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''Tau Zero'' is a
hard science fiction Hard science fiction is a category of science fiction characterized by concern for scientific accuracy and logic. The term was first used in print in 1957 by P. Schuyler Miller in a review of John W. Campbell's ''Islands of Space'' in the Novemb ...
novel by American writer
Poul Anderson Poul William Anderson (November 25, 1926 – July 31, 2001) was an American fantasy and science fiction author who was active from the 1940s until the 21st century. Anderson wrote also historical novels. His awards include seven Hugo Awards and ...
. The novel was based upon the short story "To Outlive Eternity" appearing in ''
Galaxy Science Fiction ''Galaxy Science Fiction'' was an American digest-size science fiction magazine, published in Boston from 1950 to 1980. It was founded by a French-Italian company, World Editions, which was looking to break into the American market. World Editi ...
'' in 1967. It was first published in book form in 1970. The book is a quintessential example of "
hard sci-fi Hard science fiction is a category of science fiction characterized by concern for scientific accuracy and logic. The term was first used in print in 1957 by P. Schuyler Miller in a review of John W. Campbell's ''Islands of Space'' in the Novemb ...
", as its plot is dominated by futuristic technology grounded in real physics principles. It was nominated for the
Hugo Award for Best Novel The Hugo Award for Best Novel is one of the Hugo Awards given each year for science fiction or fantasy stories published in, or translated to, English during the previous calendar year. The novel award is available for works of fiction of 40,00 ...
in 1971.


Plot

''Tau Zero'' follows the crew of the starship '' Leonora Christine'', a colonization vessel crewed by 25 men and 25 women aiming to reach the nearby star
Beta Virginis Beta Virginis, a name Latinised from β Virginis, is a star in the equatorial constellation of Virgo. It has the proper name Zavijava (), and, despite its designation ' beta', is the fifth-brightest star in Virgo with an apparent visu ...
. The ship is powered by a
Bussard ramjet The Bussard ramjet is a theoretical method of spacecraft propulsion proposed in 1960 by the physicist Robert W. Bussard, popularized by Poul Anderson's novel '' Tau Zero'', Larry Niven in his ''Known Space'' series of books, Vernor Vinge in h ...
, which was proposed 10 years before Anderson wrote the book. This mode of propulsion is not capable of
faster-than-light Faster-than-light (also FTL, superluminal or supercausal) travel and communication are the conjectural propagation of matter or information faster than the speed of light (). The special theory of relativity implies that only particles with zero ...
travel, and so the voyage is subject to relativity and
time dilation In physics and relativity, time dilation is the difference in the elapsed time as measured by two clocks. It is either due to a relative velocity between them ( special relativistic "kinetic" time dilation) or to a difference in gravitational ...
: the crew will spend 5 years on board, whereas 33 years will pass on the Earth before they arrive at their destination. The ship accelerates at a modest constant rate for most of the first half of the journey, eventually achieving an appreciable percentage of the speed of light, and the goal is to decelerate at the same rate during the second half of the journey by reversing the ram scoop fields. However, the ''Leonora Christine'' passes through a small
nebula A nebula ('cloud' or 'fog' in Latin; pl. nebulae, nebulæ or nebulas) is a distinct luminescent part of interstellar medium, which can consist of ionized, neutral or molecular hydrogen and also cosmic dust. Nebulae are often star-forming regio ...
before the half-way point, damaging the deceleration field generators. Since the Bussard engines must be kept running to provide particle/radiation shielding, and because of the hard radiation produced by the engines, the crew can neither repair the damage nor turn off their ramjet. The text consists of narrative prose interspersed with paragraphs in which Anderson explains the scientific basis of relativity, time dilation, the ship's mechanics and details of the cosmos outside. As there is no hope of completing the original mission, the crew increase acceleration even more; they need to leave the
Milky Way The Milky Way is the galaxy that includes our Solar System, with the name describing the galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars that cannot be individually distinguished by the naked eye ...
altogether in order to reach a region where the local gas density, and the concomitant radiation hazard, are low enough that they can repair the decelerator. The ship's ever-increasing velocity brings the time dilation to extreme levels and takes the crew further and further away from any possibility of contact with humanity. The initial plan is to locate and land on a suitable planet in another galaxy. Millions of years would have passed since their departure, and in any case they would be millions of light years from Earth. However, they find the vacuum of intergalactic space insufficient for safety; they must instead travel to a region between superclusters of galaxies to make repairs. They do, but the extremely thinly spread matter is then too dispersed to use for deceleration. They must wait, flying free but essentially without the ability to change course, until they randomly encounter enough galactic matter to decelerate enough to search for habitable planets. To make the waiting time shorter, they continue accelerating through the galaxy clusters they encounter, more and more closely approaching the speed of light with tau, or
proper time In relativity, proper time (from Latin, meaning ''own time'') along a timelike world line is defined as the time as measured by a clock following that line. It is thus independent of coordinates, and is a Lorentz scalar. The proper time interval b ...
, decreasing closer and closer to zero. Throughout the story, Charles Reymont, the ship's Constable, fights to keep hope alive in the confined community and at the same time maintain order and discipline, sometimes at great emotional cost to himself. He explains his system to his partner Chi-Yuen Ai-Ling: The storyline is similar to that of the long poem and later opera ''
Aniara ''Aniara'' ( sv, Aniara : en revy om människan i tid och rum) is a book-length epic science fiction poem written by Swedish Nobel laureate Harry Martinson from 1953 to 1956. It narrates the tragedy of a large passenger spacecraft carrying a c ...
'', in which the ship was unable to stop and doomed to travel endlessly, but ''Tau Zero'' has a more upbeat ending. By the time the ship is repaired, tau has decreased to less than a billionth and the crew experience "billion-year cycles which pass as moments". But by the time that they are ready to attempt to find a future home, they realize that the universe is approaching a Big Crunch. (The Big Crunch was a leading theory of the fate of the universe at the time this book was written.) The universe collapses (a process the starship survives because there is still enough uncondensed hydrogen for maneuvering outside the growing singularity) and then explodes in a new
Big Bang The Big Bang event is a physical theory that describes how the universe expanded from an initial state of high density and temperature. Various cosmological models of the Big Bang explain the evolution of the observable universe from the ...
. The voyagers then decelerate and finally disembark at a planet with a habitat suitably similar to Earth, on which the vegetation has a vivid bluish-green color.


