The novel “Needle” by Hal Clement was published for the first time in 1949 in the magazine “Astounding” and in 1950 as a book.

The Hunter is chasing the fugitive in space to bring him to justice on their planet but their spaceships fell to Earth, in the Pacific Ocean. Both belong to a symbiotic species living inside hosts that belong to other species. On reaching the beach, the Hunter finds Bob Kinnaird, a boy of fifteen, and takes advantage of the fact that he is asleep to enter his body.

For the Hunter, taking care of his host and not hurting him is one of the most important laws, but humans are an unknown species for him and must proceed with caution. Slowly he learns enough about his host to establish a form of contact with him, which is essential to begin the search for the fugitive, who could have entered the body of any large Earth’s organism.

In the science fiction of the 1940s, sentient species were humanoid, an idea also discussed in the science field, but Hal Clement wanted to write a story in which a truly alien sentient species appeared and ended up creating an amoeboid vaguely looking like a jellyfish whose life isn’t autonomous but in symbiosis with another species of its planet. Members of that species can help maintain their host’s health and help to heal their wounds. Hurting their host is a very serious crime and that’s the crime committed by the fugitive pursued by the Hunter in “Needle”.

This science fiction idea is used by Hal Clement to create a novel that in many ways is a detective story as the Hunter has to find out where the fugitive is hiding after both of them fell to Earth losing their hosts. However, in the initial part of “Needle” there’s above all the Hunter’s effort to survive the shipwreck, find a new host without harming him and understand how to communicate with him. This allows the author to show the ability and reasoning of a member of that species who’s not a criminal.

The ethical component is central in the Hunter’s thoughts and it’s a choice by Hal Clement that at the time was definitely out of the ordinary. In those years, aliens of that type were typically parasites who wanted to take over the bodies of human beings, but the author introduced the idea that those aliens could live in symbiosis with another species.

Another important part of “Needle” is given by the relationship that gets established between the Hunter and Bob Kinnaird, the kid who becomes his new host, after the initial difficulties of communication. The story covers several months during which the two of them learn to know each other and the various influences that this has on Bob are remarkable. In the end, they’re the only two characters of the novel really developed while the others come and go and are functional to the plot.

The second half of “Needle” is essentially a detective story as it’s focused on the Hunter’s investigation, aided by Bob Kinnaird. It’s not an action novel and this part has a slow pace as it’s based on the observation of people who could host the fugitive in search of some abnormal behavior and of a way to induce the criminal to betray his presence.

Contacts between very different species were one of Hal Clement’s specialtiesand another original feature for his time: he was a writer who told of friendly contacts with aliens, an unusual choice in an era when science fiction stories told mostly wars with aliens. Today the characteristics that made “Needle” special no longer seem so out of the ordinary but this happened also thanks to Hal Clement’s skill in creating an alien so different from humans. For this reason this novel has become a classic that in my opinion is worth reading.