Tau Zero, Poul Anderson
Tau Zero, Poul Anderson
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Tau Zero

Author: Poul Anderson

Narrator: Neil Hellegers

Unabridged: 7 hr 45 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/11/2016

Categories: Fiction, Science Fiction


Synopsis

This science fiction novel describes the epic voyage of the spacecraft Leonora Christine, which will take a fifty-strong crew to a planet some thirty light years distant.From practically the very first page, Tau Zero sets scientific realities in dramatic tension with the very real emotional and psychological states of the travelers, exploring the effect of time contraction due to traveling at near-light speed on the human psyche. This tension is a dynamic that Anderson explores with great success over the course of the novel as fifty crewmembers settle in for the long journey together. While they are a highly trained team of scientists and researchers and therefore professionals, they are also a community of individuals, each of them trying to create for him or herself a life in a whole new space—or, literally, in space.It isn’t long, however, before the voyage takes a turn for the worse. The ship passes through a small, uncharted nebula that makes it impossible to decelerate the ship. Their only hope is to do the opposite and speed up. But acceleration towards and within the speed of light means that time outside the spaceship passes even more rapidly, sending the crew deeper into space and further into an unknown future.

About Poul Anderson

Poul Anderson (1926–2001) was one of the most prolific and popular writers in science fiction. He won the Hugo Award seven times and the Nebula Award three times, as well as many other awards, including the Grand Master Award of the Science Fiction Writers of America for a lifetime of distinguished achievement. With a degree in physics and a wide knowledge of other fields of science, he was noted for building stories on a solid foundation of real science, as well as for being one of the most skilled creators of fast-paced adventure stories. He was author of over one hundred novels and story collections, several hundred short stories, and several mysteries and nonfiction books.

About Neil Hellegers

Neil Hellegers grew up in New Jersey and attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned a BA in theater arts and a minor in psychology before getting an MFA in acting from the Trinity Rep Conservatory in Providence, Rhode Island. He moved to New York City in 2003 and, since then, has made a career of theatrical performance, percussion, theater education, and audiobook narration. He currently lives in Brooklyn with his wife and son.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Baba on October 05, 2021

SF Masterworks 64 - an unflinchingly hard science fiction story about a group of highly trained scientists and planet colonisers stranded in space in a craft that is steadily approaching light speed, know as Tau Zero in this reality; there's some focus on the crew dynamics, but this is mostly all ha......more

Goodreads review by Henry on January 02, 2025

The dark cold is all, a starless night the eyes look but can not see, the eternal blackness, sinks into the very soul in an uneasy calm which never ends in the forever Space nothing no lights viewed, perpetual shivers and fright, we are alone in the Cosmos traveling in an inhabited starship of weari......more

Goodreads review by Apatt on December 01, 2016

Tau zero Poul Anderson is a writer's writer, David Brin, Vernor Vinge and others swear by him and Vinge even dedicated his epic A Deepness in the Sky to him. His influence on their work is fairly obvious, Anderson knew his science and was able to employ that knowledge to max effect in his fiction. He......more

Goodreads review by Manny on March 15, 2009

Poul Anderson doesn't understand Special Relativity very well (an interstellar ramscoop spaceship can't carry on accelerating indefinitely, for all sorts of reasons). His understanding of General Relativity is even worse. Even if the Universe is cyclical, whatever would it mean to be outside the mon......more

Goodreads review by Bradley on September 24, 2015

As a novel to showcase ideas, it succeeds. As a novel to showcase misogyny and thin characters in an attempt to bring real storytelling to hard SF, not so much. I'll talk of the good parts first. I learned, or eventually recalled something that hadn't immediately made a connection to me right away bu......more


Quotes

Tau Zero has been hailed as the quintessential hard SF novel, and it’s a well-deserved accolade…an exceptional story, grounded in proper science, and brimming with mind-boggling ideas, hard science, and a scale rarely matched.” Worlds without End

“The ultimate hard science fiction novel.” James Blish, Hugo Award–winning author


Awards

  • Hugo Award