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_ Mesklin _
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Introduction
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Mesklin is a fictional planet created by Hal Clement and used in a
number of his hard science fiction stories, starting with 'Mission
of Gravity' (1954). Alongside the novel's original 1953
serialization in 'Astounding Science Fiction', Clement published an
essay titled "Whirligig World" on how he designed the planet to
have the properties he wanted. The idea came from an object that
was at the time believed to exist in the 61 Cygni system, and which
might represent an extrasolar planet.
The planet is distinctive for the interaction of its strong gravity
with the centrifugal force due to its fast rotation, giving it a
gradient in the perceived force of gravity from 3 'g' on the
equator to 665 'g' on the planet's poles. It is inhabited by native
lifeforms, including an intelligent centipede-like species, the
Mesklinites.
Mesklin is considered a prototypical example of hard science
fiction worldbuilding, an exotic milieu that nevertheless accords
with known facts and laws of physics. While the planet itself is
vastly dissimilar to Earth, its inhabitants are commonly regarded
as noticeably humanlike in behavior, if not in appearance. Mesklin
itself is sometimes viewed as the main character of 'Mission of
Gravity'.
Description
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Mesklin is a fictional planet orbiting one of the stars in 61
Cygni, a binary star system. Its mass is sixteen times that of
Jupiter, or 4,800 times Earth mass. It has a very high rate of
rotation, with one day on the planet lasting only eighteen minutes.
As a result, the planet is significantly flattened with a large
equatorial bulge: the diameter at the equator is while the
diameter between the poles is slightly below . By comparison, the
diameter of Earth is approximately . The planet thus has a
significantly higher mass than Jupiter within a much smaller
volume, and its planetary core is made up of collapsed matter. The
surface gravity is very high at 665 times Earth gravity at the
poles, but at the equator the effective gravity is only three times
Earth's as the rapid rotation generates a significant centrifugal
force that counteracts most of the gravitational force.
Mesklin orbits its star in an elongated ellipse, completing a full
revolution in 1,800 Earth-days. The high orbital eccentricity
combines with a pronounced axial tilt to result in an uneven
seasonal cycle. In the southern hemisphere, the springs and summers
are very lengthy (28 Earth-months each), and the autumns and
winters are much briefer (2 months each); the pattern is reversed
in the northern hemisphere. The two hemispheres thus have
significantly different climates. The planet is cold, with average
temperatures ranging from −50 °C at the closest approach to its
star to −180 °C at the furthest point in its orbit. Mesklin is
itself orbited by two small moons and has a large ring system.
The surface is covered mostly by methane () and ammonia (), both
mainly in the liquid state; the oceans are primarily made up of
methane, while the ammonia is also present as snow. The atmosphere
is principally composed of hydrogen, and its density decreases with
increasing altitude to such a degree that atmospheric refraction
through the successive layers produces the optical illusion that an
observer on the surface perceives the ground as curving upwards, as
if living on the concave inside of a bowl rather than the convex
surface of a spheroid.
The planet is inhabited by various lifeforms. The intelligent
native inhabitants, the Mesklinites, resemble centipedes or
caterpillars. They are long and wide, with eighteen pairs of legs
ending in suckers, as well as a forward pair of pincers for
manipulation and a rear pair for attaching to the ground. They have
four eyes and mandibles. They have a tough exoskeleton that allows
them to withstand the planet's strong gravity. They have no lungs
but breathe hydrogen by absorbing it directly from the atmosphere
in a manner similar to that used by the respiratory system of
insects, whereas oxygen is toxic to them. They are able to survive
while submerged for extended periods of time by breathing dissolved
gases. Their lifespan is much longer than that of humans. They have
a strong fear of heights and of being underneath objects, owing to
the danger posed by such things in a high-gravity environment. For
similar reasons, they have no concept of flying or throwing things.
Their society is pre-industrial, with rudimentary technology
including seafaring vessels.
Appearances
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The planet first appeared in Hal Clement's novel 'Mission of
Gravity' (1954), which was first serialized in 'Astounding Science
Fiction' (April-July 1953). The third of the four serial
instalments, in the June 1953 issue, was accompanied by a 13-page
article by Clement titled "Whirligig World" describing the planet
and the process of creating it in detail. Clement later wrote an
additional three fictional works using the planet or its denizens:
the sequel novel 'Star Light' (1971; originally serialized in
'Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact', June-September 1970) and the
short stories "Lecture Demonstration" (1973) and "Under" (2000).
The book 'Heavy Planet' (2002) is a collection of these five
Mesklin-related works. In "Whirligig World", Clement encouraged
other authors to use Mesklin as a setting for their stories
provided that they stay within "reasonable scientific standards",
while acknowledging that to be "certainly an elastic requirement in
the field of science fiction".
