Tau Cero

by Poul Anderson

La época es el siglo XXI. Los personajes son cincuenta especialistas, hombres y mujeres elegidos tras un largo y cuidadoso proceso de selección destinado a incorporar sólo personal particularmente entrenado en el viaje espacial y excepcionalmente apto para desarrollar con éxito una nueva colonia. La nave es la Leonora Christine, la más reciente de su clase. Y todos los esfuerzos están puestos al servicio de una única misión, viajar a través del espacio interestelar hasta un lejano planeta donde debe establecerse una colonia terrestre. Sin embargo dos años después de su partida, la Leonora Christine colisiona con una nube de desechos del espacio, se avería y la ruta se altera. Todos se ven irremediablemente sin fin hacia lo desconocido.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Space Opera, Science Fiction Fantasy, Speculative Fiction, Space, Time Travel

257 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1970

About the author

Pseudonym A. A. Craig, Michael Karageorge, Winston P. Sanders, P. A. Kingsley.

Poul William Anderson was an American science fiction author who began his career during one of the Golden Ages of the genre and continued to write and remain popular into the 21st century. Anderson also authored several works of fantasy, historical novels, and a prodigious number of short stories. He received numerous awards for his writing, including seven Hugo Awards and three Nebula Awards.

Anderson received a degree in physics from the University of Minnesota in 1948. He married Karen Kruse in 1953. They had one daughter, Astrid, who is married to science fiction author Greg Bear. Anderson was the sixth President of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, taking office in 1972. He was a member of the Swordsmen and Sorcerers' Guild of America, a loose-knit group of Heroic Fantasy authors founded in the 1960s, some of whose works were anthologized in Lin Carter's Flashing Swords! anthologies. He was a founding member of the Society for Creative Anachronism. Robert A. Heinlein dedicated his 1985 novel The Cat Who Walks Through Walls to Anderson and eight of the other members of the Citizens' Advisory Council on National Space Policy.[2][3]

Poul Anderson died of cancer on July 31, 2001, after a month in the hospital. Several of his novels were published posthumously.


Series:
* Time Patrol
* Psychotechnic League
* Trygve Yamamura
* Harvest of Stars
* King of Ys
* Last Viking
* Hoka
* Future history of the Polesotechnic League
* Flandry

Reviews

[Lyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anderson has in Tau Zero, more than any other book I have ever read or heard about, created a sense of unimaginable isolation and otherworldliness.

I am sure there is a list on Goodreads about books that must be read by a true science fiction fan, and Tau Zero by Poul Anderson should be on such a list.

Anderson was a physics major in college and this background provides a meaningful foundation for what is a great science fiction book. Perfect? No, there is some thin characterization (usually a fatal flaw in my estimation) and apparently, according to many of the other reviews on Goodreads, there are even many questions raised by his science. But like so many of Anderson’s novels, his ideas, the premise of his story, overshadows the technical deficiencies of the book.

To his credit, Anderson approaches a very science heavy book with a humanistic flair, and ultimately this is more about group dynamics than about a scientific expedition. A recurring theme in Anderson’s work is an individual or group standing and performing admirably against great odds, an “us against the world” element. Anderson also has a rare gift for taking an idea to its extreme; here he has taken the conceptual foundation of the novel’s conflict to a distant horizon whose scope may never before have been imagined.

Tau Zero is the story of the journey towards colonization of a far distant planet. The voyagers undergo an adventure through space and time of incomprehensible complexity. First published in 1970 and nominated for the Hugo Award but lost to Larry Niven’s Ringworld, this is wildly influential and scores of writers have leaned heavily upon Anderson’s example.

If you are a reader of science fiction, this one should either be in your “read” shelf or “to read”; it’s that good.

[image error]

[Henry Avila · Rating 4 out of 5]

The dark cold is all, a starless night the eyes look but can not see, the eternal blackness, sinks into the very soul in an uneasy calm which never ends in the forever Space nothing no lights viewed, perpetual shivers and fright, we are alone in the Cosmos traveling in an inhabited starship of weariness, a sweeping colorless emptiness you can't describe but as death, a spreading feeling they are not alive only a voyage across eons to the other side of existence, a desolate void nothing is sighted , everything is still....Tau Zero, by writer Poul Anderson with a physics degree gives both hope and anxiety in the future. The title means the faster a vessel nears the speed of light, the slower a human ages, billions of years can pass in the Universe however people inside just a few months theoretically, we will find out in a distant time if Einstein was correct. The plot used in numerous versions before, a group of scientists, engineers, astronomers, biologists, et cetera, ( under a captain and officers), of fifty people equally divided by men and women relative young for breeding, search for a useful planet in a nearby solar system to colonize. A few light years away they wrongly believe. This would be rather dull reading if nothing occurred to give it interest for readers so a defect happens to our poor starship Leonora Christine, the voyage becomes endless as an anomaly causes speed to increase quite substantially, no breaks, no new worlds to conquer. The everlasting trip around the Milky Way Galaxy and beyond as they say. Ingrid Lindgren first officer from Sweden when that nation ruled the Earth ( who would have guessed ?), stern Charles Reymont ship's constable he's the muscle to keep those eggheads quiet, a tough job. The two become a couple on Terra and uncoupled in space, maybe, are the main characters. A weak Captain Telander unable to control the bored, causes passengers and crew much uneasiness, and fear, how long can a busy individual's project on board, postpone the inevitable conflicts from the international members with different views and beliefs from appearing? The ultimate hard science fiction novel as said by a prominent writer of this genre and I certainly agree...and I must warn the scenes of bleak nothingness between the galaxies, is rather eerie to read. Nevertheless this epic space opera will not be forgotten easily...

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This CLASSY SF CLASSIC concernimg a cadre of colonists setting sail to colonize a compatible star using an interstellar “Bussard Ramjet” is a superior sample of Hard science fiction. For those of you unsciencey/non nerdy types who are unfamilar with what a "Bussard Ramjet" is, I have put together the following DETAILED explanation which should explain everything:


....make sense?.....great.

My overall rating is really based on balancing what I thought were some mind-wrecking and very well described science fiction concepts with some pretty weak (bordering on dull) characters that prevented me from ever being truly drawn into the narrative tension of the plot. I figured I would just lay out the good and the bad and let you take from it what you will.

