A Sci Fi Reading Odyssey - 50 Novels

[Matt H.]

Matt, I am fascinated by your take on the novels of my youth...

Wow, thanks Windy...! That means something coming from you.

But I doubt that I am that far behind you.... I will be lucky to be running myself in a few years let alone the world. But it was a lovely comment regardless, lol

I honestly appreciate your input and participation a great deal. I guess I could have done it without you and the gang here, but point is I wouldn't have. Thanks.

 

[Matt H.]

Hey. I tuned-up my review of Double Star a little. Mostly, I changed the fourth paragraph and also clarified some things that I had left lamely vague. Farseer, Vince, Westy, gang? What think you? Got anything to add or dispute?

This “blank slate” review thing is fine, until (gulp) you end up seeming to run afoul of the likes of Robert A. Heinlein! I hope whatever form of execution chosen by Mark will be mercifully quick…

Btw, I can see the charm and the overall good message of the book. Though I don’t think I would have grasped it by age 8 like Windy. Precocious child! lol

Into Simak’s “City”… can't resist saying (contrary to my rules), It’s damn good so far! (but only ¼ in)

 

[Vince W]

It's been a long time since I read Double Star and while my youthful impressions don't match yours precisely I think that your reaction would be fairly typical today. I'm sure many adult readers would probably give up on it before the end today, given some of the quaintness that it has developed since it was first published, but sticking to the end you do find that, given today's political climate, it's not entirely irrelevant even now. I do remember enjoying back in the 70s, but it's never been one of my top Heinlein novels.

 

[Hobbit]

This “blank slate” review thing is fine, until (gulp) you end up seeming to run afoul of the likes of Robert A. Heinlein! I hope whatever form of execution chosen by Mark will be mercifully quick…

You are absolutely entitled to your opinion and there's a lot to be said about reading the book without all of the associated gubbins that can go with a long-term 'big' author. Just because I liked it doesn't mean that others will - reviews are opinions, after all! - but I'm always interested in what others think. I think that it is interesting to read how older material holds up - or doesn't! - with modern audiences.

Despite some professing that "science fiction is about the future", in my opinion it is actually usually as much, if not more, about the times it is written. As a result, older stuff is often from a different place and doesn't always translate well. My own interest/angle was that whether stories I had (mostly) loved as a youngster were still worth reading - it has been a mixed response, but it has been interesting for me.

Your review comes from a different place, and that's why it is interesting. Like Windy said. I'm impressed that you would be willing to give the old stuff a try.

However, one of the hazards of reading older stuff today is that their impact when they were first published can be lost. Looking at Heinlein in context he was often ahead of the curve in many aspects - although lacking in others.

The fact that most of his stuff at the time it was published was a revelation, but I take the point that what was once original may be now fairly predictable. Your impression is just as valid as mine - and perhaps more so as you are seeing them with fresh eyes!

It's been a long time since I read Double Star and while my youthful impressions don't match yours precisely I think that your reaction would be fairly typical today.

What Vince said!

 

[Matt H.]

You are absolutely entitled to your opinion and there's a lot to be said about reading the book without all of the associated gubbins that can go with a long-term 'big' author....

Thanks, Mark! A thought-provoking, reasonable and valid response. Thanks also for acknowledging that my critical experiment ( "blank slate"/info-blackout/non-comparative thing) has strengths but also serious weaknesses. That I know. I would never assert that any of the books of the list are unimportant or not worth reading, afterall all of them are pretty prominent and influential in the genre.

My reviews are perhaps even MORE subjective than average, not less. I'm hard on the books, though... I expect a lot since they are part of a lit "cannon". I'm judging them from a moody, very high personal appeal standard and "wow" factor, etc. I confess I free myself perhaps to be unfair to some extent.

I resisted at first the binary thumbs up/down "rating" that the gang suggested because I would definitely never discourage anyone from reading any of the books (even Odd John, lol). My goal is the opposite, I want people to read them so we can all be edified and have a good discussion here! (which we are now )

Thanks again for the response.

