Book Review: The Night's Dawn Saga by Peter F. Hamilton

[Werthead]

Peter F. Hamilton is Britain's biggest-selling science fiction writer. I'm re-reading the works set in his Night's Dawn universe, consisting of a short story collection, a trilogy of three huge novels and a companion guide to the series.

 

To start off with, the short story collection:

 

A Second Chance at Eden

 

In the mid-21st Century a brilliant geneticist named Wing-Tsit Chong creates the affinity gene. When spliced into human beings, it allows them to control bonded servitor animals with total accuracy. Humans fitted with the gene can also communicate with one another using the gene, which creates an effect similar to the old, mythical idea of telepathy. The affinity gene revolutionises science, and when combined with the growing industry of biological technology - bitek - it seems to promise a brighter, less technologically and materially-focused future for the human race. In 2090 the Jovian Sky Power Corporation begins mining helium-3 from the atmosphere of Jupiter and builds a bitek space station, Eden, as a cheap alternative to a traditional but expensive hollowed-out asteroid habitat. Eden is given its own neural strata and its sentient mind can communicate with all of its inhabitants, and all of them with one another, forming the ultimate utopian society.

 

But change is hard for some to accept. The Reunified Christian Church is deeply concerned about the implications of bitek and affinity, for with a person able to call upon the immediate support of of thousands of other human minds to any crisis or problem, they grow up better-adjusted and in less need of psychological reassurance. In short, they grow up with no need for faith in what cannot be seen or known. And that is a danger that no religion can ignore.

 

Spanning 516 years of history, the six short stories and the title novella that make up A Second Chance at Eden chronicle humanity's first faltering steps into space, the colonisation of other worlds and the huge schism along ideological and religious grounds that splits the human race in two, the Adamists and Edenists. The final story takes place thirty years before the events of Hamilton's vast and epic Night's Dawn Trilogy, and tells the story of the last voyage of the starship Lady MacBeth under Captain Marcus Calvert.

 

Peter F. Hamilton is best-known for his immense, brick-thick novels, themselves usually parts of trilogies or duologies of a truly epic and cosmic scale. However, he initially made his career in short stories, building up an impressive body of work in the six years prior to the publication of his first novel, Mindstar Rising, in 1993. Several of these stories were based around the fictional science of affinity, which he explored in different ways. After his popular story 'Candy Buds' was published he expanded the concept to novel-length, giving rise to the massive Night's Dawn story. In 1998 he revisited these early short stories, re-editing them to fit into the Confederation timeline a bit more neatly, and combined them with some new works to form this collection.

 

A Second Chance at Eden is excellent, showing Hamilton's skills are just as impressive, if indeed not moreso, when applied to the short form as to his mega-epics. The first story, 'Sonnie's Edge', shows the dark side of affinity as it is used for a rather unpleasant new bitek version of bear-baiting, with an absolute killer ending. The story's setting, Battersea in 2070, (with the vast domes of the London arcology we later see in The Naked God taking shape in the background) is vivid and impressive.

 

'A Second Chance at Eden' itself takes us to the Eden habitat in 2090. This murder-mystery novella is superb, showing the birth of the culture we will see in action close-up throughout the Night's Dawn Trilogy and examining the morality and ethics of the affinity technology when brought in sharp conflict with religious concerns. This is an intelligent story which, in the tradition of all good SF, brings complex ideas back back down to the human level.

 

'New Days, Old Times' is Hamilton's answer to why the colonies in the Confederation are ethnically-'streamed', instead of culturally integrated. We visit the planet Nyvan (which plays a big role in the trilogy) and Hamilton's argument - that if different cultures, religions and societies are forced to live together on another world we will simply make the same mistakes all over again - is grimly persuasive. 'Candy Buds' is one of Hamilton's best-known short stories, set on Tropicana, the only Adamist world where bitek remains legal by the late 24th Century, where the richest man on the planet finds himself unusually touched by the plight of a young girl he was planning to exploit for her astonishing discovery. A dark story with a savagely clever ending.

