Starfarers

_Starfarers_ by Poul Anderson is an excellent "hard science fiction" novel, epic and thoroughly absorbing. The basic premise is that in the relatively near future SETI astronomers find evidence of intelligent extraterrestrial life, not by receiving and decoding any communication from distant worlds, but by discerning interesting and at first unexplainable astronomical phenomena, occurrences that with time and study lead researchers to conclude that they are evidence of starships traveling very near the speed of light. With the information obtained from these studies and from the further research that these discoveries inspired, humanity was able to construct similar vessels and reach the stars, discovering and then settling worlds in other star systems. However, trips to these faraway beings were not at first possible, owing to their vast distance from Earth. It would take something close to a ten thousand year round trip journey to visit these beings which came to be dubbed the "Yonderfolk." Thanks to the effects of time dilation, only a couple of years would pass for those on board any ship that made the attempt while many thousands of years would pass for those on Earth. I was reminded at times of the Joe Haldeman's excellent _ The Forever War_, a fantastic novel that also explored the effects of time dilation on people traveling at relativistic speeds. Eventually, a massive and highly capable starship, _Envoy_, was constructed and a topnotch crew of ten people were selected, including among them highly skilled pilots, engineers as well as a planetologist, physicist, biologist, and a linguist. The majority of the book is their epic journey, their amazing discoveries, adventures, and personal triumphs and tragedies. What they found at the end of their trip to the stars of the Yonderfolk was in many ways just the beginning of a story that made for very gripping reading. The book is well named indeed, as Anderson, though devoting most of the novel to the intrepid crew of the _Envoy_, explored the concept and ramifications of starfaring. There were several chapters in the book that were essentially interludes, vignettes exploring the evolution of humanity and the worlds they had colonized, chronicling the rise and fall of civilizations and especially how starfaring people, the crews of near light-speed ships, fit in. I found his ideas logical and intriguing; owing to the effects of time dilation, a culture formed around the starfarers, one that over hundreds of years and then millennia increasingly separated them from the cultures of the worlds they called upon to trade exotic chemicals, alien species, Earth species for the colony worlds, new technologies, and cultural treasures from the distant settled worlds as well as eventually from the alien intelligences that they encountered. What could have been a lot of exposition and "info dumps" was made into some very good short stories, stories that helped explain the culture and technolog

Well, almost "Tau Zero," one of my favorite all time scifi novels. Anderson presents another adventure in the same mode. Few authors write scifi like this anymore. There is a sense of wonder and a sense of uplifting the human spirit to greatness that you see in Wells, Verne, Clarke, Stapledon, Baxter, Benford, etc. The characters are all well delineated such as the affected hypomanic woman pilot who acts like she is an avatar of Robert Burns. The aliens are wonderfully characterized and multifaceted. One is also left with questions which are left unanswered, contributing to the sense of expansiveness. The book gives you pause to think about the big picture. In my humble opinion, this is what scifi should be, a kind of practical philosophy. "Starfarers" succeeds at this game admirably. Do not let the archaic language put you off; it is Anderson's tongue and cheek version of future speak!

I liked this book enormously. I was especially fond of the various side lines in the book involving the other alien races. Poul seemed to pack more ideas in this book than many authors manage in their lifetime. It is true that there aren't answers to everything, but that's what life is like. One of the best books I've read this year.

I've been reading Poul Anderson for almost 40 years, and this one just blows me away. Lyrical prose, poetic constructions, good science, and the thought of Envoy all those thousands of light-years from home. What a fine book!!

In Starfarers, Poul Anderson explores once more how existence rewards those who dare to strive for something beyond themselves. He does this with a monumental journey of exploration as his backdrop, the saga of the crew of the starship Envoy on a 10,000 year voyage to make first contact with an alien civilization. Being the excellent storyteller that he is, he doesn't let the science or the vistas overwhelm the human dimensions of the tale (in fact, the few parts of the book that dragged for me were when he was focusing on the science and technology as opposed to how those things affected people).If you're an Anderson fan (as I am, in case you hadn't noticed!), I believe you will definitely enjoy this book. While the theme in it is similar to that of Anderson's recent Guthrie books (and echoes themes found throughout much of his earlier work), being a single-volume novel it's a tighter and more riveting story, more like the excellent Boat of A Million Years. The human characters are believable, the alien settings and cultures startling but well-drawn, and the writing downright moving at times.