Poul Anderson, Tau Zero

This review can be seen as a complement to an earlier review of this book that was posted a few weeks ago on SFF Masterworks:

Poul Anderson had a very long career writing both fantasy and SF for several decades before his death in 2001.  Last year, I reviewed Anderson's 1954 fantasy novel, The Broken Sword, and found it to be a better adaptation of the Norse sagas than the other 1954 epic fantasy classic, Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.  Yet despite the critical acclaim Anderson received for The Broken Sword, it never got the level of popular support that it probably deserved.  Anderson's biggest-selling novel, the 1970 SF novel Tau Zero, differs significantly from The Broken Sword, not just in content, but also in prose style and characterization.  Despite realizing that it is very difficult to compare novels, even if they are by the same author, that are wildly divergent in form and focus, I found Tau Zero to be a less enjoyable read than Anderson's other works that I've read to date.

The premise behind Tau Zero is that in the 23rd century, humans have perfected a propulsion system called the Bussard unit after a hypothetical molecule-harvesting propulsion system that would allow for ships to be propelled at speeds just under the speed of light.  Following the equation ,  where "tau" is the relationship between actual speed and the theoretical limits of light speed (the closer the resulting fraction gets to zero, the faster the speed that the ship is traveling, with the attendant time dilation aboard due to relativistic time/speed relationships), the ship Leonora Christine is designed, with scheduled acceleration and deceleration intervals, to carry its crew of 50 individuals to a neighboring star in roughly five years of ship time (or a shade over 30 Earth years), with a new colony to be started there.

Sound complicated?  It is to some extent, but Anderson plays around with this concept in what was then a relatively novel format.  He focuses much more on the individuals aboard the ship rather than on the science of the travels.  If anything, the science within this book becomes so stretched in places that some may be pardoned if they wonder how a deus ex machina plot situation was executed without an actual or even metaphorical divine plot intervention.

Anderson's story is told a bit haphazardly.  He opens the story with what I presume is a satirical commentary on NATO-Warsaw Pact tensions of the 1960s by noting that there had been a nuclear war that had seriously hurt human societies and that in the aftermath of the conflict, all of the nations agreed to turn over all of their nuclear weapons to Sweden, with the notion that the Swedes were too pacifistic and weak to do more than act as a mild-manner policeman.  Outside of using this to introduce one Swedish crewmember,  Ingrid Lindgren (one might wonder what kept Anderson from having her first name be Astrid), this subplot is dropped rather quickly (and thankfully).

Anderson focuses on character interactions and their reactions to the devastating news that the Bussard engine had been damaged during passage through a nebula and they would not be able to decelerate safely until they had at least reached a pocket of virtually no gaseous material.  He takes particular interest in the sexual politics aboard the ship and while there are occasions where the crew's moral/religious views differ and thus provide fodder for some discussion of the origins of these viewpoints, these scenes are peppered with rather odd descriptions such as this post-coital scene:

He admired the sight of her.  Unclad, she could never be called boyish.  The curves of breast and flank were subtler than ordinary, but they were integral with the rest of her - not stuccoed on, as with too many women - and when she moved, they flowed.  So did the light along her skin, which had the hue of the hills around San Francisco Bay in their summer, and the light in her hair, which had the smell of every summer day that ever was on Earth. (p. 57, Berkley Books edition)

If this were the only hokey scene in the novel, I would just write it off as being unrepresentative, but this sort of clunky use of metaphors crops up several times in the novel, lessening the impact of some of the scenes.  I just had a very difficult time taking this novel seriously, as Anderson just seems to switch between playing up a situation for melodramatic effect and setting up a deeper discussion on matters of the universe, its origins, and human places within it.  As the ship sails on, faster and faster as its "tau" approaches zero/light speed, billions of years pass by in an instant, making it almost impossible for there to be any real scope to be realized; just a whole bunch of zeroes tacked on, more or less.  This lack of scope affects the gravitas of the scenes late in the novel.  Where perhaps Anderson intended to show the destructiveness of time, the results come across more as a campy Star Trek-like approach to seeing the end of time/space in a "Big Crunch" situation.

