Poul
Anderson is, and mayhaps always will be, the speculative fiction writer who
most integrates myth and legend into fantasy and science fiction. The former relatively easy given myth and
legend are typically already half fantasy, the latter is the more difficult
given one of the aims of science fiction is believable futuristic extrapolation. Failing spectacularly with The High Crusade (a novel that sees
Medieval knights take a space ship to another planet to fight blue-skinned
aliens), his 1970 Tau Zero is a more
subtle mix. While lacking in fully
humanized characters, it nevertheless captures the ideal of a mythological
journey in hard sf form.
Tau Zero is the story of a group of fifty astronauts on
a mission to a distant star system. The
journey planned to take five years subjective time, thirty-three years actual
time, the group know they are leaving their loved ones behind for good; the
Earth they will return to in sixty-six years will be in differing circumstances. Their ship, the Leonora Christine, the most sophisticated, technologically advanced
space craft ever assembled by humanity, is capable of accelerating the vessel
to near light speed with its massive Brussard ramjet. Blast off going off without a hitch, when the
ship flies through a nebula, however, a wrench is thrown in the works. The gas pedal essentially stuck to the floor,
the astronauts must find a way to remove the figurative wrench as they inch
closer to light speed and further from the reality they are most familiar with.
Tau Zero operates at two surface levels and one
sub-surface. The science surrounding the
Leonora Christine, as well as
astrophysics at large, play a significant role in the narrative. Anderson takes small breaks to explain
various technicalities and pass along bits of knowledge relevant to theoretical
space flight. Characters occupy the
other significant portion of the narrative.
Relationships formed and broken, much of the story is the interpersonal
interaction amongst the crew, which, in politically correct form, contains the token
ethnic representatives, Swedish most prominent among them. The vast scale of
the venture combined with the human expectation and reaction to the events
which occur forms the subtext: a people caught in an expedition beyond their
ability to immediately influence. Or, in
other words, a boat caught in a storm on a journey to a place none can predict. With Anderson’s penchant for Norse myth, there
are parallels. The connection to myth likewise
offers an explanation for limit of one, sometimes two dimensions of the
characters.
Not fully
fleshed, the main issue with Tau Zero
is the lack of realism and empathy generated by Anderson’s descriptions of
humanity. Many of the characters
archetypal rather than real, it wouldn’t be a problem were the narrative to
have maintained a mythic tone—as Anderson successfully does with many other of
his stories, e.g. The Broken Sword. Attempting realism yet not wholly succeeding,
the result is a juxtaposition of tone: somewhat exaggerated characters attempt
to convey realistic emotion and behavior.
This gap becomes particularly obvious as, among the several facets of
humanity Anderson attempts to portray, one is the most difficult subject to
capture realistically on the page: love and relationships. Lingrid and Reymont, for example, mostly feel
as through they are going through the motions of getting together, breaking up,
etc., rather than innately involved as living, breathing humans. Had Anderson kept his character profiles
simpler (like real myth), the balance of science and plot would have been more
effective. As it stands, the attempt at
realism falls mostly flat.
In the
end, Tau Zero is the straight-forward
story of a crew of astronauts who embark on an interstellar journey aboard a highly
technically conceptualized spacecraft.
Part hard sf and part legend, the human stories do not color fully and
would have been better as pale representations.
But the journey they undertake—and are taken on—is all the stuff of
legend, literally.
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