(added) *Don't forget too that my review did mentioned a few times that there was a good underlying message to the book that was likely ahead of its time! I guess the overall evaluation somewhat buried that point.

(added) Also... lol. Please remember, I'm not reading these as a policeman, looking for "gotchas." But neither can you excuse everything with "well, it was a different time." The test is, did the effect of a given, idea/statement/theme/event outweigh your overall reading enjoyment? Not liking broccoli is not a political statement even if you originally had political reasons for not liking it. Weird analogy, but all I can think of

 

[farseer2]

It's difficult for me to add anything meaningful to these discussions, since it's so long since I read most of these books. I don't remember the details, only general ideas about the plot. I read this one decades ago, in my tween or maybe early teen years, and I remember it as a very good read, mostly as an adventure SF story. The prisoner of Zenda in space, or something like that. A great YA read, with the plus that the concept of impersonating someone like that was intriguing. If there was something very deep here it went over my head, but for me having a great time means that the book was successful.

Not the best Heinlein, perhaps, but a very fun one to read. I certainly prefer this to his later work, like Stranger in a Strange Land. Double Star won the hugo in its day, IIRC. Really, a lot of science fiction were adventure stories (although there were also thought-provoking books).

You're right, of course, that SF is not about the future, but about how the present sees (or would like to see) the future, just like historical novels are about how the present sees the past. Books become old-fashioned as fashions and social values change. In SF, classic novels also have the technology problem. As real technology changes, old SF become about a kind of retro-future, with no internet.

Apart from giving insight into the history of the genre, I think reading old SF books is enriching as a reader, coming as they are from a different mindset. As C.S. Lewis wrote:

Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books.

All contemporary writers share to some extent the contemporary outlook—even those, like myself, who seem most opposed to it. Nothing strikes me more when I read the controversies of past ages than the fact that both sides were usually assuming without question a good deal which we should now absolutely deny. They thought that they were as completely opposed as two sides could be, but in fact they were all the time secretly united—united with each other and against earlier and later ages—by a great mass of common assumptions.

We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century—the blindness about which posterity will ask, “But how could they have thought that?”—lies where we have never suspected it, and concerns something about which there is untroubled agreement between Hitler and President Roosevelt or between Mr. H. G. Wells and Karl Barth. None of us can fully escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books. Where they are true they will give us truths which we half knew already. Where they are false they will aggravate the error with which we are already dangerously ill.

The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books. Not, of course, that there is any magic about the past. People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes. They will not flatter us in the errors we are already committing; and their own errors, being now open and palpable, will not endanger us. Two heads are better than one, not because either is infallible, but because they are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction. To be sure, the books of the future would be just as good a corrective as the books of the past, but unfortunately we cannot get at them.

 

[Matt H.]

It's difficult for me to add anything meaningful to these discussions, since it's so long since I read most of these books. I don't remember the details, only general ideas about the plot...

Thanks, Farseer for the thoughtful response. There are some good points in the Lewis quote. Mostly my critiques try to deal with reader impact. "Messages" and political and social content are put to the test: Does it rankle to a point that it negatively affects my enjoyment?

Since Gilgamesh certain principles of good fiction have been evident. I don’t see literature as a straight line from quaint old stuff to good new stuff. The forms of good story telling are merely recycled in different combinations and with different aesthetic effects. In my 2020-based opinion Shakespeare isn’t bad. I don’t need to revere him or excuse him because he’s old. He’s good because the work is soundly structured and he hits all those points of good story-telling/fiction/poetry. Of course there is a substantial barrier in time, taste, form, purpose, but the work overcomes and over-balances it.

Talking about sci fi definitions.. My test for “true” (or pure) science fiction is simple. Could the overall story still work (and to what extent) with the speculative elements removed?

If I write a mystery novel set in 2015 in Los Angeles, but I replace “Los Angeles” with the word “mars” then technically I have a speculative/sci fi novel. But the novel doesn’t depend on the speculative. Btw, it could still theoretically be an excellent novel, even with such a thin, incongruous sci fi overlay. However if you try to re-write Childhood’s End without the speculative (trying to substitute something “real” instead), well… good luck! It could never be even remotely the same book; it couldn't work. The effect would be fundamentally ruined.