 

'Deathday' is a superb slice of SF horror, as one of the last colonists ordered to leave the failed farming world of Jubarra pursues a destructive vendetta against a resident lifeform with destructive results. 'The Lives and Loves of Tiarella Rosa' is a curiously brutal and selfish kind of love story with a melancholic aspect, actually reminiscent of GRRM's 1970s SF work (such as 'A Song for Lya'). It's not quite as good as that due to a somewhat weird ending, but it's certainly a change of pace for Hamilton and works well for the most part.

 

'Escape Route' takes us to the last voyage of the Lady MacBeth under the captaincy of Joshua Calvert's father and explains exactly what happened to trash the ship so badly it was drydocked at Tranquillity for thirty years. This is an excellent SF story featuring some traditional tropes, such as the dubious passengers and an abandoned alien artifact in space, with a clever resolution. For fans of the trilogy, this story does fill in some gaps in the backstory in an entertaining manner.

 

Overall, A Second Chance at Eden (****½) is an excellent collection of short SF set in one of the most thoroughly-realised SF settings ever created. There are no really weak links and 'Sonnie's Edge', 'Deathday' and 'Escape Route' are all superb, whilst the title novella is nothing short of classic, showing the birth of a new human culture which is beyond normal human experience but in a manner that is convincing and even attractive: a sympathetic Singularity. Hamilton's handling of the religious element is also intelligent and interesting.

 

The collection is available now in the UK. The American edition has gone out of print but some second sellers on Amazon.com still have stock.

[Werthead]

The Reality Dysfunction

 

In the year 2610, humanity has expanded to inhabit almost nine hundred worlds and thousands of industrial asteroid settlements. It has divided into two strands, the traditional Adamists who use technological starships and cybernetic implants, and the telepathic Edenists, who employ bitek - biological technology - to create living starships and sentient space habitats. The two sub-races are allied together in the Confederation (along with two xenoc species, the Tyrathca and the Kiint), despite their religious and ideological differences. Between them, every conceivable human society and civilisation exists, from the ultra-high-tech arcologies of Earth to the pastoral idyll of Norfolk to communist Mars to the breezy techno-economy of New California. Whilst crime and corruption still exist, most of humanity, at long last, seems on the verge of a golden age.

 

Syrinx is an Edenist voidhawk captain, bonded to Oenone. Starship and captain are born and raised together, forming an unshakable bond. After a stint in the Confederation Navy, they go into business as an independent trader, but a family tragedy prejudices Syrinx against the Adamists, leaving a scar that it seems cannot be healed. Meanwhile, Joshua Calvert is a scavenger, hunting the debris fields of the Ruin Ring (the remains of thousands of alien space habitats destroyed by forces unknown two millennia earlier), looking for that elusive find which will make him rich and allow him to repair his father's grounded starship, the Lady Macbeth.

 

On the stage-one colony world of Lalonde, a humid jungle planet accepting colonists from Earth's overflowing European arcologies, a new village is being settled. People fleeing from the cramped, overcrowded cities of the ecologically-devastated homeworld now find themselves planting cropfields and building sailing boats. It's a tough but rewarding existence, but one that has a serpent growing at its heart. A chance encounter between an utterly alien entity and a brutal and sadistic cult unleashes a devastating, ancient threat upon the human race. An alien species annihilated by the same force called it 'the reality dysfunction', a force which spreads exponentially and is hungry for more human bodies to use for its own ends. Even the utterly formidable resources of the Confederation will be tested to their limits as the threat engulfs Lalonde and threatens to spread to other worlds.

