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The Boat of A Million Years Poul Anderson 9780812531350 Books

Download As PDF : The Boat of A Million Years Poul Anderson 9780812531350 Books

The Boat of A Million Years Poul Anderson 9780812531350 Books

I enjoyed the book, but I'll read it only once. Poul's idea for the book is great; following a group of mortals from 2000 years ago to 1000 years in the future, but the execution leavs the reader wanting. The characters are thin, and you don't really "get to know" them like you want to. The book bounces around from time period to period, and character to character, making it a difficult read since you feel like you are starting a new book every fifty pages or so. But worst of all - the ending is completely unsatisfying. I was hoping that after a few hundreds of pages I'd get to some sort of interesting explanation of the human condition as witnessed by a group that has experienced most of recorded history. If Anderson tried to do this, I think he failed. This ones getting donated.
Oh, and there's a ton of sex, so probably not appropriate for some ages.


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The Boat of A Million Years Poul Anderson 9780812531350 Books Reviews

I've never heard of Poul Anderson, but purchased this based on a recommendation in a magazine. After the first chapter, I wasn't sure, but after the second or third chapter I was hooked. Given the premise of a small number of humans who never age beyond their mid twenties, it is interesting to see how they survive as others around them grow old and die. They must move constantly as friends begin to note that they are "different" and, perhaps, demonic or whatever. It is a sweeping novel over many centuries, but continues to hold your interest. Well worth the time to read it.
This is a tale of immortals. The direct ancestor of this book is Robert A. Heinlein's "Methuselah's Children." This is hardly surprising, given the libertarian affinity of Anderson and Heinlein. However, Anderson's work is much more detailed and ambitious. He starts in the Bronze Age and ancient Tyre and travels through our own age into the distant future. As usual, Anderson laces his writing with older words and descriptions not found anywhere except ancient epics. (It just wouldn't be Anderson without a "yonder" in there!) In his treatment of the immortals, Anderson describes the practical problems of memory, learning new languages, avoiding "witch burning," and finally, even our own scientific acquisitiveness. Unlike Heinlein's immortals (like the loquacious Lazarus Long), Anderson's people remain people; a bit wiser than the average, but not immune from their own prejudices, pasts, and proclivities. Indeed, by the end of the book, the immortals become the only "real" people left.
I love this book, and highly recommend it to lovers of science fiction and history.
I found it interesting that Anderson made all of his protagonists into libertarians. He gives a lot of examples of how governments turn against their citizenry as they acquire more power. Anderson describes how immortals would chafe at erosions of personal freedom. He also shows how America's civilization, too, can fall. He particularly takes shots at the IRS.
Much of the book consists of the immortals searching for others like themselves. Our immortals come from all over the world Phoenician, Syrian, Russian, Gaul, Native American, Chinese, Japanese, and African-American slave. The latter part describes the future, and how the immortals cope with a world where they can at last reveal themselves, but which has passed beyond their understanding. The future Anderson depicts closely resembles the future he describes in the Harvest of Stars series. I just love the way this book ends. It offers hope and closure.
If there is a downside to the book, it is that some of the characters and chapters are not as interesting as others. Hanno, the eldest immortal, is the most opinionated, creative, and paranoid of his kind. Some of the chapters surrounding the other characters do not move as quickly. I found myself skimming past some sections that I'd read before.
Perhaps the least believable immortal in my mind is John Wanderer, the Indian (Native American, or pick your own favorite title). He seems to accept the lot of his people rather too easily. Mind you, I don't have an immortal's viewpoint, but I think I'd become depressed or mad as hell, not so assimilationist, as he comes to be. The rest of the immortals seek and find inner peace in their own ways, and their behaviors seem reasonable from my own limited view.
Also, sometimes Anderson's desire to provide sensory detail can get intrusive. By golly, he puts you into third century Gaul, but enough with the smells already! And oddly enough, just around the time where conjuring up a sense of place is important (the future), this type of sensory detail is replaced by airier discussions of mental states and human-computer mental interactions.
exploring a very simple concept, relating to the existence of a certain number of persons who are immortal and who find themselves, since the moment in time they were born, in an endless reality, facing a non ending life experience which, after some thought, one has to find infinitely sadder than one would think when pondering the advantages of immortality.

Poul Andersson gives us the story of the world, from the era of the phoenicians onwards into a future ahead of us, and through these chapters in history said immortals cary on with their deathlessness and slowly discover each other, and sometimes redisover each other after a couple of centuries, and go on and on and on with their unending life, with the trauma of surviving dozens of families they belonged to, and being forced to move on before their eternal state of youth is disovered.

Very well, very humanely, written, and, at least for me, very thought provoking. What a sad thing it must be, against all common belief, to not being able to die.

By all means, read this book, whose only fault lies in a somewhat too lenghty end.
I found this novel a disappointment and I stopped reading it a bit more than half way through. The novel traces a group of unconnected immortals through history. The idea of tracing a group of immortals through history is intriguing. But it is poorly executed. Each chapter is a disconnected short story. Some of the stories are moderately interesting, some of the stories are boring and pointless, and collectively the whole book is a rambling disjointed mess. Most of the characters are cartoon sketches that are not fleshed out. Without exception all the stories leave you unsatisfied.

The novel never goes where you want it to go. Incredibly it misses all the great events of history. There are no meetings with Jesus, Buddha, Socrates, Issac Newton, George Washington or anyone else. There is no witnessing the fall of Rome, the Italian Renascence, the voyage of Columbus, the American Revolution or any other historic events. Despite living for centuries the characters never grow. You never feel them mourning the deaths of elderly children, crying for the lost centuries, laughing at new inventions, or learning to be better or wiser people.

I gave the novel two stars because I thought the idea was interesting and the novel does contain flashes of good writing here and there. And in fairness this idea would have been hard to execute even in the hands of the best science fiction writer. But I wouldn't recommend this novel.
I enjoyed the book, but I'll read it only once. Poul's idea for the book is great; following a group of mortals from 2000 years ago to 1000 years in the future, but the execution leavs the reader wanting. The characters are thin, and you don't really "get to know" them like you want to. The book bounces around from time period to period, and character to character, making it a difficult read since you feel like you are starting a new book every fifty pages or so. But worst of all - the ending is completely unsatisfying. I was hoping that after a few hundreds of pages I'd get to some sort of interesting explanation of the human condition as witnessed by a group that has experienced most of recorded history. If Anderson tried to do this, I think he failed. This ones getting donated.
Oh, and there's a ton of sex, so probably not appropriate for some ages.