Pandora's Star (contains spoilers)

[Ian SCD Officer]

Has anyone read Pandora's Star? It's an awesome book. It is set in the late 24th/early 25th Century, and it is set in a period of expansion where humanity is constantly colonising new stars and planets. Humans are able to travel anywhere very quickly via the use of wormholes, which compress time and space. A Bill Gates style businessment called Nigel Sheldon has a monopoly on wormhole technology (greedy man), after he and his best friend Ozzie Issacs invent wormhole technology in the early 21st century. Plus, everyone is able to live for up to 300+ years, after the success of rejuvenation technology.

The whole issue about rejuvenation technology does raise some moral concerns. Is it right for everyone to live that long, wouldn't it lead to some major population problems, even if there is more space for everyone? There are many issues raised in this book.

Anyway, after a suspicious event occurs (an envelopment of a star which is discovered by an astronomer), people begin to believe that the star in question might have a artificial barrier around it, which was constructed by a powerful alien species. Naturally mankind is concerned, are the builders of the barrier hostile to us? Was the barrier built to imprison an evil species, or was it meant for defence against some hostile race? Nigel Sheldon and Issacs company CST builds a starship to investigate.

Pandora's Star is a good book, but it does get long in places. Try not to read it all in one go. It's a must have for sci-fi nerds like myself. The characters are good, the plotline is good, and although Hamilton does overdo the description, it is still a very good story.

 

[Lucien21]

It's an excellent book. I really enjoyed it.

Have you read the sequel Judas Unchained yet?

 

[tantric]

I'm interested to see where he takes the economics of his setting. Politically speaking, it's *loathesome*, mindless consumerism crawling across the galaxy, megAmerica Wal-Mart-Galaxy yuck. But it should be able to produce war materials at a frightening clip.

The whole idea of letting one company own the intellectual property that produces teleportation . . .

 

[Werthead]

Very good book. Not quite as good as his Night's Dawn Trilogy, but a solid novel anyway. Incidentally Pandora's Star is the second of six books set in the same timeline. The first one is Misspent Youth, which is set 300 years earlier and shows the birth of the unisphere and the starting of rejeuvenation. You don't need to read it to enjoy the others, and it's probably Hamilton's weakest book. The third novel is Judas Unchained and is the second half of Pandora's Star (between them the two books are jointly called The Commonwealth Saga).

There will be a sequel trilogy commencing next August or September when The Dreaming Void is published, to be followed by two more books in The Void Trilogy.

I like Hamiltons' consumerist take on the future. Idealism will lead nowhere. Mankind will only go and colonise space if there's money in it. Its human nature.

 

[Gav]

I think Peter Hamiliton is merely an ok SF writer nothing more. He writes good Door stopper airport novels. It's the sort of thing I don't mind reading while I am travelling.

Night's Dawn started excellently but has one of THE most disappointing endings I've ever come across (in fact book 2 was a real come down as well).

Pandora's Star had all the Hallmarks of going the same way. I discussed the book with a friend of mine at the time and since that discussion I've decided not to read Judas Unchained (he confirmed my feelings on where the plot was going).

I like Hamiltons' consumerist take on the future. Idealism will lead nowhere. Mankind will only go and colonise space if there's money in it. Its human nature.

I agree. I like a lot of what Hamilton writes but I don't think he knows how to end a story.

 

[tantric]

I like Hamiltons' consumerist take on the future. Idealism will lead nowhere. Mankind will only go and colonise space if there's money in it. Its human nature.

in the end, night's dawn was profoundly anticonsumerist. their society had gone nowhere, learned nothing from it's mindless expansion into space. that's why the new cluster was isolated - to force humans to mature as a species, which stongly implies that their society at the time was NOT mature. forcing people to live as peasants on distant planets in the name of money instead of working on the overall sanity of their society is what caused the problem to begin with.

despite the christian theme, night's dawn is actually profoundly buddhist. the returned are pretas, hungry ghosts, people who die addicted to sensation and pleasure (ghosts with huge stomachs and tiny mouths, always hungry but never satisfied). the only cure for that is the dharma of non-attachment, the joy of spiritual fulfillemnt, which is why there were no edenists in the beyond. remember - edenism was founded by a buddhist.