 

The Reality Dysfunction is an imposing book, a massive 1,230 pages in length and itself only the first part of The Night's Dawn Trilogy (Books 2 and 3 are even longer). When the book first appeared in 1996, reviewers liked to point out that the first part of Hamilton's trilogy was bigger than most writers' entire trilogies, although today fans of epic fantasy will not be particularly daunted by its size. For a space opera novel which, for its first third anyway, veers towards the hard end of SF, the size remains unusual.

 

Of course, this would be an issue if the book flagged or if there were obvious ways the length could be cut. There is not, although the two sequels could probably have done with some pruning. Part of the genius of The Reality Dysfunction is the way its huge number of characters and storylines seems to randomly ramble all over the place at the start, but towards the end of the book they come together most satisfyingly.

 

In this trilogy, Hamilton has created what is certainly the most comprehensive futuristic society ever created. The only work that comes close to equalling it is Hamilton's own Intersolar Commonwealth, from his later Commonwealth and Void series. With Night's Dawn, Hamilton became SF's answer to Tolkien, building an immense space opera universe totally convincing in its solidarity. He has put huge amounts of thought into the politics, economics, religion, civil and military forces that make up the Confederation, and then seems to enjoy pointing out his own flaws (the economics of starflight in the Confederation seem questionable, and the author gleefully points that out, leaving the reader unsure if he has an answer or not or is just making them think he does). Whilst that solidarity is extremely impressive, it does give rise to accusations that Hamilton likes to info-dump. He has no problem with listing the dates for the founding of colony worlds or explaining how they achieved their techno-economic power in just a century. Personally I found such explanations fascinating, but other readers have reported they become wearying after a while. As always, your mileage may vary.

 

A central theme of the novel is that humanity will not fundamentally change in the future. The divisions between atheists and the religious faithful remain, and humans, at heart, seem to still be motivated an awful lot by money and sex. Even the Edenists, who have flickers of post-Singularity, post-humans about them, seem to still be defined by their essential, recognisable humanity. The realism of this can be debated, but a central complaint of far-future SF, that humans have become so unrecognisable they are no longer particularly interesting, is averted here. Life in the 27th Century is very much like life in the 21st, only with better healthcare, longer lifespans and everyone seems to get laid a lot more. In fact, with the Confederation, Hamilton has achieved the near-impossible by creating a near-utopian civilisation which is not bland or dull, but still flawed enough to be interesting. His view of the future is essentially optimistic whilst not shying away from the nastier side of human nature, which is an impressive balancing act.

 

Another complaint is that the book dwells a fair amount on sex, although this did give rise to David Langford's counter-argument in his 1997 review of the second book that any universe in which everyone has as much great consensual, safe sex as this one is intrinsically worth saving. Of course, all things are relative and out of the 1,230 pages of the book, the number of pages without any sex is also pretty high (and there's considerably less in the sequels). Hamilton himself seems to be aware of the situation and in a nice exchange near the end of the book the morality of the situation is briefly discussed between two of the characters.

 

The Reality Dysfunction lives and dies by its central characters: the evil Quinn Dexter, the roguish Joshua Calvert, the aloof Syrinx, the determined Marie Skibbow, the responsible Ione Saldana, the conflicted Father Horst Elwes and more. They're a fascinating bunch, by turns flawed but also convincing, sometimes corrupt but mostly relatable (with the possible exception of the insane Dexter). I notice that many readers seem to dislike the apparent hero Joshua (Han Solo, but without the morals), but this is perfectly in keeping with the author's intentions: he describes Joshua as a 'prat' and states that the 'proper' title for the trilogy is actually Joshua's Progress, the transformation of his character from self-obsessed, borderline-sexist egomaniac to a better person due to the experiences he encounters.

 

Hamilton also delivers good space battle. The engagements between his starships are built on real-life physics, and the idea that such fights would involve fighter craft is rejected in favour of more realistic unmanned drones that fight whilst the actual spacecraft are thousands of miles apart. The tactics of space combat are well-handled, as are the ground combat sequences featuring mercenaries and marines. There isn't really enough to qualify The Reality Dysfunction as 'military SF', but fans of that subgenre will nevertheless feel well-catered-for.

