The Boat of a Million Years

Written by Paul Anderson

Narrated by Tom Weiner

Others have written science fiction on the theme of immortality, but in The Boat of a Million Years, Poul Anderson made it his own. Early in human history, certain individuals were born who live on—unaging, undying—through the centuries and millennia. This story follows them over two thousand years, up to our time and beyond—to the promise of utopia, and to the challenge of the stars.A milestone in modern science fiction and a New York Times Notable Book when first published in 1989, this is one of a great writer’s finest works.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Blackstone Audio
• Release date: Jun 15, 2011
• ISBN: 9781441792327

Paul Anderson

Poul Anderson (1926–2001) grew up bilingual in a Danish American family. After discovering science fiction fandom and earning a physics degree at the University of Minnesota, he found writing science fiction more satisfactory. Admired for his “hard” science fiction, mysteries, historical novels, and “fantasy with rivets,” he also excelled in humor. He was the guest of honor at the 1959 World Science Fiction Convention and at many similar events, including the 1998 Contact Japan 3 and the 1999 Strannik Conference in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Besides winning the Hugo and Nebula Awards, he has received the Gandalf, Seiun, and Strannik, or “Wanderer,” Awards. A founder of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, he became a Grand Master, and was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. In 1952 he met Karen Kruse; they married in Berkeley, California, where their daughter, Astrid, was born, and they later lived in Orinda, California. Astrid and her husband, science fiction author Greg Bear, now live with their family outside Seattle.

Reviews for The Boat of a Million Years

[drmaf-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Tremendous book, although it must be admitted it falls down a bit in the last third or so. The idea of certain humans being immortal and destined to wander through history cursed by always losing everyone they grow to love is not a new one, but Anderson handles it particularly deftly. His immortals are not particularly likeable characters, but they attract the reader's sympathy because of the weariness of their timeless journey and the losses they endure. The book starts to decline when it reaches the modern era and suddenly the existence of the immortals is revealed to a world which greedily grabs onto the gift of eternal life and promptly begins to abuse it. The idea of the Immortals building a spaceship and using their long life to explore the universe is a good one, but sadly it never really grabs the reader's interest. Still an engaging, wistful read.

[antiquary_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This is another of Anderson's late, long novels which I like less than his earlier ones. Much of it reads more like historical fiction tan science fiction, as a it traces the lives of a small group of people who seem to be like Tolkien's elves in that they live indefinitely long lives, rapidly healing from most common misfortunes, though thy can be killed if something drastically severe happens to them. The story begins in the late years BC when one of them accompanies the (historical) Greek adventure Pytheas on a journey to Britain, and continues down through the years until finally they do become explorers in outer space, seeking their own planet to colonize. The plot reminds me strongly of Heinlein's Lazarus Long story, which again is not one of my favorites of his work..

[jerry2book-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I liked the Sections until the 20th century. I guess writing about the future is not easy.

[liscarey · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is solid, if rambling, Anderson fun: scenes from the lives of a small group of immortals as they learn to hide their nature and cope with the natural suspicions of their short-lived compatriots. The oldest is Hanno, a Phoenicias sailor, and the youngest is an African-American slave who eventually uses the name Corinne Macandal. The others who make it to the end of book are Aliyat (Syrian), Svoboda (Ukrainian), Tu Shan (Chinese), Yukiko (Japanese), John Wanderer (Native American), and Patulcius (Roman). Agelessness is not enough to ensure long lives, and we meet other immortals along the way, who from carelessness, bad luck, or deliberate choice, don't survive to share the ultimate fate of the eight survivors. Or rather, as they come to be known, Survivors.

Most of the book consists of the adventures the individual immortals in various well-devoloped ancient settings. Hanno joins a Greek expedition to Britain and Scandinavia. Aliyat lives too long in Palmyra while it is changing from a Christian to a Muslim city, and escapes the harem to become a prostitute--in Constantinople for a while, where she briefly meets Hanno, who has become a Rus trader. (Well, Welsh, really, for certain values of "really," but the Byzantines regard him as Rus.) Svoboda, already a great-grandmother, leaves her village before she can be killed for witchcraft, to become a merchant's wife in Kiev (and briefly meets Hanno), and later a nun, and still later a Cossack and then a soldier for Mother Russia during the Second World War. (Not for the USSR; the Soviets are better than the Nazis for Svoboda's people, but not much.) Hanno meets Richelieu; John Wanderer, under the earlier name of Deathless, survives the great cultural change brought by the arrival of the horse, and later survives the conquest of the Native American tribes by the expanding United States of America (and meets Hanno. Hanno is the unifying theme in this book.)