THE GOOD
Poul Anderson does a phenomenal job of introducing and describing some REALLY, REALLY BIG IDEAS, mostly centering around relativity and the effect of high rates of speed on the subjective passage of time. Two things I want to praise Poul Anderson for at the outset are (1) his knack for explaining clearly and understandably the scientific concepts surrounding relativity without bogging down the story and (2) proving that you can do hard SF in under 200 pages and still make the story feel EPIC in scope.

The basic plot concerns a prototype starship called the Leonora Christine that employs a “Bussard ramjet" and is intended to transport a crew of 50 colonists to a distant star system in the hopes of setting up a new colony. I was curious about what a Bussard ramjet might look like and found the following picture that I thought I would share:


***NERDY NOTE: The red gas in the front is the hydrogen being collected from space that then gets compressed to the point where nuclear fusion occurs and creates the energy for propulsion that you see represented in the rear.***

So this propulsion system allows for travel at a high percentage of the speed of light which, as a result of special relativity, causes time dilation for the crew. This means that while the crew will spend about 5 years on the journey, about 33 years will have passed on Earth….at this point if you have any LSD, it might be a good idea to take some. Given the speeds that the ship travels at it takes a very long time to both accelerate and decelerate. In fact, it is intended that the first 2.5 years of the journey will be spent speeding up and the last 2.5 years will be spent slowing down.

I don’t want to give away any spoilers so I will just say that things get very interesting and Poul Anderson takes the reader on an epic journey across time and space. Big stuff, interesting stuff and very cool stuff. For this aspect of the story…4.5 to 5.0 stars.

THE BAD
The bad can really be summed up pretty easily. The characters are weak, two dimensional and you never care enough about them to be sucked into the story when problems arise. You have your crew from different backgrounds with various quirks and issues, none of which are very interesting or compelling. However, since the book is less than 200 pages long I am willing to be more forgiving than I would be if this was longer and I was forced to spend more time with the crew in order to get to the good parts. Plus, this really is an “idea” book and so I understand the characters being little more than filler. Still, they could have been done much better and so I give this aspect of the story…2.0 stars and a well deserved FACEPALM.


OVERALL
Overall, I gave this 3.5 to 4.0 stars because I thought the awesomeness of the SF “ideas” more than compensated for the weak characters, especially given how the book is under 200 pages. Definitely worthy of the title classic and one I Highly Recommend!!!

Nominee: Hugo Award for Best Science Fiction Novel (1971)
Nominee: Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel

[Apatt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tau zero

Poul Anderson is a writer's writer, David Brin, Vernor Vinge and others swear by him and Vinge even dedicated his epic A Deepness in the Sky to him. His influence on their work is fairly obvious, Anderson knew his science and was able to employ that knowledge to max effect in his fiction. He was also a natural story teller who never neglected the human element in his sf stories.

Tau Zero is - I believe - what veteran sf readers would call "diamond hard sf" where all the science in the book is based on real-world science and its application in the narrative is entirely plausible. So no teleportation, snarky robots, or little green men. I have to admit a lot of the "interstellar astronautics theory" and other scientific details went whoosh! right over my head, yet somehow Anderson always ensured that the story is never incomprehensible. I also learned a lot about time dilation and relativity that I never knew before, which will undoubtedly make me the life of the next party I go to.

The characters are fairly interesting people, led by a protagonist who is a "pragmatism personified" super stoic constable, but at least he is very articulate, not one of those cliche taciturn hero type. In any case, given the short length of the novel (190 pages) there is not all that much room to develop the characters, a lot of them seem to be defined by their personal quirks.

For some reason this book reminds me of David Bowie's "Space Oddity", not in specifics, as the story follows an entire starship crew not just one Major Tom. However, there is a sense of that "Planet Earth is blue and there's nothing I can do" sort of loneliness and hopelessness among the crew through out most of the novel. Even before the starship went out of control the crew never had any hope of returning home to the people they know due to the time dilation effect. After things go "pear-shaped" the damned thing can no longer decelerate let alone stop, heading to goodness knows where. The final destination turned out to be truly awesome.

A lot of people who ask for sf book recommendations (in Reddit especially) tend to stipulate that they don't want anything pre-70s, or even pre-80s due to the misconception that old sf books are "outdated". Their prerogative of course but it is a shame that they will miss out on older gems like this one.

Now go take your protein pills and put your helmet on.

[Bradley · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a novel to showcase ideas, it succeeds. As a novel to showcase misogyny and thin characters in an attempt to bring real storytelling to hard SF, not so much.

I'll talk of the good parts first. I learned, or eventually recalled something that hadn't immediately made a connection to me right away but it should have.
The word Tau has a dual meaning in the text. One is Proper Time in Physics, and the other refers to coming full circle, both of which happens in the text.
Reducing Tau to Zero means they're going faster and faster and faster to the theoretical maximum of speed, even to the point of traveling between galaxies within weeks. They're already well and deep into the relative future by necessity of going so fast, making them realize that there's nothing left to lose because they've left everything they've known far behind.

The end idea pushes them outside of the framework of an oscillating universe and gives them the opportunity to pick and choose from the cream of any galactic honeypot along any time because they're outside of the framework. It's pretty damn cool, and even if the physics isn't accurate, the base concept that turned into the impetus of such an ambitious idea novel was striking and gorgeous.

It's both better and worse than Stephen Baxter's Ring, which, in hindsight, is an updated and expanded novel to do Tau Zero better than Tau Zero. The Ring had a lot more attention devoted to character, and although I can't say it was better, precisely, I can say that the development and progression into far time was a lot more fascinating, especially with the Human/Xeelee wars and the eventual grand-scale exodus from this universe.

Tau Zero was definitely a tighter novel, focusing on time and relative distances between stellar objects all the way to clusters of galaxies to the shifting of antimatter/matter oscillations underlying the fabric of reality. It was very fun to see Bussard Ramjets going far beyond their theoretical limitations, too, but I prefer Niven's treatments a LOT better. Hell, I was thinking during most of this read that I preferred Neutron Star. But by the end, Tau Zero pulled away from most of the similar SF pack by getting fantastical. (Sorry, I have a soft spot for Bigger, Kick-Ass, and Mind-Blowing concepts.)