 

[Windshadow]

This from a blog post by Patrick Rothfuss . a very popular fantasy author written just after Sir Terry Pratchett died in 2015. the best part shows Pratchett at his interview best. and I include it here as it is germane to both Science Fiction and Fantasy criticism
here is the link to the full version

Search Results for: pratchett

blog.patrickrothfuss.com

As a result, one of my first exposures to Terry Pratchett as a person was in an interview in the Onion back in 1995. Just to give you an idea of the time frame. That was back when you could pick up a copy of The Onion printed on paper. What’s more, it available *only* on paper, and even then, you could only get it in my home town of Madison, WI.

What Pratchett said in that interview had a big effect on me, as I’d been working on my own novel for a couple of years at that point.

It took some digging (as I said, this was published pre-internet) but here’s the interview:

O: What’s with the big-ass hat?

Pratchett: Ah… That’s the hat I wear. I don’t know, it… It… That hat, or types like it, I’ve worn for years and years. Because I bought one, and I liked it. And then people started taking photographs of me in it, and now, certainly in the UK, it’s almost a case of if I don’t turn up in my hat people don’t know who I am. So maybe I could just send this hat to signings. I just like hats. I like Australian book tours, because Australians are really, I mean that is the big hat country, Australia.

O: You’re quite a writer. You’ve a gift for language, you’re a deft hand at plotting, and your books seem to have an enormous amount of attention to detail put into them. You’re so good you could write anything. Why write fantasy?

Pratchett: I had a decent lunch, and I’m feeling quite amiable. That’s why you’re still alive. I think you’d have to explain to me why you’ve asked that question.

O: It’s a rather ghettoized genre.

P: This is true. I cannot speak for the US, where I merely sort of sell okay. But in the UK I think every book— I think I’ve done twenty in the series— since the fourth book, every one has been one the top ten national bestsellers, either as hardcover or paperback, and quite often as both. Twelve or thirteen have been number one. I’ve done six juveniles, all of those have nevertheless crossed over to the adult bestseller list. On one occasion I had the adult best seller, the paperback best-seller in a different title, and a third book on the juvenile bestseller list. Now tell me again that this is a ghettoized genre.

O: It’s certainly regarded as less than serious fiction.

P: (Sighs) Without a shadow of a doubt, the first fiction ever recounted was fantasy. Guys sitting around the campfire— Was it you who wrote the review? I thought I recognized it— Guys sitting around the campfire telling each other stories about the gods who made lightning, and stuff like that. They did not tell one another literary stories. They did not complain about difficulties of male menopause while being a junior lecturer on some midwestern college campus. Fantasy is without a shadow of a doubt the ur-literature, the spring from which all other literature has flown. Up to a few hundred years ago no one would have disagreed with this, because most stories were, in some sense, fantasy. Back in the middle ages, people wouldn’t have thought twice about bringing in Death as a character who would have a role to play in the story. Echoes of this can be seen in Pilgrim’s Progress, for example, which hark back to a much earlier type of storytelling. The epic of Gilgamesh is one of the earliest works of literature, and by the standard we would apply now— a big muscular guy with swords and certain godlike connections— That’s fantasy. The national literature of Finland, the Kalevala. Beowulf in England. I cannot pronounce Bahaghvad-Gita but the Indian one, you know what I mean. The national literature, the one that underpins everything else, is by the standards that we apply now, a work of fantasy.

Now I don’t know what you’d consider the national literature of America, but if the words Moby Dick are inching their way towards this conversation, whatever else it was, it was also a work of fantasy. Fantasy is kind of a plasma in which other things can be carried. I don’t think this is a ghetto. This is, fantasy is, almost a sea in which other genres swim. Now it may be that there has developed in the last couple of hundred years a subset of fantasy which merely uses a different iconography, and that is, if you like, the serious literature, the Booker Prize contender. Fantasy can be serious literature. Fantasy has often been serious literature. You have to fairly dense to think that Gulliver’s Travels is only a story about a guy having a really fun time among big people and little people and horses and stuff like that. What the book was about was something else. Fantasy can carry quite a serious burden, and so can humor. So what you’re saying is, strip away the trolls and the dwarves and things and put everyone into modern dress, get them to agonize a bit, mention Virginia Woolf a few times, and there! Hey! I’ve got a serious novel. But you don’t actually have to do that.