Concept and creation
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Clement drew inspiration from astronomical work published in
'Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific' by Kaj
Aage Gunnar Strand in 1943. Strand's analysis of the motion of the
two known stars in the 61 Cygni system suggested the presence of a
third, unseen object of relatively small size and mass. This was
the first evidence--albeit indirect--of what might be an extrasolar
planet; the discovery has since come to be regarded as likely
erroneous. Clement used what was thought to be known about the
object, dubbed 61 Cygni C by astronomers, and tried to create an
interesting setting for a story within those bounds. The magazine
'Astounding Science Fiction' had published a nonfiction article on
the apparent discovery in the July 1943 issue--"The World of 61
Cygni C" by Robert S. Richardson, who also published fiction under
the pseudonym Philip Latham--and Clement may have used Richardson's
work in addition to Strand's.
The calculated mass of the object, at approximately 16 Jupiter
masses, meant it was expected to be somewhat smaller than Uranus as
a result of gravitational compression. At the time, it was unclear
whether the object would behave more like a very low-mass and faint
star (a brown dwarf) or a high-mass planet (Super-Jupiter); Clement
elected to depict Mesklin as the latter in order to be able to use
it as a setting for his story. Given this size and mass, the
surface gravity would be about 300 times Earth gravity (300 'g').
Clement decided to reduce the effective gravity by providing the
planet with a rapid rate of rotation to make it possible for humans
to land on it in the story. He settled on an effective equatorial
gravity of 3 'g' and worked backwards from there to calculate the
spin that would result in the centrifugal force necessary to offset
the correct amount of the planet's gravitational pull. A high rate
of rotation was deemed plausible given what was known about planet
formation and the fact that the more massive planets in the Solar
System spin more rapidly than the less massive ones such as Earth.
The rapid spin also meant that Mesklin would be significantly
flattened by the centrifugal force, which over time would
redistribute its matter away from the poles and towards the
equator.
The combined effect of the difference between the polar radius and
the equatorial one, which makes the gravity stronger at the poles
since the force of gravity decreases with distance, and the
centrifugal force decreasing from its maximum at the equator to
zero at the poles would result in a great difference between the
gravitational pulls experienced at the two locations. This was one
of Clement's goals: he wanted to challenge the assumption--present
in planetary science and science fiction alike--that while
different planets might have stronger or weaker gravity, the
gravitational field of a single planet would not display a large
degree of variation across its surface. Clement calculated the
gravity at the poles to be 665 'g', but noted a low degree of
confidence in this figure as the standard methods used for
calculating the gravity of a spherical object would not be
applicable to such a distorted shape, and stated that formulae
different from the ones he used suggested that his figure might be
too high by a factor of two. Clement redid his calculations years
later with the aid of a computer rather than the slide rule he had
originally used, coming up with a figure around 275 'g' for the
polar gravity.
Based on the inferred orbit of 61 Cygni C and the known properties
of the stars in the system, Clement calculated that the planet
would be very cold at an average temperature of −170 °C throughout
the majority of its year, with a low of −180 °C and a high of −50
°C. Clement wanted his imagined planet to have native lifeforms,
and reasoned that this would necessitate a substance that is liquid
under these temperature conditions to play the role in the living
tissue that water plays in life as we know it. He enlisted the help
of biochemistry teacher and fellow science fiction writer Isaac
Asimov, and together they worked through various alternatives such
as carbon disulfide () and hydrogen fluoride (HF) before settling
on methane, and developed a basic outline for the kind of ecosystem
and lifeforms that could plausibly exist in such a chemical
environment. The low boiling point of methane (−164 °C at Earth's
atmospheric pressure, and −143 °C at an atmospheric pressure eight
times greater, calculated by Clement to be the maximum possible on
Mesklin) meant that the oceans would be expected to boil during the
warmest 300 (Earth-)days of the planet's 1,800-day year. To solve
this problem, Clement provided the planet with an axial tilt of 28°
such that the northern hemisphere's summer solstice would coincide
with the closest approach to its star, reasoning that the northern
hemisphere would then amass a substantial polar ice cap during its
lengthy winter that would be melted and boiled off in the summer,
while the southern hemisphere would be shielded from the heat by
being pointed away from the star and remain livable as the planet
reached the nearest point in its orbit.
Hard science fiction
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Science fiction scholar Gary Westfahl, in a 1993 study of the
history of hard science fiction, noted "Whirligig World" as both
"the first article about a piece of writing firmly identified" as
belonging to the subgenre and the first outline of the process of
hard science fiction worldbuilding by collecting as much scientific
data as possible and extrapolating from it, noting that while
Clement rejected the notion of the article being a how-to guide,
such texts were later written both by Clement and others such as
Poul Anderson. In 'Science Fiction Literature through History: An
Encyclopedia' (2021), Westfahl further commented that 'Mission of
Gravity' and "Whirligig World" together "effectively launched" the
hard science fiction subgenre a few years before the term was
coined in 1957. Basil Davenport, writing in 1955, commented that
the only aspect not in line with current scientific knowledge was
that humans had sent a spaceship to the planet; , writing in 1973,
similarly called this level of human spaceflight "one of the few
imaginary science details". Clement himself, in "Whirligig World",
described his approach to writing (hard) science fiction as a game
between the author and the reader, wherein the latter attempts to
spot scientific errors and the former attempts to avoid making
them; Westfahl commented that this was probably the first
description of this "game", and that it has since come to be
intimately associated with hard science fiction. In a 1980
interview with , Clement recalled science fiction fans at MIT using
university computers to calculate the shape of Mesklin, determining
that it would actually have a sharp edge at the equator; Clement
described having mixed feelings about this, being dismayed at
having been caught making an error but heartened that his writing
had inspired readers to go to such lengths.
