Tau Zero by Poul Anderson (PDF)

Description

This Hugo Award finalist, “justifiably regarded as a classic” (SFReviews.net), is the tale of an epic space voyage where time dilation goes horribly wrong. Aboard the spacecraft Leonora Christine, fifty crewmembers, half men and half women, have embarked on a journey of discovery like no other to a planet thirty light-years away. Since their ship is not capable of traveling faster than light, the crew will be subject to the effects of time dilation and relativity. They will age five years on board the ship before reaching their destination, but thirty-three years will pass on Earth. Experienced scientists and researchers, they have come to terms with the time conditions of their space travel. Until . . . the Leonora Christine passes through an uncharted nebula, which damages the engine, making it impossible to decelerate the ship on the second half of their trip. To survive, the crewmembers have no choice but to bypass their destination and continue to accelerate toward the speed of light. But how will they keep hope alive and maintain order as they hurtle deeper into space with time passing more and more rapidly, and their ultimate fate unknown? With its combination of mind-blowing hard science and compelling human drama, Tau Zero is “the ultimate hard science novel” (Mike Resnick).

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐A lot of science, engineering, relativity, cosmology, other scientific disciplines involved, altho not understanding all the technical details does not prevent the understanding and appreciation of the novel. It is intensely oriented to the humans on board — their personalities, ahilities, relationships, adaptability, interests, etc. You obtain a picture of the universe and its properties and a view of what types of problems and difficulties might be encountered by future space travelers.(I mentioned Star Trek The Next Generation because there were many episodes which relate so closely to this book; and Anderson came before Roddenberry.)Admittedly the book was a bit long and sometimes tedious in the middle but that was my reaction, not a defect in the book. The death of the universe and the rebirth was very interesting: is that what will happen? The only aspect of the book that was sort of unreal was the ending, sort of a fairy tale ending, but at least a hopeful ending with the promise of a future.

⭐Overall very entertaining although a bit slow at times. The sci-fi was thought provoking although not always internally consistent. Recommend

⭐This is a book about the end… And a new beginning. Something all of us are needing from time to time.

⭐This is a quite good novel dealing with a hard science fiction situation and handling the characters’ reactions to said situation. As summarized elsewhere, a crew sets out on a spaceship to another star and likely habitable planet. They need to reach a significant fraction of the speed of light to do so, and on the way they suffer an accident that prevents them from decelerating. Due to their speed, time moves faster in the universe than it does for them, and how they attempt to save the situation and cope with the psychological issues is well done. Anderson manages the unusual for me, in that I felt as though I were on the ship itself, and went through the ups and downs emotionally as the crew did. There are some poignant moments, exceptional writing, and awe inspiring imagery.I also found some of the technology to be interesting in that it seems just as likely today as it did when the book was written: specifically the ‘Dream Chambers’ (or whatever they were called, I forget) which provide the viewer with alternate realities as psychotherapy/recreation.That said, there are some minor problems that bring this down from a true classic to merely a 4 star work in my mind. The first is the ‘digressions’ where the author describes the science of speed, time and space to the reader. He chooses to tell this information at appropriate moments in the story, and does so as if he’s lecturing the reader directly. This obviously breaks up the flow of the story. Due to the importance of the science, the fact that almost everyone on the ship would know this science and therefore be unlikely to have long conversations about the subject sufficient to be helpful to the reader, this solution may be the most effective possible. Alternatively he could have included a Foreward discussing this information, but the reader may not have done so, which could lead to confusion.My second issue with the book is the focus on relationships. To me, a lot of this seemed forced and felt as though the author was trying to say something important about relationships in general, or at least in the future, and didn’t quite impart this information to the reader. That said, most of the relationships felt ‘real’ enough.My final real issue was the ending. I actually wished it would have ended a couple of chapters previously with a more ambiguous outcome than the almost Hollywood style ending that it ended up with. The explanation for how it finished was much less understandable to me than the science in the rest of the book.Still, the good outweighed the bad in this novel, and I can highly recommend it to anyone interested in issues of time and space.