(Pauses) That was a bloody good answer, though I say it myself.

I’m looking forward to buying myself a cheese hat.

O: Back to the hat.

P: Let’s go back to the hat… Everybody needs an edge, and if the hat gives you an edge, why not wear a hat? When you get started writing, you’re one of the crowd. If the hat helps, I’ll wear a hat— I’ll wear two hats! In fact, I’m definitely going to buy a cheese hat before I leave here. We’ve never heard of them in the UK, and I can see it as being the latest thing in fashion.

Okay, you can turn the tape back off again.

I actually remember where I was when I read that. Right now, twenty years later, I remember where I was sitting as I held the paper and read it.

I’m not going to be cliche and say it changed my life.

You know what? I am. I’m going to say it. It changed my life.

Remember what year this was. It was 1995. This was before Harry Potter was written. Before Neil Gaiman wrote Neverwhere.

Pixar has just released its first movie. There was no Matrix. No Sixth Sense. No Lord of The Rings movies. Pan’s Labyrinth and Hellboy were a decade away.

There was no Game of Thrones on HBO. Hell, there wasn’t even Legend of the Seeker. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was 2 years away, and even more years from being recognized as brilliant television, rather than silly fluff with vampires.

I had been writing my fantasy novel for about two years, and while I loved fantasy, I knew deep down, it was something I should feel ashamed of. Fantasy novels were the books I read as a kid, and people picked on me for it. There were no classes on the subject at the University. I knew deep down in my bones that no matter how much I happened to love fantasy, it was all silly bullshit.

Even these days, people look down on fantasy. They think of it as kid stuff. They dismiss it as worthless. They say not real literature. People say that *NOW* despite the fact that Game of Thrones and The Hobbit and Avengers and Harry Potter are bigger than The Beatles.

That’s NOW. If you weren’t around back then, you really can’t begin to understand how much worse it was. When I told people I was working on a fantasy novel, a lot of people wouldn’t even really know what I was talking about.

I would say, “I’m writing a fantasy novel” and people would look at me with earnest confusion and concern in their eyes, and they would say, “Why?”

Then I read that article, and it filled me with hope. With pride.

 

[Matt H.]

(added)
Also deleted an additional para and other minor edits... I think if you read the review again it makes a markedly better impression now, as a critique that is.

Made a few more edits to the Double Star review, not out of veneration but because they make the review better. I cut out some stuff (end of para 6) that lessened the overall credibility. It also broke my blank slate/quarantine rules pretty badly (didn’t realize that before).

City is holding up pretty well! About half in. Look forward to the next review and some surely great books to follow.

 

[Matt H.]

This from a blog post by Patrick Rothfuss . a very popular fantasy author written just after Sir Terry Pratchett died in 2015...

"Fantasy is kind of a plasma in which other things can be carried. I don’t think this is a ghetto. This is, fantasy is, almost a sea in which other genres swim. "

Love it! And supportable, I think. Thanks for the article.

 

[Windshadow]

I love this part it brings a smile each time I read it He was in top form that day and had published about 1/2 of his books at that time.

O: You’re quite a writer. You’ve a gift for language, you’re a deft hand at plotting, and your books seem to have an enormous amount of attention to detail put into them. You’re so good you could write anything. Why write fantasy?

Pratchett: I had a decent lunch, and I’m feeling quite amiable. That’s why you’re still alive. I think you’d have to explain to me why you’ve asked that question.

 

[Matt H.]

Heya all!

Back from my trip. I finished both City and Tau Zero and I have my reviews already partly written. Will be posting them soon. Hope everyone is well.

 

[Matt H.]

