Whereas the image
here quotes James Blish praising Poul Anderson's
Tau Zero in the highest possible terms, the British sf author,
Bob Shaw, said in conversation that, in the second half of the novel, cosmological and interpersonal narratives alternate without being integrated so which of these two critics is right? Blish extravagantly implies that, as cosmological hard sf,
Tau Zero cannot be improved upon whereas Shaw suggests one way in which it might be improved. I have not kept up with more recent sf so has any of Anderson's successors done a better job with this kind of sf?
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I have read TAU ZERO three or four times and I never thought the cosmological and interpersonal narratives of the second half of the book jarred incongruously with each other. Rather, I thought it was true to how humans were likely to actually behave for Anderson to show us those stresses and strains among the crew.
I can't speak about other authors, but my view is that in STARFARERS and GENESIS Anderson surpasssed TAU ZERO. Well, Stirling was not quite satisfied with how the crew was chosen for the "Envoy" in STARFARERS. I argued the problems with the crew could have been caused by corner cutting by the expedition's organizers.
Sean
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