While I suppose Tau Zero could be labeled as a "fun" sort of "hard SF" novel to read, I am uncertain if I would consider it to be a "Masterwork."  Anderson's prose is uneven and he seems undecided as to which tone is best for this novel.  The characters and their individual situations were adequate for the first half or so of the novel, but as the story progressed, every felt more flat and distorted, perhaps the storyline equivalent to the time dilation that was occurring inside the ship.  This unevenness in story presentation and prose dampened my enjoyment significantly.  While I would not call this novel a "poor" novel, "uneven" seems to be the most apt descriptor for it.  Certainly not one of Anderson's best efforts, based on the other two novels of his that I've read.

Poul Anderson, The Broken Sword, or the "other 1954 fantasy novel"

"The world is flesh dissolving off a dead skull," mumbled the troll-woman. She clanked her chain and lay back, shuddering. "Birth is but the breeding of maggots in the crumbling flesh. Already the skull's teeth leer forth, and black crows have left its eye-sockets empty. Soon a barren wind will blow through its bare white bones." She howled as Imric closed the door. "He is waiting for me, he is waiting on the hill where the mist blows ragged on the wind, for nine hundred years has he waited. The black cock crows - "

Imric locked the door anew and hastened up the stairs. He had no liking for making changelings, but the chance of getting a human baby was too rare to lose. (p. 13)

Although I had heard of Poul Anderson and had seen his second novel, The Broken Sword (1954), praised by authors such as Michael Moorcock, I never got around to buying a copy of this book until a few weeks ago, after I read Richard Morgan's Suvudu article on his problems with J.R.R. Tolkien. In the furor that emerged there and on various blogs and forums, Morgan mentioned Anderson as an author who wrote a more "authentic" [my word for what Morgan was describing, although he might have used it in one of the numerous exchanges last month] fantasy that did not provide a cop-out, consolatory ending, but instead was the other Norse-influenced fantasy novel of 1954 that kept most of those sagas' Götterdämmerung elements in the narrative. Curious to know if Morgan's high praise of Anderson was merited, I imported a copy of the Gollancz Fantasy Masterworks edition of The Broken Sword to see what my initial impressions would be.

When I wrote my reflective essays on Tolkien, I kept referring back to the occasional problems that I would have with Tolkien's prose, or rather with the opaqueness that often would occur when Tolkien would shift to a more archaic, formal narrative voice. I found that this, combined with said language often being tied in to Tolkien's introduction of his invented historical events to the narrative, to be a distraction that detracted from the "present" story. Anderson also utilizes a narrative voice that resembles that of the old Norse sagas. However, this prose style enhances the story rather than weakening it, due to Anderson's story being set in a slightly-fantasized England of the earliest Norse sagas of the 8th and 9th centuries CE.

The quote at the beginning of this essay illustrates how well Anderson uses this literary mode. The elf lord, Imric, seeks to have a changeling replace the newborn human child of Orm the Strong, Valgard, as humans fostered in the elvish Alfheim are of great use against the elves' primary enemies, the trolls. But instead of spelling it out in laborious detail, as might be expected if Anderson had used contemporary prose styles, his use of a quasi-epic poetic style forces the reader to consider the import of each word. In the passage quoted above, the changeling Valgard is the product of a cruel rape. The troll mother's hate-filled lament takes on the form of a prophecy, with death's skull and suffering's barren wind conjuring images of devastation without any hope of redress.

