ot too far in the future, mankind has begun to colonize the stars at sublight speeds. The latest mission is the launch of the Leonora Christina toward the Beta Virginis system, where a previous robot probe has revealed a potentially habitable planet. Thanks to the mysteries of Einsteinian time dilation, the 50 men and women aboard—including our hero, Charles Reymont, the ship's "constable"—will use up a few years of their lives in the journey, while decades will pass on Earth. Inconvenient, but tolerable. And even if the new planet proves inhospitable, they'll just turn around and come home, rather than set up a colony.
Piece of cake. About as dangerous as crossing the Atlantic was for Columbus.
But two subjective years into the outward-bound trip, an accident robs the ship of its ability to slow down. They can steer and accelerate, but that's all. To shut off the engines and make repairs at this speed would expose everyone onboard to a deadly sleet of particles and radiation.
Naturally, consternation and confusion are at first immense. But then a plan is made. The ship's fuel is cosmic debris, and there's plenty of that. Why not ramp up their speed so that they can, in a short subjective time, reach the empty expanse between galactic families of stars, where they can shut down the engines and do repairs? Then they'll re-enter a convenient galaxy, find a different planet, and set up their colony. True, millions of objective years will have passed, but life will go on.
The ship reaches a zone between galaxies and finds the cosmic medium still too thick to permit repairs. Now she has to accelerate even more, to reach the "inter-clan" region, between families of galaxies. Naturally all of this uncertainty, danger and estrangement is taking an immense physical and psychic toll on the hapless humans.
Repairs are eventually made in the depths of space. Now the Leonora can slow down, if she finds sufficient mass again. But that proves logistically harder than planned, and the ship is forced to go on and on and on, faster and faster, gobbling up time and light-years alike, until the Big Crunch itself looms as the final obstacle in their path.
A star affected by his era
No one ever called Poul Anderson a New Wave writer. He had been around too long by the time the New Wave broke, was too politically and aesthetically "conservative." Yet he was undeniably affected by the currents of change sweeping SF during the period of 1965-1975. His fiction from this era exhibits a different tone and tenor than his earlier works, while still maintaining his core attitudes, tropes and concerns. Tau Zero is remarkably Moorcockian in its trappings and premise, while still undeniably Old Guard. The existential questions raised here, the futility of striving and of science, the deracination from the natural world, the sacrifices demanded of individuals engaged in joint enterprises—all of these issues would be meat and gravy to the New Wave crew, and Anderson's narrative is surprisingly simpatico to writers of the time and those who would come later, such as M. John Harrison and Barry Malzberg. (In fact, Malzberg's Galaxies [1975] seems almost like an extension of Anderson's book.)
Where I suppose Anderson differs most from the New Wavers is in his choice of protagonist and in his final affirmation of the indomitable human spirit. Charles Reymont (and, to a lesser degree, the woman he loves, first officer Ingrid Lindgren) are never-say-die Heinleinian competent folks. Which is not to say they are untouched by Anderson's patented Nordic melancholy. It is they and their unshaken peers who guide the ship to a final safe berth. Naysayers and the weak-willed are cajoled or shamed or tricked or punished into service. This leadership ability and its asserted value to the human race are utterly alien concepts to, say, Ballard, where such a person as Reymont would have been seen as a deadly false messiah.
Anderson's science, of course, is top-notch. Thirty-five years onward, this book reads absolutely consistent with current thought, except for the depiction of the empty center of our galaxy rather than the giant black hole deemed present these days. Nor are the allegorical and spiritual aspects of the miracle voyage slighted.
Very early in the book, Anderson lays out his aesthetic: "Their flight was not less exhilarating for being explainable." God is in getting the details right.
