-quoted from here.
To circumnavigate the universe! And in so short a subjective time! Arthur C. Clarke mentioned a legend of a ship circumnavigating the universe in one day in The City And The Stars but that would have been with an FTL spaceship.
Do the characters in Poul Anderson's Tau Zero circumnavigate the universe? They fly outward between groups of groups of galaxies until the universe contracts, then circumnavigate the new monobloc and fly outward with it when it explodes. That cosmology is crude when contrasted with Anderson's later Starfarers. But there is no suggestion that the Tau Zero characters circumnavigate the first universe while it still exists.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I think Poul Anderson would agree with some of the tecnical criticisms made about TAU ZERO. In A.A. Jackson's CENTAURI DREAMS article "John Ford Fishback and the 'Leonora Christine' " (April 1, 2016), included an Addendum by Gregory Benford, who wrote in part: "We often discussed TAU ZERO, Poul once remarking that he wished he had taken more time to polish and expand the novel, since it already looked as though it might be the most remembered of his works--and indeed, seems so. He said he had written it in a few months and needed the money--its 1967 serialization in GALAXY helped, but it was tough going as a pro writer then. Plus he had a word limit on the hardcover.
Thus, with more time and not too strict a word limit, Anderson might have addressed some of the difficulties raised in this and Dr. Jackson's more recent article.
Ad astra! Sean
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