City by Clifford Simak [1952]
Open Road Integrated Media
247 pages
Reader Response by Matt H. [v 1.1] from Reading Odyssey
Rating: TBD

*** MILD POTENTIAL SPOILERS

Story Summary

Eight separate legends that have been passed down through thousands of years of dog culture tell the story and trajectory of earth’s various intelligent and sentient beings -- dogs, humans, human-mutants, robots and ants. The stories themselves also cover tens of thousands of years and there is much doubt among dog scholars as to their historicity. Did man in fact ever exist? Did the city ever exist? Why? What was its purpose?

Framed by their often puzzled doggish commentaries and introductions, the reader learns of man’s final fate, his relation to the dogs and the origin of their intelligence and culture, especially their abhorrence of killing. Most of all the myths tell of momentous and consequential tuning points in history and the fateful decisions of their legendary and folkloric heroes, in particular those of one specific human family, the Websters and their timeless robot servant Jenkins.

Critical Reader Response

These tales are really about extraordinarily fateful moments, and the momentous decisions of the Webster clan and their results that are also unexpected and odd. A highly original flavor is created. Not action-packed by any means, this book achieves its impact through careful build-up. Simak writes very well about pastoral nature and country life. At times his writing seems to take a measure of style from the great US Southern writers work in the first half of the 20th century. Especially in the earlier tales the tone is folksy and countrified even when treating of strange and outlandish subjects. And the juxtaposition of the two creates a unique effect. He is also expert in the realm of atmospherics and creates a creepy, misty, back woods feel and is vivid in portraying the natural phenomena of forest, hill and stream. Even with robots and talking dogs and socially conscious squirrels he keeps it aesthetically integrated and serious and to me it never went into the silly. This I think might have been the case with a less imaginative or skilled writer.

Among other things, the story is told of how human beings lost their dominance of the earth. The city as a phenomena was doomed from the beginning of the nuclear age. It was dissolved because it was a too tempting target for nuclear weapons. With humanity dispersed into the countryside no such opportunity existed. But with the fall of the city came changes in attitude, people became far fewer, far more independent and individualized (Though a vestige of a central government is evident in several of the tales.) As cities become a thing of the forgotten past, the “social glue” needful for urban life disappears and people become isolated and ruralized in their way of life. Lone, ageless mutants haunt the hills. Further on in the story we learn that a great majority of the remaining earthlings go to Jupiter where they are transformed into Jovian beings, never to return. A central item in humankind’s evolution is notably not a technology or scientific discovery, but a philosophy, “discovered”, or half-discovered by a close Webster friend, the Martian Juwain. The moral test put to this early Webster heir and his failing is especially poignant.

War, pacifism, natural predation and killing are central themes. And Simak’s take is sophisticated, hinting at some downsides to a totally pacifistic society – as we see in the final tale and the problem of the ants. Admirably, the books were (for me) almost allegory-proof. I got no sense that - oh, the ants are like the Soviets (or whatever). I’m a big fan of this kind of pure imaginative weirdness – and the book delivered it along with an emotional climax in each tale.

One of most fun-to-read aspects of the book is the wonderful puzzlement of the scholarly fictional dog commentators. Why do humans say and do the things they do? How can their thinking be so weird and alien? Could any of this possibly be true? Could this mythic creature, man have actually been responsible for bestowing intelligence on dogs? An entertaining tension is set up between the real human reader (to which the tales are clearly comprehensible) and the “wiser” dog scholars and their revealing semi-truthful speculations. But Dog culture too is shown to have large blind spots. They believe in a pre-Copernican, even pre-classical, universe in which the stars are known to be merely points of light. Space flight and other planets spoken of in the myths are rubbish and nonsense. At the same time, and it is not quite clear how, the dogs have a “science” that is in many ways far superior to ours. They have telepathy and mental or metaphysical powers that allow them to travel into other dimensions or alternate “time-lines”.

The super-humanly intelligent mutant, Joe was perhaps my favorite character. He is central to the events of the book but is completely opaque in motivation.. He just doesn’t give a hang about anything, and though apparently partly human (or descended at least from them) has no human hooks on which to operate, no way to be persuaded. He is a lanky, creepy, lurking woodsman, menacing, inscrutable and immensely powerful. Inter dimensional and non-corporeal vampires and the world-conquering ants round out the cast and if anything are even more terrifyingly unknowable.