Though, in the end, I agree with the Hugo awards for 1970. This was a runner up, and Niven's Ringworld won. Ringworld had Woo! You can't go wrong with Woo!

And that leads me to the not so great in this novel. It's not enough to ruin it for me, but I hated the treatment of women in it. It's not much different from SO many novels of the day, granted, but this crap really grates on me. It's like reading crappy sex scenes. My eyes kind of glaze over and skim till the meat of the story comes back. Tau Zero DID have story, too, an exploration of what it means to be cast adrift into deep time, losing their anchor to Earth and the possibility of ever meeting up with anything remotely like themselves ever again. It went through despair and a great deal of military psychology and a heavy reliance on democracy/committee-speak rather than a strict authoritarian rulership, which makes sense if you're trying to appeal to an American public, and some of the best parts of it were the attempts to keep morale up.

Unfortunately, the characters never did much for me. I'm SO SPOILED by modern SF and Fantasy.

That being said, it was still a great idea novel!

(So why am I reminding myself about The Number of the Beast by Heinlein? Because his ideas were even better along weirdly similar lines, and a lot more fantastical? Possibly. It's unfortunate that it also had some weird-ass hangups and sophomoric fixations, too. I'll never win! ;)

[Jokoloyo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Four and half star mainly for the idea of the book. I imagine I would gave solid five star without second thought if I read Tau Zero when I had just started reading science fiction.

The ending was perfect for me: surprising although could be predictable. Like good mystery novels, the ending of this book was not cheating the readers.

I admit, if I seek a perfect story, this book is not perfect. The characters are mostly flat and the plot is more or less predictable. But how could you pressed many round characters into such a thin novel? The characters were squeezed into thin flat ones, reacting to the plot.

[Baba · Rating 2 out of 5]

SF Masterworks 64 - an unflinchingly hard science fiction story about a group of highly trained scientists and planet colonisers stranded in space in a craft that is steadily approaching light speed, know as Tau Zero in this reality; there's some focus on the crew dynamics, but this is mostly all hard science fiction looking at the (theoretical) science of near light speed travel. Not being a big fan of hard sci-fi, this was a bit of a chore for, also I couldn't but help think of a later, and very similar, but far more fascinating spin on this concept - Star Trek Voyager :D. 5 out of 12 for this, just OK read.

[Manny · Rating 3 out of 5]

Poul Anderson doesn't understand Special Relativity very well (an interstellar ramscoop spaceship can't carry on accelerating indefinitely, for all sorts of reasons). His understanding of General Relativity is even worse. Even if the Universe is cyclical, whatever would it mean to be outside the monobloc during the Big Crunch? You'd be outside the Universe.

Well... an SF writer's normal solution to problems like these is to add some sex and violence, and it works here too. Sort of.

[Glenn Russell]

According to James Blish, Tau Zero is the ultimate hard science fiction novel.

For readers with a background in physics and math, there's certainly generous helping of science, for example: "Precisely because there is an absolute limiting speed (at which light travels in vacuo; likewise neutrinos) there is an interdependence of space, time, matter, and energy. The tau factor enters the equations. If v is the (uniform) velocity of a spaceship, and c the velocity of light, then tau equals - here the author provides the mathematical equation. "The closer that v comes to c, the closer tau comes to zero."

For non-science types like myself, there's enough conceptual framework to understand what's going on with a rocket ship moving through space. Two key points: 1) traveling close to the speed of light, time bends. So the universe and the people back on earth can age 100 years while the crew in the ship only age, say, 1 month; 2) when the crew on board encounters an unexpected force field, the ship incurs damage, propelling it to move at greater and greater acceleration with no possibility of a return trip to earth.

This is exactly what happens to the Leonora Christine and its crew of 25 men and 25 women on its mission to colonize a distant planet beyond our solar system. If you can click into Poul Anderson's sf vision, Tau Zero makes for an exciting outer space adventure. Here's some mostly non-science stuff readers can look forward to:

ALL NATIONS UNITED
In this future world, Sweden is the leading global power. The crew is made up of a rainbow of nationalities, a true international crowd from countries such as Sweden, China, Russia, US, Germany, even a captain from Antarctica, And each of the 50 women and men aboard have expertise within the fields of science and technology.

ART
Those who have talent in the arts are provided with ample opportunity to express themselves. Reymont the captain watches as molecular biologist Emma Glassgold sketches out a mural that will eventually be filled with forests and lakes. Additionally, the rocket builders back on earth had the foresight to include aesthetic considerations: all of the residential and recreational decks (its a huge rocket ship, the size of a skyscraper) are covered with a green material that's as springy as grass.

GAMES
The crew can keep themselves in top shape by swimming in the pool or playing vigorous games like handball where, at low gee, players can virtually walk up the walls, making for spectacular play. I bet it does! I'd like to see a film of handball played at low gravity.

NUDITY AND SEX
Well beyond the 21st century, these fit, youthful women and men have little social inhibition about undressing and being in the nude. Same goes for sex - at least for starters.

MORALS AND RELATIONSHIPS
"I want a decent marriage," Glassgold said with a flick of anger, "and as many children as God gives me. But they will know who their father is. It doesn't hurt if I don't play any ridiculous game of musical beds while we travel. We have enough girls aboard who do." Over time, relationships are formed and fidelity is expected. In this way Poul Anderson presents two overarching dramas: the scientific challenges encounters, especially the disruption in plans caused by the force field, and the unfolding dramas of romance and relationships among the men and women. Keep in mind they are together in the Leonora Christine for years with the prospect of more years to come. After awhile, even a giant rocket ship can feel claustrophobic.

DISCOVERY
Astronomers take this unique space travel opportunity to gather critical details about the universe heretofore unavailable - gamma-ray spectra among others. Yet again an additional dimension of the novel appealing for those interested in the sciences.

DREAM AND HALLUCINATION
There's an apparatus on board where one lies down, relaxes, and is hooked up to circuitry producing electronic stimulation to the brain to induce extraordinarily intense and lengthy dreams and hallucinations. This practice is a way to effectively deal with the sensory deprivation as a consequence of years confined within a ship. Thus, in this manner, many of the crew are able to retain their sanity. I might add here there are no direct references in the novel regarding drugs - quite a development recognizing the widespread use of a vast variety of drugs, both legal and illegal, currently very much part of daily life in countries like the US.