 

Pacing wise, The Reality Dysfunction has to unfold smoothly in order to captivate the reader for such an immense length, not to mention to convince them to come back for two more, even larger books. To this end the book is divided into three roughly equal segments: introduction, rising action and counter-action. The introduction, which is more like a collection of short stories than a novel, shows us the Confederation, introduces the characters and outlines the main concepts of the story. After that, all hell breaks loose and the true threat is unleashed, investigated and (impartially) understood, with events building to a climax which, whilst not a cliffhanger, will nevertheless leave many readers on the edge of their seat, eager to move onto the second.

 

The Reality Dysfunction has some things acting against it. Some people will think it's too long, others that it has too much info-dumping or too many sex scenes, or that the entire exercise is just too confusing, with too many characters, planets or storylines to easily keep track of. Some people find the central premise of the reality dysfunction itself too unbelievable once it is revealed, and possibly out of keeping within an SF novel (although Hamilton does a surprisingly good job of explaining the situation in SF terms in the final novel of the series), although others absolutely love its unexpected nature: of all the 'twists' in an SF novel to occur, I don't think I've ever read anything on this scale before.

 

For myself, I found the book stunningly well-paced and a ferocious page-turner, building up the most well-realised SF setting in the genre's history with verve and aplomb. The Confederation is flawed and sometimes corrupt, but above all it is worth saving, unusual in a genre all-too-often dominated by dystopias that probably deserve to be annihilated. Hamilton also intelligently explores numerous questions in this book, from economics through to faith and religion. Whilst a conservative atheist (in the small-c sense), Hamilton is nevertheless fascinated by the merits and weaknesses of organised religion and its impact on morality and society, and in the Night's Dawn books he explores religion in space opera with more intelligence, fairness and understanding than any other SF writer bar possibly J. Michael Straczynski in his TV series, Babylon 5.

 

The Reality Dysfunction (*****) is for my money one of the very best works of space opera ever written, right up there with Dune and Hyperion (not as well-written as either, but considerably more convincing), and easily the most comprehensive single-author SF setting ever conceived. As SF author and critic Colin Greenland said at the time, The Reality Dysfunction reads like fifty science fiction novels, each tackling a separate and fascinating subject, rolled into one gripping and cohesive whole. The novel is available now in the UK and, at long last, in one volume in the USA. A limited and illustrated edition will be released by Subterranean Press in November.

 

The remaining two, slightly more flawed, novels in the sequence are The Neutronium Alchemist and The Naked God.

[Werthead]

The Neutronium Alchemist

 

The 'reality dysfunction' has escaped from Lalonde, overrunning several other Confederation worlds and asteroid settlements, subverting people to its will. On the Kulu Kingdom principality world of Ombey, Ralph Hiltch, a veteran of Lalonde, organises a desperate battle against the enemy. Pastoral Norfolk is easy pickings for the menace, but, with help from an unexpected ally, Louise Kavanagh manages to stay one step ahead of it. Ultra-advanced New California comes under siege, whilst the decadent Valisk habitat becomes a raging battleground between the subverted and the habitat's insane controlling personality.

 

As the Confederation goes to a war footing and unleashes its resources against the new threat, another problem arises. Dr. Alkad Mzu has escaped from Tranquillity and is now on the run, seeking to complete a thirty-year vendetta to annihilate an entire star system. Joshua Calvert reluctantly agrees to pursue her, although half the intelligence agencies in the Confederation are also on the case. Meanwhile, Syrinx recovers from her own considerable physical wounds but finds her mental recovery to be much harder. At the urging of the Edenist government, she travels to the Kiint homeworld to find out how they defeated their own brush with the dysfunction thousands of years ago...

