7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Epic hard science fiction novel that explores big ideas, May 9, 2006
_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 technology of Earth and its sister worlds when the _Envoy_ eventually returned in the very distant future.
To a lesser extent Anderson also explored some related themes (as to me any truly good science fiction should do so). For instance, is the urge to explore a thing deeply engrained in humanity, or it is instead maybe cultural, or even perhaps found only in certain individuals? Also, what is the end result of human history; what is the nature of the "ultimate" or "final" human society, or can there ever be any such thing? Can humanity ever achieve a stable population on a world, creating a society free of war, civil strife, and living in an ecologically sustainable manner, or is that type of society too alien for our species (or maybe any species) to achieve? Will all starfaring species share the same ultimate fate, or is each species too different to share the same fate? What is the impact of thousands and tens of thousands of years of history on a society and on an individual in terms of imagination, creativity, and initiative?
A fantastic novel, one I highly recommend.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Tau Zero Redux, January 26, 2000
By A Customer
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!
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A Long Read---Patience Required!, July 19, 2001
I have read several novels that introduce many characters that are on a long intersteller voyage, some do well and you get to know the characters. ENCOUNTER WITH TIBER by Buzz Aldrin and John Barnes did a great job with this but I can't say the same for STARFARERS. This novel has so many characters that they are nearly impossible to keep track of and which person did this or that, much of it just became an unintellible mass.
Is there anything of redeeming quality in this novel? Yes, it gives a very good, even excellent story, of man's contact with alien species, and depicts science and technology very knowledgeably, so it seems. Character development is great, but as before too many characters for my taste. It is a long novel and takes patience to read.
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