It's in these visits to different times and cultures that the book is strongest; it's always been one of Anderson's great strengths. Where the book drags a bit is in the late 20th century, where Hanno becomes a remarkably predictable libertarian. Only a particularly petty and unhealthy puritanism, for instance, can possibly explain laws banning smoking in elevators. Hanno's nemesis, Edmund Moriarty, a.k.a. "Neddy," U.S. Senator from some unidentified New England state, is a cartoon, about as subtle as a ton of bricks. Even John Wanderer's mild reminders that there are some real problems that are most usefully addressed at a level beyond rugged individualism carry little weight beside the fact that Moriarty's own aide has complete contempt for Moriarty's hypocrisy, evidenced in such telling signs as the fact that he has quit smoking, and the senator is too smugly oblivious to notice. Despite the fact that this is the section in which all the surviving immortals make contact, and the one in which hiding successfully becomes a serious challenge, this is a dull, draggy interlude. There is no explanation, not even hand-waving, for how clever Hanno hides them all from the nefarious forces of modern civilization for the remaining decades before aging becomes a solved problem for everyone. We then have another not very interesting section, set in the same AI-controlled world as The Stars Are Also Fire and other later Anderson works, before the real story resumes. The immortals leave this boring non-story for a far more entertaining encounter with two alien species.

Not Anderson's best work, by any means, but very enjoyable even with its weaknesses.

[randystafford · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

My reactions to reading this book in 1992. Spoilers follow.A classic sf novel and classic Poul Anderson. This book is a masterpiece of structure and almost a catalogue of important sf themes. Anderson combines his historical interest with the hard science that made up his Tau Zero. (When Phoenician Hanno refuses to turn back from diverting Pytheas to search for the Others, he reminded of the captain in Tau Zero.) Anderson develops the implications of his immortal mutation: the pain of children and lovers and spouses growing old before an eternally young immortal’s eyes, the threat of insanity under the load of centuries’ memory, the need to constantly move about and remain obscure, the caution developed over millenia and the attendant long ranging planning, the hazards and restrictions on women immortals who eventually find only careers in prostitution are available to them (and come to despise men like Aliyat), the distance from mortal men and their values and their culture. Not all survive and some episodes in this episodic novel show that: Rusus who dies at Indian hands in the American West, the Danish bard who wills himself to death in the hopes he will be reunited with lovde ones at Christ’s return in 1000, the warrior who hopes for an immortality he already has by a glorious death. Anderson shows how different cultures react with immortals. Tu Shan and Okura reside in a mountain village in Nepal, revered as wise philosophers guiding the village. John Wanderer is a revered shaman. Hanno becomes a trader. Svobada merely suffers the vagries of Kazak history through Stalin. Aliyat poignantly transforms from a self-confidant Christian (all the immortals tend to view religion with a jauindiced eye since they see so many come and go) to a timid, frightened prostitute. Corinne transforms from ignorant black American slave to leader of a strange religion of self hope. Perhaps most pathetically (but still interesting and logical) Patulcius has been working as a low-level bureaucrat since the days of the Roman Republic, an invisible funtionary preserving civilization’s memory. The book begins to really pick up when the immortals begain to meet each other, to form their friendships and loves. The part set in 1975 and contemporary times brings in Poul Anderson’s libertarian bent (the immortals have a firm appreciation for freedom given the centuries of war and oppression they’ve seen). The final Thule section takes us far into a “post-biotic”future as many authors go. This is a future of routine sex changes, plentiful energy, nanofactories, and computer mediated communion and fantasies. Capitalism is dead (everyone gets a ration -- the only scarce resource is land), and the immortals, like the rest of man, is having hard time adjusting, finding a purpose in life. Tu Shan finds his art unwanted, totally replicable if wanted. John Wanderer wanders the futile reservations of those who have not accepted the immortality and conveniences of the modern world. (Anderson rightly brings up the analogy of the Shakers. Like that earlier group who retreated from modernity, these groups are dying out. I fully agree with Anderson in that some people would seek this type of retreat. Still, having immortality at the price of children (something the natural immortals can have) seems a plot contrivance. If you have the biotech for routine sex changes, you can cure sterility.). Hanno longs to explore. Ozuka is trying to find a way to develop new arts, new insights into the meaning of existence. Man seems at a dead end with little curiosity to physically go beyond the moon. The immortals, in their quest, in their very oldness, represent the vital childhood of man. They push outward in the Pytheas and meet aliens and look forward to developing a common insight, gleaned from all sentient races, to explore and farm new worlds. They hear of the leftovers of other races who, like man on Earth, are developing into something beyond ken. These malcontents, like the immortals, are perfectly suited to their universe because, as Anderson points out, only maladopted organisms have to evolve. It is an ironic, intriguing, stirring end to the epic. The immortals have seen so much change yet are changeless, well adapted (more so than normal man). This book has a wealth of sf themes: cultural change, biotech, nanotech, alien contact, machine intelligence, alien contact, immortality, theology. It is quintessential sf is sf is the literature of change. It is quintessential Anderson in its politics, its use of history and science. The part I liked best, though, was “The Kitten and the Cardinal” section where Hanno reveals his secret to Cardinal Richelieu and asks for official protection. Richelieu wisely refuses citing the fuel such a revelation would put on the fires of religious wars and tells Hanno that he’s seen much history but, unlike Richelieu, he’s never been in it. Hanno, in the final section, drives history forward in his dictatorial explorations. I also liked John Wanderer’s comment that “Change is a medicine bundle. You must refuse it altogether, or take the whole thing.” The Indians realize this when the horse brings new prosperity and a new kind of competition and war between tribes.