 

The second volume of The Night's Dawn Trilogy is the direct continuation of The Reality Dysfunction, pretty much picking up the story immediately. The book has a slightly different focus - Lalonde has been left behind and a couple of superfluous characters like Kelven Solanki have been rather abruptly jettisoned from the story - but it's generally a continuation of the same writing style as the first book. Simply put, if you liked the first book, you'll like this one too.

 

It improves on the first book in a few key areas as well. Hamilton reigns in the info-dumping, apparently partially a conscious choice and partially because after the first book set up the Confederation setting so well it's no longer necessary. In addition, the slow start to Book 1 is missing. Book 2 hits the ground running and, if anything, the pace increases and the tension ramps up throughout this immensely thick volume (it's actually several dozen pages longer than the first book). The sex scenes, which I know put some people off the first volume, have been radically reduced in quantity as well. After all, with the extinction of the human race looming and the Galaxy at war, getting laid is not the highest priority any more ;-)

 

Unfortunately, the book does have a couple of niggling issues which detract from it. Hamilton develops this very peculiar obsession in the second volume of his broad-canvas space operas to have an extremely tedious car chase taking up a chunk of the book. It's not as bad as Judas Unchained (where such a chase takes up about half the book, intercut with other stories), but The Neutronium Alchemist does feature such a sequence which takes up several dozen pages. In addition, the Valisk storyline is simply not as compelling as many of the other plots in the trilogy, and the pages devoted to it do feel like they could have been better spent on events elsewhere. Once you've completed the trilogy and realise how little this plot thread adds to the overall story of all three books, it's inclusion feels even more pointless, despite some good lines from Rubra.

 

Readers' reactions also vary immensely to what happens on New California. I thoroughly enjoyed it and felt it was a logical extension of the premise, and if you can swallow the premise of the reality dysfunction itself than what happens next shouldn't pose any problems. But I do know people who thought it a step too far and stopped reading. A shame, because it actually works very well, and sets up the absolutely brilliant ending.

 

The Neutronium Alchemist (****½) is a very fine continuation of the story begun in The Reality Dysfunction. The story is meaty enough to support its immense length, and Hamilton's prose skills have improved somewhat from the first book. That said, the absence of some characters from the first volume and the amount of time spent on less-compelling plot-threads does leave it as a slightly less-accomplished novel. Still, as readable, epic space operas go, this is one of the very best out there, and it ends on an absolutely killer cliffhanger which at the time of publication was jaw-dropping (although now you can just go out and buy the third book straight away). The book is available now in the UK and, at long last, in one volume in the USA.

[Werthead]

The Naked God

 

The threat to the Confederation from the 'reality dysfunction' is growing. Anxious to show that the pervasive threat can be neutralised, the Kulu Kingdom have joined forces with their oldest rivals, the Edenists, to liberate the peninsular of Mortonridge on Ombey from the enemy. However, the conditions they encounter mean warfare the likes of which humanity has not experienced for seven centuries.

 

Meanwhile, the nefarious 'Organization' has proven extremely effective in spreading the contamination to other worlds, keeping the Confederation Navy on the back foot. The habitat Valisk has vanished from the universe, but the survivors on board are soon to discover that their hoped-for sanctuary is anything but benign.

 

Quinn Dexter has penetrated Earth's defences and is now trying to destroy the great arcologies, forcing Govcentral's intelligence service into desperate measures to contain his threat, including making use Louise Kavanagh to draw him out. Meanwhile, Joshua Calvert and Syrinx are convinced to join forces to take their starships on a mission to the far side of the Orion Nebula, to the long-deserted Tyrathca homeworld, where they hope to find records leading them to an artifact the Tyrathca believe can resolve the crisis once and for all...

 

As well as being the final novel in the colossal Night's Dawn Trilogy, The Naked God is probably the single largest science fiction novel ever written (excluding Atlas Shrugged, depending on if you want to argue that as SF or not), coming in at an eye-watering 1,150 pages in length. In hardcover. That's 200 pages longer even than its two huge forebears, and it has to be said the flagging pace of the book probably owes a lot to that fact.

