{"id":1267,"date":"2016-11-25T21:52:41","date_gmt":"2016-11-26T03:52:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/?p=1267"},"modified":"2016-11-25T21:52:41","modified_gmt":"2016-11-26T03:52:41","slug":"a-look-at-poul-andersons-to-outlive-eternity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/a-look-at-poul-andersons-to-outlive-eternity\/","title":{"rendered":"A Look at Poul Anderson’s “To Outlive Eternity”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"anderson-to-outlive-eternity\"<\/a>To Outlive Eternity<\/em><\/a>
\nPoul Anderson
\nBaen<\/a>
\nmass market paperback $7.99
\nebook $6.99<\/p>\n

This post isn’t about the entire collection, but the title story.\u00a0 “To Outlive Eternity” was serialized in Galaxy in 1967.\u00a0 An expanded version was published in 1970 as the novel Tau Zero<\/em>.\u00a0 I read the novel approximately 25 years ago.\u00a0 Today being Anderson’s birthday<\/a>, I wanted to read something of his that was longer than a short story, but not too long.\u00a0 “To Outlive Eternity” was perfect.<\/p>\n

Anderson was a master at many forms of science fiction and fantasy.\u00a0 He had a degree in physics; not surprisingly, much of his hard science stories revolve around physics and astronomy concepts, one of the many reasons I like his work.\u00a0 “To Outlive Eternity” falls into this category.<\/p>\n

A group of scientists and professional spacemen are in a ship accelerating towards another star system to explore a possible Earth-like planet when they encounter a nebula that has drifted into their trajectory.\u00a0 They survive the passage through the nebula, but not without damage.\u00a0 They’ve lost the ability to brake.\u00a0 In order to repair that part of the ship, they will have to turn off the thrust.\u00a0 But the engines that are propelling the ship forward are what are powering the force fields that protect the crew and ship from the Doppler shifted radiation.<\/p>\n

In order to fix the brakes, they have to turn off the force fields.\u00a0 To safely do that, they need to be where there is virtually no hydrogen and the radiation background is weak.\u00a0 That means they need to be in intergalactic space.\u00a0 But in order to get there in a reasonable amount of time, they have to go faster and faster to increase relativistic time dilation.\u00a0 Of course there will be a number of complications which will require ingenuity and grit to overcome.<\/p>\n

For a story that’s half a century old, it held up pretty well.\u00a0 I don’t buy some of the scientific tricks Anderson pulls, but I’m not sure I did when I read Tau Zero<\/em> all those years ago.\u00a0 Memory fades; while I remember enjoying the novel version of the story, I don’t recall of the scientific justifications Anderson used in it.\u00a0 I’m not an astrophysicist.\u00a0 I’m sure some of my colleagues would find quite a bit to object to.\u00a0 However, I’m willing to suspend my disbelief.\u00a0 Anderson was a good enough writer that suspension of disbelief is a pretty easy thing in most cases.<\/p>\n

\"galaxy-magazine-april-1967\"<\/a>Lest you think this is a dry story where the science is all there is, let me disabuse you of that notion.\u00a0 Anderson peoples his tale with a large cast of characters.\u00a0 Even so, he focuses on the ship’s constable, a man who by the nature of his responsibilities has to make the hard decisions.\u00a0 Even when the captain can’t or won’t.\u00a0 The story is as much about how the constable keeps the crew sane and working to survive as it is about the scientific underpinnings.\u00a0 Since I’ve moved into a type of management position in my day job, I had a greater appreciation of the human aspect of the story, more than I would have at any earlier period of my life.<\/p>\n

There are seven stories in To Outlive Eternity<\/em>, including the Hugo winning “No Truce With Kings”.\u00a0 I’ve read that one; I’m not sure about some of the others, but I’m going to eventually read the whole book.\u00a0 The stories are all from the 1950s and 1960s.\u00a0 Those were good decades for Anderson.\u00a0 He was establishing himself as a writer.\u00a0 Science fiction was still primarily a short fiction field, and Anderson did most of his best work at shorter lengths during those years.\u00a0 In the 1970s, as novel came to dominate the markets, Anderson would write some of his best known works, such as The People of the Wind<\/em>, Mirkheim<\/em>, Orion Shall Rise<\/em>, and Avatar<\/em>, just to name a few.<\/p>\n

If you’ve not read Anderson, read him.\u00a0 You’ll be in for a treat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To Outlive Eternity Poul Anderson Baen mass market paperback $7.99 ebook $6.99 This post isn’t about the entire collection, but the title story.\u00a0 “To Outlive Eternity” was serialized in Galaxy in 1967.\u00a0 An expanded version was published in 1970 as the novel Tau Zero.\u00a0 I read the novel approximately 25 years ago.\u00a0 Today being Anderson’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[812,285],"tags":[715,774],"class_list":["post-1267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-baen-books","category-poul-anderson","tag-baen-books","tag-poul-anderson"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3P5pJ-kr","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1267"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1267\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1272,"href":"https:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1267\/revisions\/1272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}