The Boat of A Million Years

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.

In Poul Anderson's The Boat of A Million Years, a group of humans who for some reason never age beyond young adulthood, never grow sick, and never die unless killed, live their lives thru the wasteland of time on planet earth. This is less a novel than a series of short stories, vignettes, and novellas, that tell of episodes in the existences of eleven men and women who must bear the brunt of ongoing life. Beginning in the 300's BC on a sailing vessel crewed by Hellenistic explorers, we meet the oldest of the known "immortals" a slightly sad, though resolute man of science, who does not understand his condition but endures it with an end to eventual comprehension. After this, we pass from ancient Rome, to Byzantium, Tartar-age Kiev, Scandinavia, rural China, Shogunate Japan, Renaissance France, pre-Civil War Ohio, the American west among a settlers versus Comanche's standoff, Stalingrad in 1942, Turkey in the mid-twentieth-century, America in the 1980's, during a time of a political witch hunt nearly reveals the existence of the immortals who have loosely gathered together for protection and mutual understanding. Finally the novel pushes on into unnumbered time. We are introduced to an earth eons yet to come, and see the remaining immortals planning to leave their home planet behind and venture into space, making their greatest voyage yet, still ignorant as to the truth of what they are, still searching for answers...

A long, demanding book, but one full of interesting and well-though out hypotheses. Here eternal life is less a blessing than a curse and we sense the pain and tragedy such an existence would bring. By the novel's mid-point, we do not envy any of these men and women what they have. I found this book highly realistic in its psychology, in its minute details (many of which made me stop and think, "I'd never have thought of that.") and remarkable in its achievement of recreating historical periods down to the tiniest detail. A fine classic!

The premise of this book is interesting; for some unknown reason a few immortals are born here and there around the planet. This is not so much a novel as a disjointed collection of vignettes and short stories that cover the centuries since ancient Phoenicia to a bizarre future where everyone is immortal. If you are expecting the derring-do and character development of the television series Highlander, skip this book. It drags unmercifully in parts, and is overall unsatisfying and (dare I say it?) boring.

There are a number of science fiction stories about prolonged lives, but this is one of the best. Poul Anderson had the good idea of having the long-livers represent numerous ethnic and personality types bound together only by their mutation, allowing him to explore several possibilities at once. Even their strategies for covering up their mutation varies: an adventurous man travels endlessly; a bureaucrat fudges his own dates; a peasant and a prostitute stay under the radar; charismatic types attract friends who are willing to help with coverups. In the meantime the loose premise gives Anderson a pretext for giving snapshots of dramatic moments in history, from the explorations of a Greek philosopher to the drama of an escaped slave on the Undergound Railroad to the Battle of Stalingrad.

I would have given this 5 stars were not for the long, extraneous last chapter, which puts the long-livers in the future. It has none of the interest of the rest of the book: the secrets are out; there is no more historical background, and the characters have lost their individuality. That chapter should probably have published as a sequel to the book rather than its conclusion.

I rarely don't finish a book, but I could not read the last 150 pages. I really enjoy older Sci-Fi. I have read around 150 books of older Sci-Fi. But this is maybe the worst one of them all. Not worth your time, effort or frustration. It will drain you of your soul trying to enjoy this over bloated pretentious piece of garbage. Characters you care little for. A "story" that gets old real fast. I was patient with it, but I am only human. AWFUL. This was nominated for a Nebula???!! Please....!

Good idea - bad execution - too much historical filler - too many short stories with just a slender common thread - like another 1 star review - I gave up after 110 pages - and I very rarely don't finish a book - especially by such a renowned author. On one aspect of the "science" of his version of immortality - your brain needs to forget - or it is overwhelmed - so the idea of remembering 10 centuries of history and people and places, etc is literally not possible - search for "We must forget to avoid serious mental disorders, and forgetting is actively regulated" - interesting error in his concept.

Three vessels fared by moonlight. Hanno the phoenecian, an explorer and adventurer, wants to travel and learn. At china, a traveller Tu Shan is heard to master the Tao. Many claim his great age is due to enlightenment. A thousand years later in ancient Rome. A crowd is hounding somebody. The fugitive, Rufus, was built for strength, not speed, and his pursuers were yelling: "Sorcerer"; the man has lost his old toothless wife, but he never seemed to grow old. People didn't understand. 200 years later. A fashionable and expensive courtesan in Constantinople was overdue for a change of identity. And Hanno had a first chance to meet a female of his kind, who would also share the secret. He hoped for companion from years gone past him. Were there more of them? How many?

Immortality. The story is about few men and women that live through ages. Taking identities and changing occupations as ground starts to burn around them. People around them grow old and there comes a time when they can't hide their youthful look any longer. They are lonely. At the end there is no more hiding in modern society, but to go to the stars to find a planet, home of their own, to settle down. The book consist of historical episodes where these ageless people appear in different name: in Phoenicia, in Scandinavia, in Gaul, in Rome, Japan, Russia, Native American tribes etc. Each one of them is suffering under the onus of an extraordinary curse; their children and wives fade from the memory. They are not immortal, they can die when hurt, but they don't age. None of them know why.

Two (2) stars. Written in 1990 there is almost no science fiction that would follow from the high hopes of the book cover presenting a spaceship. Of 600 pages the historical episodes fill 90 percent of the book: best described as a short story collection. The cultures and time periods are well researched but the flaw is the book's extreme length; eventually the obsessiveness of the history starts to wear off the reader. Without an explained purpose or hinted goal, following the lives of ageless people through human history is not very engrossing. In the last chapters eight immortals experience space and an alien encounter but there is not enough drama to keep it pinching. The next phase of their lives is too tidy (happily ever after) because aliens take them under their wings. It would have been interesting to cover the problem of human nature to enduring 2000 years. Would anyone really want to live that long? What psychological strains could it cause to have to endure and cope with losses of one's closest people? The book is silent about these aspects and pours on being on adventure mode through the end. This may be personal work of the author, but from the reader it takes a great deal of conviction to finish the book.

The plot is quite interesting but only for the first 100 pages or so, then it becomes somewhat repetitive and the final part shows a twist that doesn't fit with the rest of the book.

I read this book on a trip to South America in 1990, and three times since.
More than any other reason I read books to escape. This one was well written, and perfect for a long trip.
I love anything to do with time travel or books that span centuries. Don't know why.
This was a great fix, and would highly recommend it.

For those of you who would like a long winded account of the book, sorry.

Yes, the cover is misleading, but just ought to teach us that age old lesson about covers of a book. Being did a bit of research before I read the book, so I knew that the book had a hefty chuck of history... but I didn't know it'd be 80% of the entire book! The story lines of the immortal characters sometimes gets confusing because they change name from time period to time period. Some stories also cross paths, which can be a breath-taking read or it can be a head-scratching line-by-line reread. Situations and times of the characters lives are sometimes rewarding, but most of the time it gets boring. I was waiting for the big jump to the future but some disappointed when the jump was 1972 to the far flung future. I would have liked to have seen sometime in between being explored. And when the book did come to an end it was as hasty as the time jump had been. It was hard to follow mainly because the SF part of the book was so anticipated and when it came it was wham-bam and book's over.