HUMAN NATURE
Many are the reflections on human nature and humankind's place in the universe. At one point, a crew member shares this thought: "A shipful of witches, devils, vampires, goblins, bogles, and spooks screaming their way down the sky toward the Black Sabbath. Well, aren't we?" That's one way of looking at it; however, I don't think I'm giving away too much by saying Poul Anderson enjoys his sf stories complete with a number of space heroes. Pick up a copy of Tau Zero and read all about it.


American science Fiction author Poul Anderson, 1926-2001

“Who can we trust with a monopoly of the planet killer weapons and unlimited powers of inspection and arrest? Why, a country big and modern enough to make peace-keeping a major industry; but not big enough to conquer anyone else or force its will on anyone without the support of a majority of nations; and reasonably well thought of by everyone. In short, Sweden.”
― Poul Anderson, Tau Zero

[mark monday · Rating 2 out of 5]

faster, faster, faster - to the future or to death!

fascinating ideas; less than fascinating execution. characters are often tedious, yet still manage to be surprisingly real and at times even moving. overall: dry, thoughtful, mournful, mind-boggling (a word that i probably use too frequently when writing about sci-fi)... and, in the end, rather uplifting.

that said, this is sadly a somewhat forgettable experience. and i just read it this year! i think for something to really pop for me, i need the intricacy of ideas to be paralleled, to some extent, with depth of characterization and/or complexity of narrative. perhaps this is my bad.

[Megan Baxter · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm reading this book as moderator of a discussion on Sci Fi Aficionadoes this month. No one has chimed in yet on the discussion. It's a little lonely. The reason I'm bringing that up is because Tau Zero was the winner of our "Time Travel" theme, which has me a little bit...befuddled. I mean, yes, they travel through time, but in the same direction as the rest of us. At near light speed, so, you know, faster, or slower, or whatever. But in one direction. I guess that's time travel, but by that logic, every book that is in any way linear is about time travel.

Note: The rest of this review has been withdrawn due to the changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision here.

In the meantime, you can read the entire review at Smorgasbook

[7jane · Rating 3 out of 5]

Varying between 3 and 3.5, but mostly staying on the latter end.
It's the 23rd century, and "Leonora Christine", a long-planned spaceship destined towards a distant planet 30 light years away, is launched from Stockholm. 50 people, men and women from different countries are on board, and the trip is supposed to take about 10 years). But (around the middle of the book) the ships deceleration system is damaged, and with the ship speeding increasingly towards tau zero speed and faster, it's not yet possible to fix it - only to hope a way, and a place, can be found to fix it, while galaxies and time pass by...

This was an interesting to read. You could feel the time it was written (1970) in it, though no doubt some of it could be passed as values of the century it was placed on: attitude towards nakedness (both sexes), loose relationships (vs. desire for monogamy from some passengers), and even in the slightly lax attitude towards use of alcohol, still, even when just announced pregnancy (first one on ship), though that might've been something just missed at the knowing-it moment.

It's funny to read Sweden being the current world-power, which shows the author's background, which draws some drunken protest from one American traveler. Another person is clearly Finnish, Dr. Urho Latvala, who even plays an accordion ::)
Other characters are also of interest, especially in relationships-level, where the main thread follows the on-and-off-then-finally-on relationship between Ingrid Lingren and Charles Raymont. Their backgrounds are quite different, and their general character is likewise. Raymont is clearly important in helping people get through crises together, both after main accident and all the mental/moral trouble of getting on with life and finding solutions - he's not stupid, just a bit rough and forceful at times; just the way he has been raised.

I don't know how accurate the science is to what people believe in today, I don't know much of it. But the end is kind of clever solution to the problem: after the scary realisation that the world is imploding into a tightness and exploding again into a new Big Bang unvierse is followed by the opportunity not only to finally be able to use the now-fixed deceleration system to bring ship back to a manageable speed (and time-passing level). And not only that: they are quite luckily able to find the just right kind of galaxy with the just right kind of planet (with strange colors and 3 moons) for humanity - at least that of the ship's - to start again. I kind of wish I could be able to see this space-sight on film, would be trippy.

It's a short read, on some levels of its writing-time even though not too badly, and nicely surprising too. It took me a long time to finish it, having kept it on pause for some years, but finally finishing it was certainly worth it.

[Kevin Lopez (on sabbatical) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Despite the not inconsiderable handicaps of an unappealing protagonist, somewhat clunky dialogue, and dated gender norms (all of which are, unfortunately, standard features of much of the science fiction of this era—the works of Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury and many others suffer from it to varying degrees; some are all but smothered by their stodginess, while others transcend their time), Poul Anderson’s Tau Zero is—warts and all—an immensely enjoyable novel, by turns sublime, exhilarating, and beautifully poetic.

Traveling on the spaceship Leonora Christine, a crew of fifty of humanity’s best and brightest, twenty-five women and twenty-five men, set out to scout and, if all goes well, establish a settlement on an exoplanet some thirty light-years from Earth. Traveling at a considerable fraction of the speed of light, the crew are well aware that they will experience relativistic effects, the most significant of which, for them at least, is time dilation. By the time they reach their destination, only a few years will have passed on the ship, while events on Earth will have advanced decades (the physics-minded among you may be raising an eyebrow at this, but for the purposes of the story, Einsteinian notions of simultaneity are conveniently elided in this case). If they ever return to Earth, however—breaking symmetry and thus rendering time dilation a salient concern—the disparity in relative elapsed time on a round-trip of such length, between an object accelerating at close to light-speed and Earth, would mean the returning travelers would be coming home to an utterly changed world, likely meeting the adult grandchildren of siblings and friends who have passed away. On the other hand, if their journey is successful and they remain to begin a settlement, at a distance of thirty light-years any messages sent between Earth and the crew’s outpost would take thirty years to arrive, while a two-way communiqué would take sixty (Anderson, a physicist by training and proud writer of “hard sci-fi,” would never countenance any superluminal travel in his story!). But the crew are professionals; they’ve all volunteered for this mission knowing the risks and ramifications, and have all more or less made their peace with them.