Prominent characters

* Ingrid Lindgren, Ship's First Officer – Swedish; she and Reymont had a relationship until he learned of her liaisons with Boris Federoff; she becomes the "face" of authority and the link between crew and passengers. * Charles Reymont, Ship's Constable – Interplanetarian (i.e. no Earth-country citizenship, by choice), veteran of two previous interstellar flights; determined to maintain order and ensure survival in the face of disaster and hopelessness, he becomes the ship's ''de facto'' leader (although he defers to the ship's hierarchy). * Boris Fedoroff, Ship's Chief Engineer – Russian * Chi-Yuen Ai-Ling, Planetologist – Chinese; after Reymont's break-up with Ingrid, she and Reymont begin a long-term relationship. * Lars Telander, Ship's Captain – Swedish; a devout Protestant and a strong leader, but the dangers, uncertainties and responsibilities piled on him following the disaster seem to slowly erode him. * Johann Friewald, Machinist – German; a man of courage and good nature; after the disaster, he becomes Reymont's right-hand man in maintaining order and ensuring survival. * Elof Nilsson, Astronomer – Swedish; a brilliant scientist, but arrogant, physically unattractive and completely lacking in social graces to the point where he is unable to maintain relationships with people; his relationship with Sadler quickly self-destructs, but later he and Ingrid begin a partnership. * Jane Sadler, Bio-Technician – Canadian; after a brief relationship at the book's beginning and her failed relationship with Nilsson, she and Friewald become permanent partners. * Emma Glassgold, Molecular Biologist – Nationality not stated, lived most of her life in Israel; apparently (though not specifically stated) a devout Christian; as the story develops, she develops a deep (but non-sexual) relationship with Norbert Williams. * Norbert Williams, Chemist – American; brash and somewhat loud-mouthed and hot-headed, but capable of deep feeling (proved by his relationship with Emma Glassgold).