[pitcherbooks · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

An interesting book with an interesting concept. The first 80% of the book takes its time, chapter by chapter, to introduce the rare human immortals born into and surviving from the iron age to our own time. It reads more like an interesting historical fantasy until the timeline finally passes our time and heads into the future. The examination of "struggle" as integral to human success and perhaps to the very definition of humanity was thought-provoking.

[datrappert · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Blow by blow account of the thoughts of Ivan Ilych as he lays dying, wallowing in his own misery and self-pity and ruminating over the meaningless of his life. As usual, I can't really get inside the Russian mindset, and the only really effective parts of the book for me are some of Tolstoy's observations about home decorating (seriously). I'm sure I will think about this from time to time, however; and when I find my self on MY death bed, I won't be reading Tolstoy.

[theabominabledavid · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

The book had promise, but it tailed off toward the end. I was almost 100 pages from the end when I stopped reading - I just didn't care any more.

[zzamboni_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I was a little worried after reading the other reviews, but in the end decided to push forward and read this book myself. To be honest, it gets quite tedious, particularly in the first half of the book, in which the same story repeats itself endlessly: immortals living their lives, losing their loved ones, moving on, and searching for other immortals. The second half gets much more interesting (starting with Chapter XVIII), when all the immortals finally find each other, and in the last chapter (XIX), which takes place far into the future (these two last chapters comprise almost half of the book)Overall, I'm glad I finished it. The book explores some of the possible consequences in society, the human mind, and scientific exploration, of immortality, which I found quite interesting.

[clong_818048 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This is one of the very few books I can ever remember giving up on after reading halfway through. I had no empathy for or even interest in the protagonists--immortals who live on and on while those around them die. I have enjoyed several of Poul Anderson's sci fi novels, but not this one. Maybe it got better in the second half; I don't think I'll ever find out.

[phyllis2779 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The book was interesting but I found parts of it slow-going. I liked some of it and some parts were slow. I read a huge chunk of it in a relatively short time, lost interest and then cam back months later to finish it. Some pieces didn't relate all that well to others. I found as if the end piece, going off into space to look for alien civilizations, came of of nowhere, with little lead up. Only one character seemed liked he the explorer spirit. The other main characters seemed like wanderers or survivors.

[aeceyton · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

the ending was hard to swallow

[jklugman_2 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Very disappointing novel that is basically a cosmic paean to American rugged individualism and the pioneer spirit that occasionally veers uncomfortably close to a ham-fisted libertarian polemic. The protagonist, "Hanno", is a blatant Mary Sue character. Although this is a story about immortal human beings who experience thousands of years of human history, Anderson has little interesting to say about life, love, or his characters. His writing for the love scenes is especially execrable.