Each of the eight is quite strong as a self-contained story. But one of the best, the story “Desertion” - about Jupiter and humankind’s choice no longer to remain human, is one that fits into the overall book the worst. It is a little too different from the rest in POV and tone to my mind. If you wanted to pull threads further, one could ask… Why should these ancient dog legends take the exact form of obvious sci fi short stories? Because the tales do not resemble myths in the slightest, but have all the features and clear marks of modern writing – naturalized dialog, developed characters, standard narrative technique, etc. They don’t read like myths and the reason for this is not explained. Within the conceit of the whole book, this could be pointed to as a nagging question.

So, the individual tales are excellent, highly imaginative and emotionally engaging. The connective tissue (introductions) is entertaining and super-imaginative too. However the seams do show pretty clearly, and there are a few logical weak spots here and there as I mentioned. The end of last tale is not at all bad, but doesn’t seem to quite measure up as an end for the entire novel- a liability of a highly episodic form. In fact it might be impossible to neatly tie-up such a fairly sprawling set of sub-plots and themes.

If you look at a dog, a special creature in relation to humans by all accounts, though they may not top the list of animal problem-solvers or tool users, I will not be the first to point out a unique look of human intelligence and sensitivity is there. Since I read this, I have not been looking at dogs quite the same way. It’s very easy to look and wonder… if dogs could have a culture, what would it be? That persistent wondering, along with many other merits, is a big thing for a novel to achieve.

 

[Matt H.]

Got my review of City posted. (there WILL be some touch-ups as always) Was quite impressed, with some qualifications noted in the review. Compared to others so far of the 1950's, it doesn't show much age... Great imagination, avoids any simplistic moralizing. Would love comments from the distinguished gallery!

Working away on review of Tau Zero now..

 

[Matt H.]

Tau Zero by Poul Anderson [1970]
Berkley Medallion
188 pages
Reader Response by Matt H. [v 1.5] from Reading Odyssey
Rating: Recommended, good adventure and more

Story Summary

The pioneering mission of the space ship Leonora Christine is to colonize a nearby star system. The crew's instructions are to try to locate a habitable planet within the system, and if they find none to return to Earth. The system, known simply as “beta” is close in cosmic terms, but nevertheless the trip is expected to take decades. The crew of the ship are fifty men and fifty women, carefully selected for their expertise and temperament. Among all of them, there is only one “constable” designated to enforce necessary discipline—Charles Reymont.

For this monumental journey, a new type of space drive, the “Broussard Engine” is to be put to its greatest test. As the ship accelerates to fractions of the speed of light, in keeping with the laws of relativity, time passes more slowly for those on the ship (this fact is indicated in the “tau factor” which decreases as the speed increases.) The faster they go, the more out-of-sync they become with time back on earth. Several centuries will pass there.

But something goes wrong. The ship hits an unexpected lump of matter which causes it to go off course and accelerate more than was planned. The mishap begins a cascading series of ever more desperate gambles, to preserve the ship and to eventually find some way and somewhere to stop. The original plan is abandoned and the strategy becomes to accelerate even more. Seconds for the crew become centuries of earth time… and the increase continues until billions of years are passing and billions of light years are traveled. Reymont will have a pivotal role in controlling the situation as human needs and nature are thrown in to a chaotic mix with technical realities, discipline, duty and purpose.

Critical Reader Response

This book has the great virtue of a very simple plot. It’s a lifeboat story and exploits all the obvious drama of such a situation – hope versus despair, fight to the end versus accept fate and enjoy last moments, discipline versus panic. Anderson gives us a satisfying exploration of all of it, and he made me care about the characters. I found it a good, enjoyable and thoughtful adventure story tastefully interwoven with science and tech which bolstered its credibility. There is decent dose of science in there, even a couple of equations. But any understanding of the science is quite dispensable to understanding the plot or enjoying the book.

