Hal Clement Trek article, redux

[ChallengerHK]

I posted a question about a Hal Clement article a while back, far enough back that I'd probably be guilty of Frankenstein-ing a thread if I appended this info there. The question was if anybody remembered/had any information about a Clement-written article explaining why the Enterprise was a bad design, more or less. At the time no one seemed to have any information on it.

A while back I decided to do some down-the-rabbit-hole searching and I managed to find the piece. It's titled "An Effort of Logic" and it was written during the second season. I found it in the Clement papers at Syracuse University. This is a draft, but my memory says it's mostly the same, although it is missing the art it was published with. And it was definitely published somewhere, although I'm still not finding any info on the publisher.

 

[Christopher]

Any way the rest of us can read it?

 

[ChallengerHK]

I'm going to talk to them about that.

When I first ordered a copy, I asked if it could be shared with other researchers. They (quite rightly) said that they didn't want me sharing it. Since then, however, I've found that for copies below a certain page count, the copies are free. I'm going to ask again, given that I'm not taking any money from them by doing so, if I can share the copy I have. Worst case, if they say no, people can order their own copies. If they say no again I'll post the ordering information here.

 

[ChallengerHK]

Triskelion No. 2, December 1968

Pretty cool. I guess I had been trying to find it without the title for so long that when I finally got the title it never occured to me to use it to search. Thanks.

 

[ChallengerHK]

OK, talked to Syracuse and here's the deal:

• Starting at X page count, they charge for copies. This piece is below that page count, so they sent them out for free.
• Previously I was told to not disseminate the piece. When I asked again, I got the same instruction.
• I pointed out that there were people, researchers (which I think is true; YMMV), who would want copies of the piece, and that this was going to generate requests that they weren't getting paid for, but were putting effort hours into.
• After a few moments thought she agreed with me. She asked that I not post them anywhere, but told me that she was OK with me sending emailed scans.

So, anybody who's interested, message me an email and I'll send copies.

 

[ChallengerHK]

I purchased that particular copy from AbeBooks.com right before posting the screencap, so I’ll scan the relevant article (and upload it as a PDF to this thread) once it makes its way through the COVID-constipated bowels of Royal Mail and USPS. Don’t hold your breath, though, as last time I bought an antiquarian title from the UK it took over two months to arrive in the US.

I think that's a wonderful offer. I would caution you to be aware of copyright laws. I doubt anyone is going to raise hell about a fanzine from 1967, but you never know.

That being said, I don't think that's where I saw it, although I might be wrong. If that's not were I saw it, there's at least another example of it in print. When you get it, I'd like to know if it has the art in it that I remember, basically one or more images of the Enterprise with giant, clunky bracing added to triangulate the various graceful, flowing pieces.

 

[Christopher]

I wouldn't want to ask anyone to violate copyright, though I'm not sure how copyright would apply to an amateur work like a fanzine. Maybe just summarize the article and quote some key excerpts?

 

[ChallengerHK]

I wouldn't want to ask anyone to violate copyright, though I'm not sure how copyright would apply to an amateur work like a fanzine.

Any creative work is subject to copyright. In the case of a fanzine, the copyright to the original material is held first by the creators of that material, and then later by whoever buys the rights for the material. The creators of the material in the zine would hold copyright on their additions. So CBSMount would own the Enterprise, for instance, but (if he were still alive) Clement would own the rights to his image with the added bracing. The zine publisher would own the rights to things like layout and his or her original content, e.g., a foreword.

And again, I doubt anyone is going to care, but safety first.

 

[publiusr]

Good!

 

[ChallengerHK]

Definitely not what I saw, but the text is largely the same as what I have now. I think I may have encountered it first in Enterprise Incidents or something like it.

 

[Christopher]

Cool article. I love Clement's reasoning for why there aren't more connecting struts on the warp nacelles. Although his argument underlines how silly it was for TMP and later productions to put the matter-antimatter reactor inside the ship itself rather than safely isolated in the nacelles. "Warp core breaches" wouldn't be so guaranteed to destroy the ship if they happened out in the separate outboard pieces.

Clement's musing about the value of getting above the galactic disk to survey the Milky Way's structure is basically the justification I used in my novel The Captain's Oath for the extragalactic mission in "Where No Man Has Gone Before." After all, the nearest "edge" of the galaxy would be one of the faces of the galactic disk, not the outer rim; and it's hard to understand what other point there could be to leaving the galaxy when there's nothing else out there that's reachable within any reasonable time frame.

 

[Transaction Declined]

I’m going to be doing some housekeeping in my Dropbox folder this week so whoever wants this article should download it ASAP because it will be gone by Friday. Just FYI.