Tau Zero -

Author: Poul Anderson

Not to be confused with the Danish resistance fighter and publisher, Poul Anderson, this Poul Anderson wrote one of the most well respected hard sci-fi, space opera novels, nominated for a Hugo award in 1971. The starship Leonora Christine is powered by a Bussard ramjet and on course for a distant star system. As there`s no FTL in Anderson`s Tau Zero, the crew are looking at spending five years on the ship, with 33 Earth years passing before they arrive at their destination. Before the Leonora Christine gets there, she collides with a nebula damaging one of the integral parts of the engine and the crew accelerates the ship to get to a region where the gases and radiation levels are acceptable enough to try and repair the decelerator. As the crew tries to repair the ship, the time dilation screws up and they become more and more removed from ever seeing humanity ever again. Changing course, they try to locate another suitable planet to land on anywhere, but find they have to fly freely in their search, doomed to travel endlessly. In Earth time millions of years would have passed since they left. This all sounds very morbid, but it`s not all gloom and doom, with a surprisingly upbeat ending in Tau Zero. The reason why we love this book and for the gut-renching portrayal of the crewmembers' reactions to being the last of humanity and the prospect of being confined with their colleagues indefinitely make this a case study in good science fiction. Think of this novel as a mix between Hard Science Fiction and Space Opera. While science has proven the science behind Tau Zero as not possible, the book can still be appreciated as a great science fiction book without the actual pure science part being correct.