Pandora's Star, Peter F. Hamilton (Book Club)

Have just finished this book and am starting the next one.

Whilst I got all the way though the thousand or so pages without actually encountering one character I particularly liked, I was surprised to find I liked the book.... I think.

I am not sure I share Chris and others objections about the technical imposibility of wormhole generators (but then I could write what I know about physics on the back of a postage stamp twice). Possibly if Hamilton was displaying a similar lack of crediblity about a field in which I knew something (can't think what) I would be equally annoyed.

By the end of the next book Judas Unchained I am sure I will know if I liked them both. But does anyone know if he's finished the 3rd one. I am assuming there's a third, I am sure I read the word trillogy somewhere.
 
No this series is only the 2.

When it comes to technology I'm an ignoramous but surely like fantasy, you have to stretch the brain and just enjoy the fact that someone...somewhere had invented a forcefield that can wrap around a whole star system...cool.
 
Well after finishing the second one, I think it was brilliant. I tend to veer towards fanatasy more than Sifi just becuase I am not technical and description of technology leave me cold. This however was totally absorbing for all the many thousands of pages. A real achievment.
 
dwndrgn said:
Peter F. Hamilton's Pandora's Star

1) Anything you particularly liked about it?

I quite liked the ideas. I liked the Primes.

2) Anything you disliked?

It's a Peter F hamilton book. Entertaining in a "fluff" kind of way. Hamilton is a good writer (as it goes) but tends to blow the later stages of his books. I felt that this one was peculiarly flaccid in the middle section. I didn't feel that he padded out some of the more interesting sections well - for example the "perfect detective" investigating the star flyer (aka chasing the arms dealer). It's been a while since I read it so I am a biy fuzzy on the details. I didn't bother with the follow-up.

3) What subjects jumped out at you while reading?

None really.

4) Any other topics you'd like to discuss, related to this work?

No.
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A good book, and got me back into modern SF in a way. I wanted something 'epic' to read, just in size. I wasn't dissapointed, and based on this book, have bought much more of Hamilton's other works.

The initial contact with the Aliens is awesome, I think I stayed up till 2am reading it to find out the outcome. Some of his naming for objects in a far future sound suspiciously modern, eg Boeing, Cadillac, etc.. which dates it for me personally.
The characters are good, well-described and you choose from the many that there are to associate with. I seemed to connect with Paula Myo over Ozzie (the whole planet-hopping thing I found boring frankly), and also with Dudley Bose too.

The ending of the book for me was great, made me jump straight into the second one (Judas Unchained) and working my way through it slowly but surely. Sure, I have my grumbles about this book, but overall, an epic fun read that describes a functional universe, despite some wishmaking on Hamiltons part.

If people are comfortable with long, epic SF novels, I would recommend this.
 
I enjoyed this, but i have to say that i thought it was a lot longer than it really needed to be.
 
I much preferred this to the Nightsdawn trilogy, but i find Peter F. Hamilton's work in general to be OK, but i wouldn't ever consider it to be as good as Banks' culture novels or Reynolds' Revelation Space novels. The only one that i did find to be exception was Fallen Dragon and only then because the characters were so well written. That said, i enjoyed the dreaming void very much and have the Temporal Void to read next.
 
chrispenycate said:
Actually, the device that gives the problems is the wormhole- teleporter- matter transmitter- spacewarp that appears in the first chapter and remains the foundation of the entire book. It ignores the laws of conservation of energy and momentum (there's no way that a point on the surface of Mars is at either a gravitationally equivalant level or moving with an identical velocity to a point on the surface of Earth) it's selectively permeable (light and a guy with a diving suit can go straight through, and presumably the air he's breathing, while the atmosphere in the California lab isn't producing a minature hurricane expanding into the rarefied martian environment. Essentially it's a wish fulfilment device running on magic- it does whatever you want it to do, ignores the fact that space is being twisted like a plate of spagetti between the two ends- and does all this on its first experiment. As I said, magic- and calling the magic "Sufficiently advanced technology, backed by genius level mathematics" merely moves us into the field staked out by Hollywood andthe 50's pulp magazines.

My suspension of disbelief has a very poor gearbox- once it's cruising you can slide a solar systoms sized force field past it with barely a twitch- but hit it hard enough to stall it at the very beginning, it has a tendency to limp along in "analytic", looking for discrepancies for a few pages, before it can get back to following at full speed. This is not as enjoyable as getting into a book and just letting it sweep you along (I normally do a second reading for demolition purposes, but vary rarely contact an author to complain, you'll doubtless be pleased to learn)

I also feel that the book suffers from an excess of- well, everything, really. Not that the bits aren't well done, just that there's too much sheer mass for the story told- a sort of "Wheel of Time" "I'm getting paid by the word" syndrome, trying to map an entire universe with its multitude of private stories into one reading experince- but that could be due to the fact I was so often in "slow" mode.

Mind you, I wasn't expecting people to agree with me, and was surprise how few opinions were given- is this standard?

