Live girlfleshLet 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.
Until recently my experience with science fiction has been limited to pretty much Arthur C Clarke, whose books of course I love. Now that I have begun to branch out, I see the possibilities the genre has to offer. I will look back on Poul Anderson's "hard" sci-fi novel Tau Zero as one of the reasons I fell in love with sci-fi all over again.The book follows a group of colonizers sent from Earth to start anew on a more-or-less Earth-like planet orbiting a star a few light-years down the road. They run into trouble in the form of a rogue phantom nebulina whose dense particles damage their ship so that they can't decelerate, ever. They immediately acknowledge their predicament and more-or-less accept their fate: an endless journey to the end of time and space, forever alone, with no hope of returning to Earth or reaching their new home. When the catastrophe hits, Anderson uses the opportunity to explore two major ideas.The first is the science and philosophy behind and implications of Einsteinian relativity and near-light speed space travel. The book almost presupposes a familiarity with relativity, but Anderson does step aside several times to refresh the reader on the concept (which is singularly fascinating, to be sure). He points out an ultimately gigalithic (made up word) consequence of traveling at any sizable fraction of the speed of light: time dilation. This means that as a person, let's say, moves faster and faster relative to another, less time passes for him or her than for that other person. This is explained in mathematical terms by Anderson, which I can't really relate here, but which the Wikipedia page for the book explains nicely. In essence: as the colonists' ship, the Leonora Christine, is forced to continuously accelerate, as its "Tau" decreases, more and more time passes for the universe outside while it seemingly remains constant for the people onboard. While there is a limit to a body's velocity (the speed of light), there is no limit to a its “Tau factor”. Ten billion years can go by for everyone else in an hour of your time if you are moving fast enough, relative to them (if they happened to be moving the same speed as you, they would experience the same amount of time). The scientists and technicians onboard the ship literally watch as the universe ages around them. This leads to the second idea Anderson explores: the interpersonal and psychological effects of such significant time-dilation.The colonizers on board begin their mission hopeful and excited, albeit expecting a degree of loneliness. They know they won't be able to return to Earth if their mission is successful. Even if it isn't, by the time they get back to Earth, many decades will have passed (though only a few years will have for them) and the world may be unrecognizable to them. But when disaster hits, they quickly realize that being cut off from the Earth for a few decades is hardly the worst kind of isolation. Accelerating forever through space means being cut off from the entire universe. Even if they manage to repair the damage and return to Earth in a decade or so of their own time, millions of years will have passed back home, at least, more or less. Humanity is lost to them, forever – it would be either long extinct or evolved (biologically, culturally, and/or technologically) to an utterly alien state. But chances are that the Leonora Christine will simply accelerate forever through time and space until its life-support systems give out (a closed, artificial ecosystem operating at less than 100% efficiency will never last very long), slowly killing everyone on board. A special kind of loneliness sets in, flanked by hopelessness and despair. Anderson explores the sociopolitical situation that arises (Reymont's misunderstood and compassionate iron-fistedness is one of the most interesting human elements of the book), along with the psychological states and complex relationships that emerge as coping mechanisms (which are successful to varying degrees). The human side of the story perhaps isn't handled as brilliantly or deeply as the scientific/philosophical side of the story is, but the characters are interesting and did resonate with me.Tau Zero is far from a perfect, but it has become one of my very favorite science fiction books. To me the scientific theme is the incomprehensible immensity of time, the philosophical one is our ultimately paltry piece of the cosmic temporal pie, and the human theme is humanity's persistence to survive even in the face of this mind-staggering reality. The book took me to a place only a precious few other books have, admittedly more through its ideas than through its characters. Nonetheless, this is a truly wonderful piece of idea-driven story telling, and is a leading example of why I have come to appreciate science fiction overall. Highly recommended, especially for anyone looking to get into science fiction in general. It is a great place to start.
What do You think about Tau Zero (2006)?
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
—Megan Baxter
...According to the blurb on the cover, James Blish considers this book the ultimate hard science fiction novel. There is something to be said for that. I have rarely read a novel with such rigorous scientific underpinnings. Anderson had a degree in physics and in other novels it is quite clear that he thought about the properties of fictional planets he created. In Tau Zero he takes it way beyond that and makes physics the main character. The scope of the novel, in time and space is almost beyond comprehension (something the author points out several times in the text). Anderson takes hard science fiction as far as it will go, in that sense it is the ultimate novel in this particular sub-genre. That being said, it does not escape the shortcomings generally associated with the sub-genre. I'd say it is a must read for fans of hard science fiction only.Full, somewhat spoilerish Random Comments review
—Rob
I was hoping you'd read this. My grasp of Relativity (special or otherwise) is such that I can easily imagine myself integrating fictional inaccuracies as scientific fact, and I just can't risk it!
—Manny