⭐First, I have to preface this by saying these reviews are somewhat relative to the nature of the book and author. The three stars I give this are not equivalent to the three stars I give some throwaway self-published sci-fi space opera potboiler.Anderson’s writing is first-rate: literate and descriptive but efficient. Character development was pretty solid. This book falls into the category of “realistic” science fiction, in that it takes into account our current understanding of physics (circa 1967), along with some speculative technology, but sticking with what we know about the universe. And that basically drives the action of the story. It is simultaneously epic in scope – without giving too much away about the story, the crew of the ship sees quite a lot – and yet it is self-contained. 50 people on a ship, and all of the action happens on board this flying tin can.And yet for all the grandeur of what they ultimately experience, I found this book to just be a little bit ponderous and depressing. The plotting also got fairly repetitive: we’re in a real fix here. crew becoming despondent. we’ve got a plan to get out of this mess… oh no, our plan won’t work. have to keep going. crew becoming despondent. formed a new plan. oh no, the plan won’t work. have to keep going. crew becoming despondent. and so on. And in the midst of this, our 50 crew members are engaging in a series of soap-opera like couplings, affairs, and re-couplings. It was like “The Young and the Restless” in space, or “Fleetwood Mac: Behind the Music”. It got old quickly. What was curious is that, in this book, the pattern was to have sexually liberated or adventurous women dumping men who wanted stable long-term relationships, leaving the men bitter and depressed. Maybe says something about Poul Anderson’s view of women & relationships?SPOILER SECTIONI have to say, if I were naming this book, I wouldn’t call it “Tau Zero”. I would be much more straightforward and call it “The Ship That Couldn’t Slow Down”. Kind of like that movie where Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves are on a bus, and the bus can’t slow down. Or there was some cheesy made for TV movie about the airplane that flew into space and couldn’t land. Or the song about the guy who rode around forever on the subway below the streets of Boston because they raised the fare to get off. Or the story about the ghost ship that can never make port. It’s kind of a tired genre. Meanwhile we have a couple of obligatory “Moby Dick” references – I guess that makes it a true literary novel, if you have “Moby Dick” allusions!The other part of this book which makes it a bit gloomy is that it’s really no fun to think too much about the physics of near-light-speed travel. It’s much more fun for Kirk to say “Lay in a course Mr. Sulu – Warp Factor 5.” and then a few hours later, “Drop us out of warp, slow to half impulse. Bring up the planet on long-range sensors”. Rather not deal with things like having to start decelerating when you’re halfway there, and having time pass at different rates on the ship vs back home, and have a hard time observing the universe outside the ship. So to build a whole story around the weirdness of light speed travel is kind of like watching C-SPAN. It’s realistic, but you’d rather switch the channel and watch some reality TV.Also I found the ending preposterous.

⭐I first read Tau Zero as a boy when it first came out. Even after 50 years, it holds up pretty well. If the reader is ever in Stockholm, I can recommend the sculpture garden mentioned at the beginning of the novel. It is magnificent.

⭐The main character is the ship’s police officer. He’s a ‘proper’ man, who belittles anyone who disagrees with him and is quick to temper, fighting at the slightest provocation – and he’s much better at fighting than the scientists he’s threatening. The rest of the crew admire him – a good man is hard to find! – rather than revile him. Women will do anything for him – they’re just sex objects in this chauvinist book – including asking other women to satisfy their hero boyfriend for them. The scientists take advice on science matters from him – who better to plot a course than the police officer? Who knows relativistic physics better than the police officer? Not the professors of relative physics and stellar dynamics! Only the police officer has such mastery, because he is such a thinly drawn ‘great man’ that I really do wonder if the author wrote a parody. But there’s nothing amusing, no commentary on the human condition, just a boorish man that the author seems to think is how ‘real men’ should be, and a whimpering crew that the author thinks should do anything for the ‘real’ man. Even by the standards of the day this was written in, the sexism and ‘great man’ narratives are extremely uncomfortable reading.An SF masterwork? Not by a long shot. I literally don’t want to read anything else by this author because of this book, which is a shame because he’s written a lot of time travel stories, which are one of my favourite types of story.

⭐This is what one might classify as ‘hard SF’ from the 1960’s. There are some interesting and thought-provoking concepts and illustrations of the effects and consequences of Einstein Special Theory of Relativity, such as time dilation when approaching the speed of light. There is a lot of science in the book, and the effects of time dilation are taken to the extreme.Where this book falls down for me is in the writing, characterisation and dialogue. The prose is quite clunky and I had to re-read a number of sentences to make sense of them. This is as much as exploration of being lost in space with little chance of rescue on the psychology of the travellers, but for me Anderson doesn’t have the writing skill to produce interesting and believable characters. Despite being relatively short, I still found it a bit plodding. It could easily have been shortened to a novella. Interesting single concept, but Anderson fails to produce a good book around it.

⭐Female characters are poorly regarded but if you accept that as part and parcel of reading a 50 year old book, there is still much to enjoy despite that: the immensity of space, the tragedy of relativity, the power (and loss of same) of human connection.My other issue is the actual print quality of the book is terrible. Words misspelt or missing letters or mixed up completely. It was a headache to read, with blotchy ink.

⭐I grew up with Anderson’s brand of hard sci-fi but never got round to reading this one. It starts with a fascinating possible future where the Swedes rule the world (as the only people who can be trusted not to start a war!). A starship sets out to investigate a potential alternative Earth – then hits a problem which means it can’t put the brakes on at journey’s end. How to get out of it (which I’m not going to explain) and how the crew and passengers cope is the basis of the plot.One small detail which actually makes this book more workable is the things that Anderson skips over: for example, the central character, who’s a combination sheriff and sergeant-major, made a name for himself when he “fought for the Zebras” during the troubles on Mars. No need to explain as it’s not relevant to the reader, but a citizen of Earth in the period when the book’s set would know exactly what was meant.