 

That said, The Naked God carries on the storylines left hanging at the end of The Neutronium Alchemist without interruption and, to use a rather lazy reviewing phrase, if you enjoyed the first two books I suspect you'll also enjoy the third. Numerous plot threads are in motion, and Hamilton deftly moves us between New California, Ombey, Valisk, Norfolk, Tranquillity, Earth, Trafalgar and other worlds with confidence and ease. However, he also has to time all his story threads to converge at the same point, which results in a number of middling problems contributing to the book's great length. Most notably, there's a discernible amount of filler in this book. Whilst it's great to finally get a detailed look at the ecologically devastated Earth with its population squeezed into immense domed cities, seeing Louise check into a hotel and get some neural nanonics does slow down the story at the exact moment it should really be gearing up for a thunderous climax. Instead, the story jumps around haphazardly, with an inordinate amount of chapters for the Valisk story given that very little happens in it but not much coverage at all of Joshua and Syrinx's mission, which should really be the dominant plot thread of the novel. Also, whilst an effective antagonist in the first two novels, Quinn Dexter's over-the-top villainy in this third volume does reduce him to a bit of a cartoon figure whom it is hard to take seriously. Hamilton should really not have given him the superpowers he did at the end of Book 2 (including virtual indestructibility), as they make his chapters somewhat tiresome. Indestructible characters, good or bad, make for dull reading.

 

Elsewhere, the book is as well-written as the rest of the trilogy has been, with a welcome strong return for the horror elements present in Book 1 but largely missing from the second book. There are also more big battles in space and on land, and a strong philosophical streak running through the book about the morality and application of warfare. Hamilton definitely seems to be having fun tweaking the noses of his American space opera counterparts, who all too readily resort to solving their problems with lasers and nukes, whilst he gets his characters to think their way out of their problems instead (although sometimes with the odd maser barrage as well, just to keep things colourful). There's also some nice ideas about consequences and choices and responsibility, although given the number of people moaning that the book and the ultimate solution to the reality dysfunction crisis doesn't involve a fusillade of antimatter explosions, perhaps this doesn't get across to the reader entirely successfully. Most notably, Hamilton has said the trilogy should have been called Joshua's Progress, as it is his (well-handled) character evolution and development which brings him to the point where a solution to the crisis can be found. Unfortunately, in The Naked God Joshua actually takes a bit of a back-seat to proceedings and is merely one among many, many POV characters, meaning his sudden importance to the plot in the final chapter is rather jarring.

 

There's some excellent characterisation in the book. As well as Joshua, characters like beleaguered General Ralph Hiltch and Louise also develop in interesting and unforeseen ways. As with the previous book it does feel like Dariat and the Valisk story are somewhat superfluous, with their actual contributions to the overall plot (the hellhawks in Book 2 and the melange - not the Dune kind - in Book 3) not really justifying the immense length of their narrative.

 

That brings us to the ending, which on one level is epic, cosmic and genuinely impressive. It is also rather too neat, and Hamilton is probably a little bit too exacting in detailing 'what happened next' to the characters, right down to a minor car thief arrested at the start of Book 2 (although that bit is quite funny). It isn't a totally perfect ending, and he does leave one huge 'plot bomb' waiting to explode which could be followed up on in future books, but in this age where slightly more ambiguous endings are all the rage Night's Dawn does feel like it dots all the 'i's and crosses all the 't's a little too pedantically. Also, whilst the ending isn't a deus ex machina at all, it is certainly brought about by a plot device, which some readers have found anti-climatic. I found it worked quite well.

 

The Naked God (****) is the weakest book in The Night's Dawn Trilogy, as conclusions often are, but it is still mostly well-written and characterised, with fun action sequences and an impressively thoughtful air to proceedings that will hopefully get the reader to think about some of the issues raised. The book is available now in the UK and USA.