Uncommon Sense
Encyclopedia
"Uncommon Sense" is a 1945 science fiction
short story by Hal Clement
. In 1996, it was retrospectively awarded the 1946 Hugo Award for Best Short Story
.
. Subsequently, it was published in Nebula Awards Showcase 2000. The story was the first of Hal Clement's "Laird Cunningham" series, followed by "The Logical Life" in 1974, "Stuck With It" in 1976 and "Status Symbol" in 1987. In February 2000, all four stories were re-published in The Essential Hal Clement, Volume 2: Music of Many Spheres.
Cunningham goes exploring and finds that the planet is very strange and orbits one of the fiercest suns in the galaxy (Deneb
). The planet itself is quite similar to Earth's Moon, being airless and of a similar size, but due to the daily heating by its sun, the terrain is very different and appears strangely windswept. Cunningham also investigates the local life forms which include plants, herbivores and carnivores. He dissects a few of the animals and finds that they have liquid metal for blood and that their eyes are more like noses, in that their eyes function as pinhole cameras
with respect to the local gas molecules, which in the near vacuum travel in essentially straight lines like light rays. Cunningham realises that the animals navigate mostly by smell, since the extremely bright, undiffused sunlight would hamper an optical sense.
Taking refuge in a cave, Cunningham watches his ship and his assistants as they attempt to repair it, welding up cracks in the ship's hull. However, they only work during the day and return to the inside of the ship at night. By night, Cunningham kills animals and collects their blood in grooves in the cave floor. The blood freezes in the cold of the night and he attaches the resulting small bars of metal to the remaining cracks in his ship's hull. The next morning, his assistants emerge to continue welding, which melts the bars of blood. The smell attracts many local predators, and Cunningham makes his way onto the ship in the commotion. Although the assistants easily fight off the alien animals, Cunningham locks them in the airlock as they attempt to return to the ship. He then sends out a distress call and sits back, waiting for help to arrive.
work in which the protagonist must solve a scientific puzzle set up by the conditions of an alien world.
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
short story by Hal Clement
Hal Clement
Harry Clement Stubbs better known by the pen name Hal Clement, was an American science fiction writer and a leader of the hard science fiction subgenre.-Biography:...
. In 1996, it was retrospectively awarded the 1946 Hugo Award for Best Short Story
Hugo Award for Best Short Story
The Hugo Awards are given every year by the World Science Fiction Society for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year. The award is named after Hugo Gernsback, the founder of the pioneering science fiction magazine Amazing Stories, and was once officially...
.
Publication history
"Uncommon Sense" was first published in the September 1945 edition of Astounding Science Fiction and included in Clement's 1969 collection Small ChangesSmall Changes
Small Changes is a collection of science fiction short stories by Hal Clement, published by Doubleday in 1969. It was issued in Great Britain by Robert Hale Publishing, and reprinted in paperback by Dell Books as Space Lash.-Contents:...
. Subsequently, it was published in Nebula Awards Showcase 2000. The story was the first of Hal Clement's "Laird Cunningham" series, followed by "The Logical Life" in 1974, "Stuck With It" in 1976 and "Status Symbol" in 1987. In February 2000, all four stories were re-published in The Essential Hal Clement, Volume 2: Music of Many Spheres.
Plot
Laird Cunningham is a rich man who enjoys travelling to distant worlds in search of bizarre life forms. On the trip told in this story, Cunningham overhears the plotting of his two assistants to loot the ship. To avoid this, he forces a crash landing on an unnamed planet, sabotages the ship and escapes, leaving his assistants in the ship.Cunningham goes exploring and finds that the planet is very strange and orbits one of the fiercest suns in the galaxy (Deneb
Deneb
Deneb is the brightest star in the constellation Cygnus and one of the vertices of the Summer Triangle. It is the 19th brightest star in the night sky, with an apparent magnitude of 1.25. A blue-white supergiant, Deneb is also one of the most luminous nearby stars...
). The planet itself is quite similar to Earth's Moon, being airless and of a similar size, but due to the daily heating by its sun, the terrain is very different and appears strangely windswept. Cunningham also investigates the local life forms which include plants, herbivores and carnivores. He dissects a few of the animals and finds that they have liquid metal for blood and that their eyes are more like noses, in that their eyes function as pinhole cameras
Pinhole camera
A pinhole camera is a simple camera without a lens and with a single small aperture – effectively a light-proof box with a small hole in one side. Light from a scene passes through this single point and projects an inverted image on the opposite side of the box...
with respect to the local gas molecules, which in the near vacuum travel in essentially straight lines like light rays. Cunningham realises that the animals navigate mostly by smell, since the extremely bright, undiffused sunlight would hamper an optical sense.
Taking refuge in a cave, Cunningham watches his ship and his assistants as they attempt to repair it, welding up cracks in the ship's hull. However, they only work during the day and return to the inside of the ship at night. By night, Cunningham kills animals and collects their blood in grooves in the cave floor. The blood freezes in the cold of the night and he attaches the resulting small bars of metal to the remaining cracks in his ship's hull. The next morning, his assistants emerge to continue welding, which melts the bars of blood. The smell attracts many local predators, and Cunningham makes his way onto the ship in the commotion. Although the assistants easily fight off the alien animals, Cunningham locks them in the airlock as they attempt to return to the ship. He then sends out a distress call and sits back, waiting for help to arrive.
Style
The short story is a classic hard science fictionHard science fiction
Hard science fiction is a category of science fiction characterized by an emphasis on scientific or technical detail, or on scientific accuracy, or on both. The term was first used in print in 1957 by P. Schuyler Miller in a review of John W. Campbell, Jr.'s Islands of Space in Astounding Science...
work in which the protagonist must solve a scientific puzzle set up by the conditions of an alien world.