⭐The blurb on the back of Poul Anderson’s ‘Tau Zero’ lauds it simply as, ‘the ultimate hard science fiction novel’. This does not necessarily denote that the book is going to be hard to read, or that the science side will be too overbearing to enjoy the fiction. The term is generally applied to a sci-fi story in which everything has to “add up” and make sense, so that a scientist of the relevant field could read the book without ever saying “it does not work like that”. The term “hard sci-fi” can also be used to talk about books that do not work on “realistic” scientific principles, as long as the science of the story universe is carefully explained and does not contradict itself, which can be a difficult task for even the most creative writers, especially as sci-fi fans are notoriously picky about such things. The main thing that “hard sci-fi” is not, is traditional “pulp” sci-fi, which is primarily concerned with creating a sense of the fantastic and escapist, and which is quite happy to wave away any glaring plot holes with the use of what is referred to in the post-Buffy era as “Applied Phlebotinum”, where the writers make up some mystical or futuristic pseudo-science to drive the story forward, or to sidestep out of those situations where the author realises they have put themselves in a corner. Again, this kind of storytelling has its rightful place, and fans of the TV show ‘Futurama’ can see how the genre’s penchant for Phlebotinum can be treated with love and humour. However, I came to ‘Tau Zero’ to try challenging some of my prejudices about more serious science fiction, and the experiment was largely successful.Attempting to write hard sci-fi does not preclude an author from writing something exciting and escapist, indeed ‘Tau Zero’, set on a spaceship in the 23rd century, and designed to explore the outer limits of space and time through the eyes of its crew, promises the reader about the most fantastic premise it is possible to present under the banner of realistic fiction. A skeleton crew of fifty of the greatest minds of their generation are selected to board the ‘Leonora Christine’ and guide her to a remote planet that has been identified as having potential for colonisation. The early part of the story is driven by deft sketches of the crewmembers, and how their differing cultural and training backgrounds influence their experiences of long-term space-travel, and their interactions with each other. During this period, there is also ample time to explore the romantic possibilities of this highly-talented micro-community, creating drama from the tensions of various couplings, while marriage and childbearing is strictly forbidden until successful colonisation of the destination planet has been achieved.This exposition is all good fun because of the unusual environment (at least for a reader like me; perhaps it is quite boring for the sci-fi faithful), but the key event in the story comes fairly early on: the navigators become aware that the ship is on course to pass through an interstellar dust-cloud, which cannot be avoided using the ship’s carefully-explained control system. The crew is informed that they will have to take cover until they pass through, and then assess their status on the other side. A night of terrible shaking and shuddering noises passes, and all initially seems fine the next day (in ship-time). However, it is rapidly discovered that the ship’s braking system has been badly damaged, posing a conundrum that will challenge the crew’s will to survive. The system cannot be fixed without turning off the ship’s radiation shield, and this cannot be done without travelling far into intergalactic space, where there is no radiation. The distances involved require the crew to commit to accelerating the ship to almost light speed, in order to achieve their goal within their lifetimes, but in doing so, time around them will pass faster and faster, leaving their generation behind back on Earth. The time acceleration is handled gradually, showing the characters dealing with the milestones one by one, starting with the loss of a living connection to their home planet, and then much farther forward, through the probable extinction of the human race and the death of the planet itself, and eventually to the observation that the stars are not behaving in a manner familiar to the experts on board, and the impressively understated realisation that this is because they are witnessing the universe getting older.Poul Anderson does a fine job of balancing the reader’s interest in the science behind the story, and the lives of its many characters, along with a few passages about the political background of 23rd century Earth, and I had great fun living through the various stages of the characters’ experience, coming to terms with each new state of affairs and the dilemmas it presented. Unfortunately, I think the ending was very rushed and disappointing, considering the very measured approach employed throughout the majority of the book, which kept my interest even when it became a little too preoccupied with the relationship woes of the crew. I don’t want to give away any details about the ending, as it would spoil the experience of the rest of the story for any interested readers, but I can say that Anderson ends up falling into one of the sci-fi writing trope-traps, concerning the description of unfamiliar environments (ironically one whose definition is attributed to James Blish, the author of the aforementioned blurb praising the novel); surprising considering the breadth of his knowledge and his attention to detail throughout the first 180 of ‘Tau Zero’s 187 pages.Overall I think it was a good choice of novel for the sci-fi newbie, as it combines the excitement of the fantastic setting with the grounding of its focus on human emotional responses. The author writes with passion and conviction about his subject, with some wonderful descriptive writing that is terse and pragmatic, even when going to the trouble to describe what it clearly considers beauty. Okay, the handling of the human stories is at times clumsy, but never so much as to detract from the enjoyment of the interplay between the relationship dramatics and the over-arching roman-a-thèse frame. The chaos of the ‘what if’ is perfectly controlled in order to permit its full exploration, and it never relies too heavily on theory and its understanding for a sustained period. It will make you feel clever and humble and infinitesimally small all at once. If only he had devoted some more time and attention to bringing the conclusion up to the standard of the rest of the story, then I would have given it full marks.

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