Setting
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Clement's stories about Mesklin were the first to be set on a
planet outside the Solar System believed (then) to actually exist.
, writing in 'The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and
Fantasy' (2005), described Mesklin as the prototypical example of
an alien world vastly dissimilar to Earth. John J. Pierce, writing
in 1987, commented that it far surpassed the exotic settings
imagined in works like Stanley G. Weinbaum's "Parasite Planet"
(1935) and E. E. Smith's 'Lensman' series in terms of its
alienness. In 'Mission of Gravity', the peculiar properties of the
planet Mesklin--its high gravity, short day, unusual chemical
environment, and so on--are revealed indirectly rather than being
explained outright; Neil Barron and viewed this as one of the
novel's strengths, while Westfahl instead considered it a
shortcoming. Westfahl noted that while Clement's "Whirligig World"
outlines the creation of the fictional location in detail, it does
not discuss the decision to set a story on the world or the process
of creating that story. Clement stated that the story came after
the setting and the lifeforms that could plausibly inhabit it had
already been invented; Westfahl considered this to be a half-truth,
reasoning that the purpose behind the lower and thus
human-tolerable gravity at the equator and the presence of a
chemical environment conducive to life was evidently to facilitate
an encounter between humans and aliens and that this basic story
idea must thus have been present from the outset even if the
details were worked out later. Kingsley Amis, writing in 1960,
commented that Clement and other science fiction writers likely
engage in this type of worldbuilding primarily as a creative
exercise in its own right, rather than as a means to an end in
service of telling interesting stories.
Mesklinites
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The Mesklinites are generally regarded as similar to humans in the
way they act, think, and speak--even if their appearance is
inhuman--and this is often regarded as a flaw in Clement's
creation. , writing in 1999, described the Mesklinites' value
system as resembling that of Victorian-era England, while Barron,
writing in 1979, found the main Mesklinite character Barlennan to
most of all resemble a Yankee trader. Morgan further commented upon
the Mesklinites' human-like thought processes and their desire to
gain scientific knowledge while at the same time seeking to avoid
giving up their independence. In Morgan's view, these things make
the Mesklinites more reminiscent of an "emerging third world
country" than a wholly alien species; Barron similarly identified a
native-colonist analogy. Barron also commented that the depiction
of Mesklinite psychology suggests that understanding of the world
is shaped by sensory input related to one's physical environment
and compared the Mesklinites' perception of their world as a bowl
to the human perception of the Earth as flat. Hassler noted that
while the Mesklin stories are narrated from a third-person
omniscient perspective, the viewpoint characters are Mesklinites a
majority of the time. As a result, the reader's understanding of
the Mesklinites comes from the Mesklinites' own perspective, such
as their reactions to things like the much longer duration of Earth
days than the Mesklin days they are used to. Hassler further
compared the depiction of the Mesklinites to the works of Jonathan
Swift, both in terms of the size differential as in 'Gulliver's
Travels' (1726)--calling them "Lilliputians in a Brobdingnagian
world"--and their use as a vehicle for social commentary.
The planet itself as a character
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Westfahl, writing in 1996 in the context of the notion that the
Mesklinites are too human-like to be interesting as aliens,
investigated the argument that Mesklin itself may be considered the
main character of 'Mission of Gravity', as well as the most
interesting one. Westfahl compared the situation to Arthur C.
Clarke's 'A Fall of Moondust' (1961), where the imperiled
characters that might intuitively be viewed as the main characters
are less developed than the ones who come to their aid. In his
view, the description of the planet in the first line of the
novel--"The wind came across the bay like something
living"--suggests that this was indeed Clement's intention. More
broadly, said Westfahl, one might consider writers of hard science
fiction to be applying character writing skills to objects rather
than traditional characters, as opposed to neglecting
characterization altogether in their stories. Nevertheless,
Westfahl did not find Mesklin to be characterized effectively in
the novel, which he attributed to Clement's decision to reveal
information about the planet piecemeal in an indirect and
roundabout way.
See also
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* Extrasolar planets in fiction
* Jinx, a strongly prolate (rugby football shaped) planet in Larry
Niven's Known Space setting.
*
*
External links
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*
*
[https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5667640905f8e29a3f838b2d/5670c0344bf11858ea5c1474/5670c16ca2bab819494abc84/1453098364378/mesklin.jpg
Depiction of Mesklin], from the cover of the Tor Books edition of
'Heavy Planet', from artist Stephan Martinière's site.
License
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Original Article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesklin
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