I've succeeded in downloading the Stross, but perhaps I'd better wait till a few more people have written before jumping in.
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Probably should have read this post earlier since I'm finding it a little bit hard to get into the book after the prologue where the astronauts were greeted by the Californians on Mars for exactly the same reason as Chris. Still, I'm going to soldier on, and hope that it gets better and has other interesting ideas to draw me in.
 
thesoothsayer said:
Probably should have read this post earlier since I'm finding it a little bit hard to get into the book after the prologue where the astronauts were greeted by the Californians on Mars for exactly the same reason as Chris. Still, I'm going to soldier on, and hope that it gets better and has other interesting ideas to draw me in.
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You quite probably wouldn't have agreed with me, anyway; I'm a minority taste, and you couldn't have found out without trying.

But Hamilton does have lots of good ideas; I just preferred it when he didn't try to put all of them in one book. And I have duly obtained "The dreaming void", despite knowing it's likely to suffer from the same limitations...
 
chrispenycate said:
But Hamilton does have lots of good ideas;
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Yes, but the trouble is that his stories have just turned into a tool used to string these ideas together rather than being a good story first with some good ideas in it.
 
The story is the age old Alien invasion plot, with a few twists. how is that not good?

Pandora's Star is utterly superb, quite possibly the best i've ever read. good characters, an idyllic future (who wouldn't want to live for a thousand years?) a huge Interstellar empire what's not to like?

Judas Unchained was a slight let down, mainly because of the ending. It makes sense but seems a little too easy for me. this is the main reason i was disappointed with the end of 'Night's dawn' trilogy.

I've recently finished the Void trilogy, the follow up to the Commonwealth saga, and was not impressed. i don't like fantasy, and it has no place in an SF novel, even with such a extra-ordinary way of realising it.

And now i hear he might be doing another trilogy set exclusivley within the void. :mad:
 
Is one of the few writers playing with idea of a society where immortality is the norm which I liked as I think we will be there in some decades, even the timing of this in the books is interesting. Unfortunately he did not try to picture new social rules only applied the actual ones to the new environment and is exactly here where I wanted to see his imagination.
The Pandora Star is in my opinion the only one I enjoyed and even this was longer than necessary, I think that it should have only half of the actual length. The other two are only examples on how to milk a good initial idea happening often in other trilogies. When an author is starting to describe very detailed the geography and climate of fancy worlds is a sign that he is out of new ideas.
As other pointed that he has some problems with the scientific aspects I remember that his Fallen Dragon was based on a temporal paradox but excepting this was a good book.
 
I love Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained.

I like reading about different characters with completely different lifestyles, seeing how they live. I thought the different species of alien were unique and really interesting. I love how there are various sub-plots, but all of them seem entwined somehow.

I also like his descriptions of all the different settled worlds and how they are all different. One world for women only. One really industrialised. One going back to basics with little technology. One that genetically manipulates its residents to have everyone 'perfect' and live in harmony.
Although I do think some of the ideas are rather unrealistic and unscientific, that's one of the reasons I enjoy reading Fantasy and Science Fiction.... throw something fantastical in the works, and try and imagine how it would change the world.

Really do love these books.
 
Big fan of the series and the Void trilogy, which follows. I do find I get a little lost in his books sometimes, there are so many characters and loads of techie stuff. But, I am a bit of a geek so I forgive him. There is so much detail, which I do like. I am not usually a fan of the slow detailed books but I was easily trapped in the story.

He does some horrible things to his characters, although he is possibly not as sadistic as George R R Martin. The bit where the motiles are tearing the Astronomer guy and the girl apart is masterfully done. You have to live the horror vicariously through the humans because the immotiles have absolutely no idea what they are doing.

Trying to overlay current scientific understanding on a science fiction book is like trying to eat a picture of a sandwich. I think we have to suspend our disbelief a little.
 
I really couldn't get on with Night's Dawn. I loved it up until the dead started coming back and it ruined it for me. It was like getting in to a film and then suddenly they start singing and you realise it's a musical.
 
A little late to the punch, but I thought Pandora's star was Great read and a very solid ending. There were about hundred pages that were not really needed. I also didn't understand what is the point of marriage in a immortal society. In all I love the world building, I love the characters, and I love the aliens. I'm now reading Judas Unchained if anyone wants to discuss.
 
Pandoras star and Judas unchained are great books, such a well realised 'world'. As you say they have a fair amount of fat on them, but I kind of go into reading PFH knowing that. One thing that isn't well advertised is that he wrote a second trilogy set in that universe, the void trilogy. They are totally seperate stories but some of the plot lines that are started in the Pandoras Star duology arn't resolved until the conclusion of that story. Overall i didnt enjoy those as much.
Ive just started on the Great North Road. Its just as long as one of those novels but from the bit that i've read it seems a lot tighter. Whether that is because he's matured a bit as a writer, its set in a slightly more contempory time or he's just got a new editor i don't know but i am enjoying it.
 
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