Book Review: "The Boat of a Million Years" by Poul Anderson

The Boat of a Million Years (1989)
Poul Anderson (1926-2001)
470 pages

I remember when Poul Anderson’s science fiction novel The Boat of a Million Years first came out, over three decades ago. I had somehow heard about it before it was released (in those halcyon, pre-internet days), and anytime I came near a bookstore I eagerly checked to see if they had it. When I finally found a copy, I was over-the-top excited to read it – and it didn’t disappoint.

All this was long before I began writing these reviews. But, recently, I read the book again.

What originally attracted me was the story arc following a group of immortals on Earth as they live through the millennia, from ancient times to far into our future. Anderson’s immortals are born at different times and in different places, but all face the challenge of keeping their agelessness hidden. While some carry out into solitary, nomadic lives, others repeatedly settle down, though only ever for a couple few decades until their families and neighbors begin to question their perennial youth, forcing them to again disappear and start elsewhere anew. For they must take care as, while they do not age, they can be killed if injured sufficiently brutally.

The story opens in 310 BC, introducing the earliest born of these immortals, Hanno, as he seeks to join a Greek ship that plans to sail out of the Mediterranean and up the coast to then unknown northern lands. Already in the opening pages, it becomes evident the care Hanno takes to hide the centuries he has already lived.

As the story proceeds, readers are introduced to other immortals, born later, in other lands. With each chapter, Anderson drops into the life of one or the other of them, usually to reveal a moment of crisis, as they face trouble hiding their immortality and struggle to find a way through. Gradually, their wanderings begin to intersect, their experiences helping them to detect another like them, though their ever-present fear of discovery by mortals keeps them wary even then of revealing themselves.

In ancient times, and even up through the 1800’s, disappearing remains a feasible option for them, with vast uncharted or at least isolated lands to vanish into, and limited or no communication across large distances. As the 20th century dawns, however, it becomes increasingly difficult for them to remain under the radar. They must employe ever more cunning strategies to remain undiscovered – and be quick to move on whenever someone gets too close to the truth. Eventually, they reach a point in which they must decide whether to face the uncertain future together, and what path offers them the most appealing way forward.

Especially in the first half of the novel, before the characters have come together, it can be challenging to keep track of who’s who, especially as it can be several chapters before Anderson comes back around to the same character. As they change their lives to remain hidden, they often change their names, and though Anderson gives clues for the reader, to help keep track, it can still be difficult to keep things straight. Admittedly, I made it more difficult for myself this second time through, because I ended up reading it a bit at a time, over many months.

Unfortunately, as I recall also happening on my first reading, I didn’t discover until I finished the story that the end pages contain both a Chronology, listing the year each chapter begins, and a Glossary, providing the modern-day locations of the ancient place names used in the story. It would have helped to know that these pages were there as I was reading the story; unfortunately, the book has no table of contents, so a reader is left to discover these guides by chance – or once they come to the last page of the story.

The one advantage to not discovering the end pages in advance is that for someone who loves history, it can be fun to decode the places and times the chapters are set in. And unlike when I first read the book, now with smart phones a reader can discover for themselves the information necessary to figure it out.

As someone who enjoys learning about the past and imagining what’s to come, the idea of these characters witnessing and experiencing so many centuries of human development thrilled me. More generally, stories set across long time scales tend to catch my attention. Thus, I was excited to turn the page, deep into Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves, and read the single line 5000 Years Later. And then there was Cixin Liu’s Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy, which begins in our recent past and actually carries right on past the end of our universe. (My reviews of these novels linked to at right.)

The first half to two-thirds of the book can feel a bit chaotic, as the story jumps ahead in time and place from one character (or few characters) to the next, until they finally begin to come together. And Anderson imagines a rather depressing future for humankind, one that paradoxically leaves the immortals as the most recognizably human beings left to carry on the ancient motivations of humankind. But if you love history and an epic sweep to your stories, Anderson’s done his homework; in The Boat of a Million Years you’ll drop into now almost legendary times and places in our past, not as dry history, but through characters who experience them firsthand.

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Have you read this book, others by this author, or even similar ones by other authors? I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts.
Other of my book reviews: FICTION Bookshelf and NON-FICTION Bookshelf