Tau Zero by Poul Anderson is the October Classic Read at the Classic Science Fiction Message Board. The novel was based on a 1967 short story, “To Outlive Eternity.” It was expanded into a novel and published in 1970. It was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1971.
Tau Zero follows the crew of the starship Leonora Christine, a colonization vessel crewed by 25 men and 25 women aiming to reach a distant star system.
The text consists of narrative prose interspersed with paragraphs in which Anderson explains the scientific basis of relativity, time dilation, the ship’s mechanics and details of the cosmos outside.
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