Soon, however, things go terribly awry. During the Leonora Christine’s journey, the ship collides with an unforeseen nebula which destroys its decelerators—and thus any hope of slowing down. Now, faced with the prospect of indefinite acceleration, and inching ever closer to light-speed (without ever overtaking it, of course), the crew will have to deal with dramatic relativistic effects far more extreme than any they could have imagined—entire eons passing by outside the ship while inside they experience mere moments.

With a plot as propulsive as the Leonora Christine’s thrusters, Anderson continues to up the ante, blending clear scientific explication (flawed in some respects, of course, but quite good in others) with a poetic flair reminiscent of Ray Bradbury’s best work. When Anderson describes the universe—the sky, the stars, the glittering nebulae and violently blazing supernovae, the intricate interplay between lightness and dark—his childlike wonderment and awe come rushing off the page in dazzlingly descriptive and poetic passages:

“ It loomed behind her, around her, where she circled Earth. Staring away from sun and planet, you saw a crystal darkness huger than you dared comprehend. It did not appear totally black; but it was the final night, that our kindly sky holds from us. The stars thronged it, unwinking, their brilliance winter-cold. Those sufficiently luminous to be seen from the ground showed their colors clear in space: steel-blue Vega, golden Capella, ember of Betelgeuse. And if you were not trained, the lesser members of the galaxy that had become visible were so many as to drown the familiar constellations. The night was wild with suns.
“ And the Milky Way belted heaven with ice and silver; and the Magellanic Clouds were not vague shimmers but roiling and glowing; and the Andromeda galaxy gleamed sharp across more than a million light-years; and you felt your soul drowning in those depths and hastily pulled your vision back to the snug cabin that held you .”

This is where Anderson is at his very best—depicting with unrestrained marvel the spectacular majesty of the universe. Together with a supremely imaginative plot, it’s what makes Tau Zero such a brilliant and memorable story, deserving of its place beside the most enduring masterpieces of speculative fiction.

[Jemppu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fine and grand hard sci-fi, which unfortunately gets constantly distracted by tediously petty relationship drama and archaic attitudes.

_______
Reading updates.

[Dirk Grobbelaar · Rating 5 out of 5]

The night was wild with suns.
And the Milky Way belted heaven with ice and silver; and the Magellanic Clouds were not vague shimmers but roiling and glowing; and the Andromeda galaxy gleamed sharp across more than a million light-years; and you felt your soul drowning in those depths and hastily pulled your vision back to the snug cabin that held you.

This book packs a lot of punch for its page count. There really isn’t a lot I can add to any discussion surrounding Tau Zero. It is considered a Hard Science Fiction classic, and for good reason.

I’m not going to ramble on about this one. If you’re reading high concept Science Fiction and haven’t read this yet, just go out and get a copy right now. It’s only 190 pages and reads fairly quickly, despite the science-y bits.

”It is so dark out there, I never thought that I, grown up, would again be afraid of the dark.”

[Rachel (Kalanadi) · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting enough plot weighed down by frustrating characters and boring relationship drama. Intelligent characters are made into emotional fools, gendered stereotypes, and hard dictators, rather than being allowed competent action or genuine emotional care.

(Ok, they do get things done, but in between bursts of hysteria, drunkenness, and being saved emotionally by a woman having pity sex with them. I mean, for the men. The women are totally more resilient and see to the men's needs so the men can get shit done, I guess.)

This story has a strong setup, especially with the women, oddly enough, and then it all goes to pot.

It's written quite well too, though I personally think Anderson's style is more suited to fantasy like The Broken Sword.

[Stuart · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Hard SF Classic With Equal Focus on Psychology - Science is Outlandish, Characters Clunky, But Ideas are Exciting and Influence Has Been Huge
This slim book was seen as a comeback for the Golden Age of SF Old Guard vs the New Wave writers of the late 1960s, the latter full of their iconoclasm, pessimism, anti-science, left-wing views that questioned everything championed by the Golden Age - mankind brave and strong, facing a big and ominous universe with unwavering resolve and using technology to conquer new frontiers. Poul Anderson has always been a stalwart of the genre, never seeming to reach the heights of Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein, but always chugging along and prolific (a lot like Ben Bova), and also producing two notable fantasy novels, The Broken Sword and The High Crusade. I've seen his books for decades, but the only one that seemed to really stand out is this one, and it was selected by David Pringle in his Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels : An English-Language Selection, 1949-1984, so I finally got around to it in audiobook.

Given it's short length, it's had a profound influence on multiple generations of hard SF writers. It's brevity is much appreciated as the norm in recent decades for Hard SF has been doorstopper length, from 1980s flag-bearers Greg Bear, David Brin, Gregory Benford giving way to even more prolific writers like Alastair Reynolds, Peter F. Hamilton, Stephen Baxter, and more recently Adrian Tchaikovsky.

Well, keeping firmly in mind this book was written back in 1970, and Poul Anderson is a hard SF guy, not a Samuel R. Delany or Robert Silverberg, I tempered my expectations of his character explorations of the intense pressure, loneliness, and conflicts that would arise when 50 elite male and female scientists are selected to represent humanity on what is almost a guaranteed 1-way trip to seed the stars and start a new colony. And you know, he actually did his level best with an international group of scientists, all with their personality quirks and hangups. They still came off as pretty wooden and the dialog felt dated and clunky at parts, and casually sexist in others (standard for the times), but the actual picture of mental duress they were facing was genuine. Here's where some readers likely gave the book 3 stars as characterization is quite wooden vs modern writers, or felt charitable and allowed 4 stars for the effort.

Now the physics - that's a subject for debate, but I've seen enough comments that it basically is implausible in the extreme, but if accept the core assumption that the ship will continue to gain mass as it accelerates toward the speed of light (tau zero), to the point of impacting nearby planets and galaxies, I guess you can accept anything! Once that massive conceit is swallowed, he does extrapolate well, especially in such a short book, with only occasional physics info dumps. If anything, the book has inspired more fully-developed treatments with the latest theories in cosmology today, so gets kudos for that even if it doesn't stand up now, half a century later.