Origin of the title

The novel's title is derived from the value of the time contraction factor Tau (\tau), where \tau = \sqrt where ''v'' is the velocity of the ship and ''c'' the
speed of light The speed of light in vacuum, commonly denoted , is a universal physical constant that is important in many areas of physics. The speed of light is exactly equal to ). According to the special theory of relativity, is the upper limit ...
. At a given
velocity Velocity is the directional speed of an object in motion as an indication of its rate of change in position as observed from a particular frame of reference and as measured by a particular standard of time (e.g. northbound). Velocity is a ...
, the duration that is experienced on the non-accelerating Earth may be multiplied by tau to yield the duration experienced on board the ship. Therefore, as Anderson writes, "the closer that he ship's velocitycomes to he speed of light the closer tau comes to zero", and the longer the time that passes outside the ship for a duration inside. The ship in the story intended to attain a tau of 0.015, but as they continue to accelerate beyond the original schedule, it decreases much further. This usage of tau is somewhat idiosyncratic. In physics, tau is more usually used to represent the ''total'' elapsed time of the moving clock, so Anderson's "tau factor" is what would conventionally be written d\tau/dt. Physicists also prefer to use gamma (γ) to represent the
Lorentz factor The Lorentz factor or Lorentz term is a quantity expressing how much the measurements of time, length, and other physical properties change for an object while that object is moving. The expression appears in several equations in special relativit ...
in
time dilation In physics and relativity, time dilation is the difference in the elapsed time as measured by two clocks. It is either due to a relative velocity between them ( special relativistic "kinetic" time dilation) or to a difference in gravitational ...
, which in Anderson's terminology would be 1/\tau.


Themes

The social themes in this book are much lighter than the scientific themes. The latter include everything from black matter, time dilation, the theory of relativity, and Big Crunch theory of the universe. Reymont, the constable, regularly persists as a hyper-masculinized police officer, while first officer Ingrid basically acts as a buffer between Reymont and Captain Telander. These three characters are responsible for the majority of all decision-making on the ship, but Reymont is the only one who makes regular chapter-to-chapter appearances. In between these interactions, there are numerous romantic entanglements. In the final, ending parts, much of the novel deals with the crewmembers' reactions to being the last remnants of humanity, and the prospect of being confined with their colleagues indefinitely. Though they were prepared to "lose" twenty Earth years during their journey and spend five on board the ship, the knowledge that they are being carried further and further into the future has various effects on the psychology of the characters. The novel describes the changing and extreme time dilation effects as well as events from the perspective of both the ship and an external observer. Incidental to the main themes is the political situation on the Earth from which the protagonists set out: a future where the nations of the world entrusted
Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic country located on ...
with overseeing disarmament and found themselves living under the rule of the Swedish Empire. This sub-theme reflects the great interest which Anderson, an American of
Danish Danish may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the country of Denmark People * A national or citizen of Denmark, also called a "Dane," see Demographics of Denmark * Culture of Denmark * Danish people or Danes, people with a Danish a ...
origin, took in
Scandinavia Scandinavia; Sámi languages: /. ( ) is a subregion#Europe, subregion in Northern Europe, with strong historical, cultural, and linguistic ties between its constituent peoples. In English usage, ''Scandinavia'' most commonly refers to Denmark, ...
n history and culture. In later parts of the book, characters compare their desperate situation to that of semi-mythical characters of Scandinavian legend, with the relevant poetry occasionally quoted. In addition, there is a fist fight between an American astronaut and a Swedish astronaut about who built the best empire, as well as other nationalistic rhetoric.


See also

*
Tau Zero Foundation The Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project (BPP) was a research project funded by NASA from 1996-2002 to study various proposals for revolutionary methods of spacecraft propulsion that would require breakthroughs in physics before they could be r ...
– Successor to the
NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...
Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Program The Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project (BPP) was a research project funded by NASA from 1996-2002 to study various proposals for revolutionary methods of spacecraft propulsion that would require breakthroughs in physics before they could be re ...
, named after ''Tau Zero''


References


External links

*
Tau Zero
at Worlds Without End * {{Poul Anderson 1970 American novels 1970 science fiction novels American science fiction novels Novels by Poul Anderson Works originally published in Galaxy Science Fiction Hard science fiction Doubleday (publisher) books Novels about the end of the universe Novels about time travel Fiction about nebulae