Army Air Corps in World War II, Harry returned home, learned to drive a car, became a high-school chemistry teacher, and wrote Hugo-winning science fiction.

Hal was a fixture at many sf conventions, where he always had time to talk to his fellow fans.

NESFA Press has also published a three-volume set of Hal Clement's novels and shorter stories which all remain in print: The Essential Hal Clement:

Printing History

Hardcover, 5.25" x 7.25", xx+164 pp., ISBN 0-915368-35-8 1987, $13.00, 550 copies, $10.00 in advance and at the convention, September 1987. out of print!

Boxed hardcover, 5.25" x 7.25", xx+164 pp.,ISBN 0-915368-90-0, 225 copies boxed and numbered, $20.00 in advance and at the convention; 25 copies boxed and lettered, reserved for the CactusCon Convention Committee, September 1987. out of print!