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

This 1970 novel seems to be considered part of the sci-fi canon, and I can see why as it contains some very grand ideas and concepts. It was these that eventually won me over after what I thought was a slow start.

The novel starts with the departure of one of the first groups of people to go on an interstellar colonisation mission. There are 25 men and 25 women, who are expected to be the progenitors of a new human race on a recently identified alien world. It seemed to me that there was a 1960s “free love” vibe going on with these guys. The world of this novel has no need for dating apps, as couples form up with the absolute minimum of advance formalities. Maybe it’s because they are scientists who consider everything in rational terms. From the perspective of the 2020s, I found this aspect a bit unconvincing.

This is a short novel, about 190 pages in the edition I read, and the first 60-odd pages were a bit dull. There’s a lot of technical detail about how the spaceship is meant to operate, which I suppose is required as it links to the rest of the story. About a third of the way in we get the central event, when a problem with the ship’s propulsion drive means it can no longer decelerate, and in fact it keeps accelerating closer and closer to the speed of light. Huge time dilation effects kick in, and one of the most impressive aspects of the novel is the sense of these 50 humans hurtling through the Universe in a sealed capsule, unable to interact in any way with the rest of creation.

There’s lots of physics in the book, and lots of imagination too. I thought the science basis for the story fell apart towards the end, but decided I wasn’t going to get too hung up about that as, ultimately, this is a work of fiction. I found it an enjoyable one, and I think it would be an entertaining read for fans of hard sci-fi.

[Michael Finocchiaro · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had higher hopes for this book about space travel gone bad, but came up feeling a bit disappointed. The characters are not very engaging. Some of the science is cool - the tau idea, Bussard drive - but the story felt conventional. For a "end of the universe" story, I found that Death's End was a much stronger book. Perhaps others had more positive experiences with this one, but I can't honestly give it more than 3 stars.

[Markus · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short but solid hard sci-fi classic. It strikes me that Poul Anderson is an underappreciated author, but perhaps I'm biased due to his consistent emphasis on Scandinavian matters. It's almost strange to see my little corner of the world emphasised so much in a futuristic voyage novel, but here we are.

[Baal Of · Rating 5 out of 5]

Proof that I still like idea-driven SF, I found this book to be astoundingly mind-expanding. I loved the hard-SF aspects, and the slight bending of physical laws to create the scenario. As I was reading it, I was reminded of a movie I saw a few years back that had a similar premise of a ship on an unplanned journey through deep space. I found that movie quite boring, and at points annoying, but this book delivered the concepts in a way I liked. Yeah, the characters are not all very likable, but then there's no reason that the elite chosen for such a journey would be. The sense of isolation and despair come through clearly, and the breakdown of social norms made sense as well.

[Richard Derus · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rating: 2 stars because equations do not belong in fiction

Good story spoiled by *shudder*flinch* see above can't bear to type it again. My then-brother in law thought that I'd like the book based on my voracious reading of SF. He wasn't wrong, exactly, he just misgauged my aversion to all things mathematical. Arithmetic I'm fine with, after that it's always been a really hard slog for me.

Still, it was kind of him to make the effort and subsequent recommendations were spot-on, so he was listening. I wonder how he is doing...must be 70 by now....

[Nate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Awesome hard sci-fi concept it it takes awhile to get traction for such a short book. The characters and interpersonal drama came off a bit wooden. I’ve never read a book where people drank more cocktails in space.
There’s a lot of hard science exposition as well which could be off putting to some. And I found the end a bit ambiguous.

[Miranda · Rating 1 out of 5]

Let’s get a couple things out of the way. Yes, this book was written in the sixties. Yes, cultural mores have evolved since then. There still is no excuse for publishing incel propaganda. The plot is fine at best, and it’s not like this is a famous classic. (It’s the movie Speed in Space with more relativity and a lot of technical mumbo jumbo that honestly I skimmed over, because I didn’t care about these characters enough to be interested in the made up technology that might or might not save them/doom them.) Send one copy to the Library of Congress in case someone is doing a PhD thesis on sexism in 1960s science fiction, but there is no reason for this to be preserved as part of the cannon. There’s no reason to leave these lying around where someone might accidentally read it. Books are forgotten every day. Books go out of print every day. The world moves on, thankfully; we make social progress, thankfully. Let this be one of those books. This book is spreading ideas that are actively harmful to women and minorities. People are reading this book now, in the year of somebody’s lord 2021, and those people should either be appalled by the insidious sexism that is in the very core of this novel, or they’re getting confirmation of their own horrible sexist ideas.

I’ll get back to the sexism later, but even leaving that aside, which would have tanked the review even if the book had otherwise been entertaining, the male characters are flat cardboard cutouts of male stereotypes I hate. The female characters all seem to be Stepford wives that got lost and ended up on a spaceship. As for the technology. The ship drives are moderately clever, but the rest of the relatively picked over science fiction tropes and technologies are simply cloaked in thick layers of technical jargon—apparently the author found a physics textbook and decided to play some darts and didn’t know when to stop.

Now let’s talk about that sexism. I knew this was gonna be a rough time when, on like, page five, we are being introduced to the main female character and she and the male main character have the following conversation, which I have paraphrased (she doesn’t literally say Affirmative action, but she talks about how there are fewer women so they don’t have to be as qualified):

FMM: [Gives short bio, explaining how she became an astronaut]
MMM: Wow that’s really impressive, it must be hard to be a women in space.
FMM: [Flirty giggle] Oh, no, affirmative action makes it super easy—you’re in such demand. Also don’t worry I won’t be doing anything technical, I’m just here for admin and HR.

So that’s not great. As a woman in a male dominated field, who gets comments like that about affirmative action, and who is often mistaken for a secretary or an administrator, that joke is actively harmful to me and other women just trying to do our jobs. She also then exposits that there are exactly 25 men and 25 women going on the trip and they’re planning to set up a colony and she thinks MMM is the most manly/best prize so she wants to call dibs early, I guess, anyway they go off to his bunk to have sex, after she charitably promises not to nag him about how messy it is. Gay people do not exist in this book, apparently, nor do people who are asexual, or outside the gender binary, or bisexual.

