★★★☆☆
Synopsis: Scientists build a generation ship to explore a star without the knowledge of governments down on Earth. Antimatter from a brown dwarf star nearby helps to propel them to near light velocity. But they fail to brake due to a technical error and pass the target star after 14 years.
As they get close to light speed, time becomes relativistic – thousands of years pass while it’s just a matter of years for them.
Review: This story is similar to Haldeman‘s better known novel „Forever War“, as it applies relativistic time and compares its passing down on Earth and on the spaceship.
There‘s some interesting physics in the story with the antimatter brown dwarf star (I don’t think that this is a topic nowadays anymore with radio astronomy‘s insights), and the relativistic time.
The story’s won the Hugo and Locus Awards back in 1977 and nearly managed to stand the test of time. As with many classic Hard SF narrations, newer findings break some basic elements in the story. One has to go into a special state of mind to ignore those (or maybe isn’t aware of them) to enjoy the further course of the story.
The plot itself is jumpy and only halfway believable – a generation ship of that size couldn’t probably be abducted by scientists. Military officials will be involved heavily. Also, I don‘t believe that 3,000 people are able to keep a secret of that importance – someone will surely leak the news.
All of this isn’t discussed in the story, the author drives the plot through those bumps and clearly seeks to achieve a sense of wonder in his readers.
Some 30 years ago he managed to do this convincingly. Nowadays, while being enjoyable, it isn’t worth 5 stars anymore.
Meta: isfdb. Originally published in Analog, I‘ve read it in Shapers of Worlds. It‘s been anthologized quite often.
Reißwolf 