Starfarers

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The Starfarers of Catan

In between the story jumps regularly back to the development of human society over the gaps of many thousand years and to that of the Kith , the closed group doing the starfaring, who are often shunned by the rest of Earth. The Kith have their own settlements on different planets, where some retire to from time to time.

Starfarers

Earth has changed over the long period of time taken up by the voyage of the Envoy , and no one is much interested in spacefaring anymore. On Harbor, a colony of Earth, the Envoy crew finds remainders of the Kith society, which still are connected to spacefaring.

But the last ship to plot trade-routes in space, the Fleetwing , disappears from tracking. The cause is a Zero-Zero-failure ripping off the rear part of the ship.

The Envoy sets out on a rescue mission as soon as possible but twenty years of outside time have passed by the time they reach the Fleetwing. They save the remaining crew, thus building a foundation of experienced spacefarers to start spacefaring anew with the knowledge acquired from the Holont.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Works by Poul Anderson. Orbit Unlimited New America.

KIRKUS REVIEW

Maurai and Kith Orion Shall Rise. Operation Chaos Operation Luna.

Retrieved from " https: Wagner Support SF Reviews. Book cover art by John Harris. If, while reading Starfarers, you can't seem to escape the uncomfortable feeling that Anderson has been this way before, it's because he has.

Ooh, so much better. Starfarers is Anderson's latest take on the theme of deep space voyaging, and although he brings some new approaches — and most importantly, some new science — to his storytelling this time, the familiarity of it all ultimately breeds plenty of contempt.

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This story is as fresh as yesterday's breakfast. And the fact that it isn't even populated by interesting characters most unusual for Anderson doesn't help. The occasional evocation of an old-fashioned sense of wonder can't compensate for the fact that in Starfarers we sadly have what may be one of the worst novels of Poul Anderson's illustrious career.

And I say that with genuine pain, people, as I'm a big fan of this man!

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The story begins in the not-too-distant future, when humanity has both encountered evidence of intelligent life deep in space, and, with the help of good old quantum physics, figured out a way to develop an almost-light speed "zero-zero" drive that will at long last get people to the stars, and, hopefully, out to where these aliens might be. Anderson, as he has done many times before, cobbles together a collection of stock SF characters to populate the Envoy, a spacecraft which, due to relativistic time dilation, will take a whopping ten thousand years of Earth time to travel to its appointed destination and back while only five years seem to pass in the lives of the crew.

You would think that Anderson, with his track record, could take this opportunity to develop some fascinating backstories for these voyagers. After all, it's no small thing to volunteer to go off on a space flight that will ultimately return you to a "home" perhaps even more alien to you than the place you're going to visit.

Starfarers by Poul Anderson

But instead, Anderson surprisingly glosses over his characterizations. We get little feel for what is motivating any of these intrepid starfarers beyond some vague sci-fi notion of "wow, the universe, so much to discover!

The crew of the Envoy is composed entirely of idealized politically correct stereotypes, ethnically diverse to a fault, and often to the point of absurdity.

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