This passage and a later one introducing the titular broken sword presage fell and horrific tragedies to follow. Just as many of the Norse sagas contained horrific weirds and mass slaughtering, so too does Anderson's take on this ancient narrative form. The stolen child, renamed Skafloc, and his changeling double, Valgard, have intertwined fates that involve each losing everything near and dear to them. Anderson is unrelenting with their characters, showing each to be pawns in greater games being played by the old gods against the growing menance of the White Christ, whose cross is the bane of elf, troll, and god alike, as well as them being tools of the elves and trolls in their immemorial battles for supremacy over the other. While at times these two characters come perilously close to being cardboard cutouts of dynamic, conflicted characters, for the most part I found myself caught up in their personality differences. Each is the mirror of the other. If Valgard be sullen and quick to enter the bezerker rage, Skafloc is a smooth, seductive operator. If Skafloc be comfortable with his role as Imric's foster human child, Valgard never manages to fit in with Orm's other children. Anderson masterfully uses their disparate character traits to drive the plot towards its damning, bloody end.

The broken sword itself is an intriguing plot element. A mysterious gift to Imric, its fell destiny as being the accursed weapon that Skafloc is fated to use to tragic effect stands out in comparison to Tolkien's Ring. Both are "evil" artifacts, but whereas Tolkien's Ring could be seen as a metaphor for the glamors cast by temptation, Anderson's sword, later forged anew, can be viewed as being a representation of fate and of the tragic suffering that humans will endure, whether it be at the hands of gods, chance, or humans themselves. Take for instance this passage after Valgard discovers his true origins:

"I am strong," he growled, deep in his throat. "When I was a viking, I broke men with my bare hands. And I have no fear in battle, and I am cunning. Many victories have I won, and I will win many more."

His hands fell slackly to his lap and his eyes darkened with horror. "But what of that?" he whispered. "What of that? Why am I so? Because Imric made me thus. He molded me into the image of Orm's son. I am alive for no other reason, and all my strength and looks and brain are - Skafloc's!"

He stumbled to his feet. Blindly he stared before him, and his voice rose to a scream: "What am I but the shadow of Skafloc?" (p. 241)

Here Valgard takes on the role of the accursed victim of fate, one doomed to kill those around him. It is a bleak, tragic life, one that is portrayed in turns as being sympathetic and loathsome. I found myself drawn to this solitary character, reminded of another Tolkien character, that of Túrin. But whereas Tolkien's Túrin finds momentary pleasures that simultaneously lessen and increase the magnitude of his black fate, Anderson's Valgard has no moments of cheer, no hopes of love, nothing but an almost nihilistic desire to have all symbols of his past erased by fire and his axe. Skafloc, however, with his fated encounter with Freda, balances Valgard's unrelenting darkness by his gradual fall from a diffident playboy type to a suffering, love-stricken fool whose love proves to be another example of fate's capricious cruelty. As a tragedy, The Broken Sword is one of the earliest (and best) produced in fantasy literature.

The conclusion to The Broken Sword fulfills the promise of the earlier plot revelations and of the characters' intertwined, mirrored personalities. As rage and suffering builds throughout the final third of this 274 page novel, the narrative becomes more taut, as the plot tension is distilled into short, terse paragraphs that pack a strong punch. The formerly-broken sword's trecherousness is revealed and the Skafloc/Valgard duo discover this in ways true to their characters. There is no sense of "closure," only that their tragic tale is but one small part in a greater, unfolding tragedy that is destined to spill out into all the realms at some indeterminate date.

Although I worried that reading The Broken Sword less than a week after finishing The Lord of the Rings might lessen the effect on me, I found the opposite to be true. I can see why critics of The Lord of the Rings (the story of The Silmarillion is a different matter to be addressed at a future date) blast him for not going far enough with his narrative at times, "settling" for narrative cop-outs that fail to meet the promise of the set-up. Anderson certainly does not shy away from showing the trials and tribulations suffered by his characters. They are not saints, but neither are they empty malevolent ciphers. Instead, by showing them as lusty, hearty characters, Anderson breathed life into Skafloc and Valgard and the characters surrounding them, enabling the reader to be caught up in their tragic tale. It is a shame that The Broken Sword is out of print in the United States, as I believe there is a market for this sort of dark, brooding fantasy, one that can serve as a complement (if not a straight alternative) to the sort of epic fantasy influenced by Tolkien.