Tau Zero (1970)

The Leonora Christine cannot slow down after damage to its drive, turning a planned voyage into an increasingly extreme encounter with distance and time. Anderson makes the crew's social endurance part of the problem as the outside universe changes around them. The accelerating scale gives this compact novel its distinctive pressure. Its physics and cosmology belong to a bold 1970 speculation, while the human question remains clear: how can people keep choosing a future they can no longer picture?