Which brings us to the second of my complaints about the way women are treated in this book. I’ve never read a book that had this much Virgin/Whore complex packed into 200 pages. The author seems to swing wildly back and forth with needing all the women (no really, there is not a female character who isn’t paired up with at least one male character at a time, and if she isn’t, she’s plotting how to get paired up) to be desperately wanting to have sex with the male characters to prove how manly they are (there’s a truly astonishing sequence where three female characters are introduced to the Male Main Character in three pages and they all proposition him), but also, our Male Main Character (who is portrayed as being the emotionless, physically fit, attractive male ideal) beats up the people who is partner cheats on him with, and there’s a lot of judgement for women who switch partners “too often.” He also talks about how the women he sleeps with smell like “girlflesh” and somehow does not end up being a serial killer.

But the truly insidious bit of sexism in this book, the one that enrages me and is the driving force behind why I am writing this screed is that the women are choosing their partners because SOCIETY NEEDS THE MEN TO BE HAPPY, because the men won’t DO THEIR JOBS unless the women they want will have sex with them. There’s actually a scene where the lead scientist is having a breakdown and they’re trying to talk him out of it and he goes on this horrible self pitying response about how he can’t do it, and it’s all their fault, because no one will sleep with him. And the Female Main Character does not kick him in the balls and tell him to suck it up because no one owes him shit, she says “oh, well I guess I better have sex with this guy for the good of society.” And then later, when Our Stoic Male Main Character is having Stress, his Chinese girlfriend at the time (the portrayal of her is less racist than it is sexist, but that bar is somewhere in the middle of the earth’s mantle so it’s not like the author gets brownie points for that), realizes that what he needs is not, oh IDK, therapy, or a hot meal, or a massage, but to have sex with aforementioned Female Main Character, who he broke up with after she cheated on him (notably to cheer up a DIFFERENT male character, who was feeling homesick, who Male Main Character beat up to prove that he was a MANLY MAN and he was HERE TO LAY DOWN THE LAW) so the Female Main Character is like “Okay, fine I will sleep with this man, to cheer him up.” For those of you keeping score at home, that’s three different male characters this Female Main Character sleeps with just to cheer them up. This is some incel enabling bullshit.

(An aside about Chinese Girlfriend, who gets maybe the worst description of a woman I have ever read outside of the Men Write Women Twitter feed: “she could never be called boyish. The curves of breast and flank were subtler than ordinary but they were integral with the rest of her—not stuccoed on, as with too many women—and when she moved they flowed.” Who exactly are these women stuccoing on their boobs and their butts? They probably need medical attention. Also, who are the women whose boobs and butts “flow” when they move, and has this author ever actually seen a woman moving in his life?)

And at the end of the book, in case you thought that maybe, maybe this was a commentary on how society is bad and messed up, and we really shouldn’t think that women are only around to make men happy so they can do their oh so important oh so stressful jobs, the last chapter sends you off with a description of “A man standing next to his woman” HIS WOMAN. HIS WOMAN. LIKE SHE’S HIS LOYAL GOLDEN RETRIEVER.

Finally there’s a lot of other super problematic opinions about society that are just thrown around casually like non-consensual medical treatments, that the only way to maintain societal order is by physical force, and opiates of the masses, and that a small sect of “elites” should be making all the decisions, because the general public will be “hysterical” unless information is presented in a very specific way so their dumb brains can understand it. These elites are naturally, scientists, and mostly white and male, (the author charitably says, “At least we can trust a few of the women.”) The book also teeters on the edge of some really dark eugenics style stuff and probably only doesn’t fall in because it is too busy being sexist to have time to fit that in. There’s a lot of discussion about how they need to preserve the genetic diversity of the colony population, and how they can’t let the women go off the anti-aging drugs because otherwise they won’t be able to have babies when they get to the eventual site of the colony. The only good thing I can say about it was that at least it was short. At 200 pages I only wasted a couple hours reading at this and another couple fuming and writing this review. But you can learn from my mistakes. Don’t read this book. If you’re a good person, it will make you angry. If you’re a bad person it will make you a worse person.

[Otherwyrld · Rating 2 out of 5]

I remember reading this book many, many years ago and being hugely impressed with it. Decades later and the hard physics that literally propel the story is still impressive (even though the ending is now no longer accepted), but the rest of the book has aged very badly.

The problem lies with the characterisation, or rather lack of it. All of the characters are paper thin and poorly realised. Worse, this book has a major problem with the way women are portrayed which made it quite a struggle to read. It is a problem that many writers of hard science fiction often struggled with at the time this book was written in 1970, but it is such a shame that this story was so badly bogged down by what should be a fundamental part of any book.

Still, it is a classic story and it certainly has it's moments. How much you enjoy it may well lie with how much you can put aside its flaws.

[Daniel Villines · Rating 4 out of 5]

At 99.99999% the speed of light, 1 year on board a spacecraft will equal 2,236.07 years for those not on board. This is a fun and serious fact of relativity. To think about it is to arrive at the conclusion that the stars may not necessarily be out of human reach due to the vast distances between them. A star that’s 1,000 light-years away would require only six months of an adventurous astronaut’s life to reach it at that speed. All we need is technology and humans are an inventive lot. Of course, the down side to this realization is that the astronaut would never come home. He may indeed make it back to earth, but his home would have perished soon after his journey began.

This is what makes Tau Zero such a wonderful book. It takes the above fact and tells the story of its practice. It places human characters inside a spaceship and sends them on an adventure that is not that far off from being possible. Substitute a bit of imagination for technology and Tau Zero becomes real. This aspect of the book was relished and it is quintessential science fiction.

As for the book’s weakness, it appears that Anderson loved science more than people. The three lead characters, while defined by their positions and names, have very little personality or human complexity. The remainder of those on board the spacecraft are merely names that enter and exit the story as required by the plot. Overall, however, this is a somewhat minor complaint. When it comes to human adventure, the accomplishments always outlive the people involved.

[Chris Beaton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Live girlflesh

Let me start by saying that I liked this book. With my 'internal' rating system, I'd give it four stars, but GoodReads informs me that this means I "really liked" a book and I think I just "liked" it, so I'm downgrading to three... Regardless, a VERY pleasurable read, a real page turner and a superb thought experiment. But enough with the forewarning, time for some griping, cos bits did indeed cheese me off.

