The Best of Hal Clement

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that the stories here were puzzles in a light narrative wrapper rather than actual stories with real people. Although I’ve enjoyed some of the author’s other work, this collection didn’t gel with me. I bailed after “Uncommon Sense”. Overall, the environmental descriptions were presumably there to lay out the issue being demonstrated so the reader could follow along with the problem-solving. But without actual diagrams, they meant nothing to me. I also got a weeny bit tired of judgemental statements along the lines of, “For some reason, despite this information, our intrepid protagonists didn’t spot some obvious issue…” when I certainly couldn’t see whatever he meant either. I freely admit my ignorance, but having my nose rubbed in it wasn’t helpful or fun.