Anderson gives us a plausible future. The society undertaking the space mission is cosmopolitan and liberal, even lax in some ways. This future seems grown-up and perhaps has left some of its hang-ups in the past. On earth at this time, Sweden has become an important political and technological powerhouse and many key crew members, including Reymont are Swedes. The Swedish theme is light however and merely imparts a slight flavor that worked fine for me. A somewhat detached attitude about sex and monogamy is portrayed, but creditably, I think, is also challenged and at times is shown to have limitations.

Though every spaceship is by necessity a “lifeboat”, this spaceship is a complex, fairly spacious even luxurious one. The original trip has been well-planned and well stocked with projects and diversions a-plenty for the crew. At first they busy themselves in artistic decoration and scientific pursuits and the studies they will need to colonize their new world. They have a fairly generous schedule of parties too, though alcohol is rationed. Here is an interesting question on an unknown subject…How can or could humans maintain their sanity, mental health, purpose and mission for decades on a space ship? Is it even possible? Anderson provides a plausible scenario on how they could, and explores the problems and conflicts that could exist too. As the emergency unfolds, Andersen excellently portrays the aching loneliness of utter isolation both in space and even worse in time – the awful knowledge that everything you ever knew has passed into oblivion billions of years ago.

Tau Zero is told in the third person. The characters vary in their prominence, but Reymont emerges as the central one. He is a likable hero—an infuriating hard-ass with a largely military core, further toughened by combat. He’s also scientifically brilliant, self-deprecating, has foibles, makes mistakes, doubts and reaches his breaking point too. At times he must be inhumane. He believes he knows better than the others. But he even violates his own code at times. Though most of the story he is smugly self-assured and has a charming angry gusto in his actions. But like most successful characters he grows.

I found this book to be a solid adventure story and much more. It was an economically-packaged, fun-to-read exploration of morale, discipline, leadership and human purpose. An avenue for criticism might be that the ending, though pretty satisfying overall lacked much of a twist. Does a book need a twist? I guess this one would prove that the expected unexpected is not always essential.

 

[Hobbit]

I always remember how dour this story was - whether or not it actually was, I'd have to reread!

I know some have had major issues with the science, but it didn't bother me - I'm not a scientist! But I remember how epic it was, and that's what I remember most, I think.

 

[Matt H.]

I always remember how dour this story was - whether or not it actually was, I'd have to reread!

I know some have had major issues with the science, but it didn't bother me - I'm not a scientist! But I remember how epic it was, and that's what I remember most, I think.

Hi Mark! Thanks for the comments... Yes "dour" could be applied. Like I said, the hero is a hard-ass, but by my reading he is also meant to be seen as flawed too and does undergo a measure of growth. Didn't find the main message to be "obey and do your duty"...although, that theme floats in the story. Those who tend towards the opposite were not all portrayed as villains.

The relativity-related science also bothered me too quite a bit, though I didn't mention it.

As you approach the speed of light *on ship* time completely stops relative to outside time? Which means you travel infinitely far in an infininately short time? So to someone on the space ship, you can cross a billion light years in one second if you're close to light-speed? Didn't seem right... (Help from physics buffs welcome) Pondering adding a sentence about my science-clueless doubts in the review..

 

[Windshadow]

I would never second guess Poul Anderson on his extrapolated science and it all depends on how close to lightspeed you venture... but of course your energy required to get to Tau Zero increases asymptotically to infinity.... this is something of a problem

 

[Vince W]

Tau Zero is one of my favourite Poul Anderson books. His ideas and stories were big and fun to me growing up. This book lost out to Ringworld in the Hugo's, another of my favs.

@Matt H., your comment about the story being economically packed is one of the hallmarks of Anderson's, and most Golden Age authors, writing. You will never find Anderson using two words when one will do.

 

[Matt H.]

Finished The Humanoids last night and formulating my review. A lot of the book was very exciting. But must say, I really hated the ending. With that ending it has a vaguely Odd John feel to it... though also very different, it suffers a little from the "reader rip-off" problem similarly... Will elaborate in review.