WHAT IT IS ABOUT SCIENCE FICTION? Why are there so many great novels that have been needlessly burdened with tedious, 2-dimensional characters, the personal lives of which are dominated by *sleeping* with as many of their brilliant fellow scientists as they can, and then getting jealous, at the same time as either striving to become alpha males or to worship them? I mean, really??? It's like the editor has stepped in and said, "ok, mister, that's enough science - time for some fucking, or we'll lose our audience!"

Theories:
* They really DO think a heavily science-driven plot must be balanced with cavemen antics.
* They are more likely than other authors to have given up on the human race as barbarous savages.
* Old sci-fi was written in an era with few sexual liberties, so part of the allure of other worlds was fantasizing about other sexual freedoms (gotta say, I think there's a lot of weight to this one).
* They are more likely to not give a damn about human emotions and drama, and they just kind of fill that bit in hurriedly at the end, once they've got their awesome concepts fully fleshed out.

And don't get me wrong, sex, love, jealousy, attraction, all these are fun times. If the writing (and the psychology) is good. Here are some of my favourite bits from Tau Zero:

She whistled. 'Hey,' she said, 'I hadn't seen you before in less'n a coverall. That's some collection of biceps and triceps and things you pack around. Calisthenics?'

'M-m-m-hm.' Reymont kissed the hollow between shoulder and throat. Through the wetness he smelled live girlflesh.

'Maybe someday you'll dare trust me.' She drew close to him. 'Never mind now, Carl. I don't want to harass you. I want you in me again. You see, this has stopped being a matter of friendship and convenience. I've fallen in love with you'

Unclad, she could never be called boyish. The curves of breast and flank were subtler than ordinary, but they were integral with the rest of her - not stuccoed on, as with too many women - and when she moved, they flowed. So did the light along her skin, which had the hue of the hills around San Francisco Bay in the summer, and the light in her hair, which had the smell of every summer day that was ever on earth.

Lindgren got up, paced the narrow stretch behind her desk, struck fist into palm. 'I've assumed obligations,' she said. The words wrenched her gullet.
'I know -'
'Not to smash a man, especially one we need. And not to... be promiscuous again. I have to be an officer, in everything I do. So does Carl.' Raw-voiced: 'He'd refuse!'

Stuccoed on!?! Eeeew. And EVERY summer day? Even the ones when the sewers backed up? As you can see from the above, though, the saving grace about all this stuff is that it is EXTREMELY entertaining, even if depressingly heteroboring.

The other doozie I want to complain about before I sign off is the women. They're supposed to be scientists, but it's only the men who actually seem to *do* anything, while the women are manipulated into managing people's emotional welfare (apparently, this is ok because 'Her role demands she not be a Machiavelli type who'd play a part deliberately', and she's too dumb to notice anyway) or hysterically demanding that they be allowed to have children (She crawled from him, handhold to handhold. 'No!' she yelled. 'I know what you're after! You'll never take my baby! He's yours too! If you... you cut my baby out of me - I'll kill you! I'll kill everyone aboard!).

Hilariously, towards the climax of their voyage, when hope is at its lowest, the best insight we get into the human condition is that one of the men can no longer sustain an erection, until he gets drunk and then slapped on the back by his biceps-triceps-and-things best mate, who is not quite the captain, and keeps saying "this must be the captain's decision!", until people grovellingly say "no, Carl, you've taken us this far, the crew trust you" yadda yadda.

So, despite MASSIVE FAILURE on the human scale, I feel like I should end by reminding you, the core of this book is a wonderful thing. Essentially, something goes wrong with a ship travelling at close to light speed, such that they can no longer decelerate. For various reasons, they keep deciding that their best option is to continue accelerating, getting closer and closer to the speed of light (at which point 'tau', a variable in the equation describing something to do with light speed, is zero). Due to the effects of relativity, the speed at which they perceive time becomes massively different from the rest of the universe, and soon they see the very universe aging around them... Like all great thought experiments, there's just so much innate drama and excitement and questions in this scenario, that it's really invigorating, and it leaves you burning with ideas of all the storylines that *didn't* happen. You want to gather all the little silver balls and put them back into the machine and start it over, to see other ways they could have navigated through its intricacies.

[Luciano Bernaroli · Rating 4 out of 5]

Premetto che ero prevenuto sullo svolgimento e sulla parte finale perché l'inizio l'ho trovano molto noioso, sarò sincero. È un hard scifi, spaziale, molto tecnico e scientifico ma accostato ad una parallela narrazione degli eventi che farebbe invidia a un romance dei più banali. Questo accostare alle avventure della astronave più improbabile del mondo (prima di Adams) i fatti e le sottotrame romantiche che coinvolgono tutti i passeggeri, all'inizio fa supporre che il libro non tratti di altro che di una sorta di un fantascientifico Beautiful. in realtà procedendo con la lettura si capisce che un osservazione molto attenta dei rapporti interpersonali tra gli individui non è altro che una specie di analisi sociologica che l'autore approfondisce. la trama a volte ha del surreale e a volte sembra talmente plausibile da tanto che viene scientificamente spiegata da sembrare roba di tutti i giorni, In che porta ad una conclusione letteralmente col botto... è sicuramente un classico della fantascienza straconsigliato..

[Bart · Rating 1 out of 5]

(...)

Ultimately, I can handle bad science or outdated sex stuff or weak characterization – especially in older SF. The main problem I had with this book was “Carl Reymont, a macho alpha male who beats people into line for their own good”, as a reviewer on Goodreads wrote. It is the entire ideological setup of the novel that bothered me most. Anderson writes about a character that knows best, and assumes the 50 scientists that people the ship could not function as a healthy group without a Machiavellian hero/leader/brute. It’s the kind of thinking that results in justifying violent dictatorship via elitist conceptions about the masses. Paternalistic bullshit. Yuck.

(...)

Full review on Weighing A Pig Doesn't Fatten It

[Rachel (TheShadesofOrange) · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.0 stars
I enjoyed some of the hard science around the space travel but I was otherwise underwhelmed by this short book. The biggest weakness was the characters. The males felt so boring and flat, while the women felt like props.