Pandora's Star (The Commonwealth Saga)

Peter F. Hamilton has written a great story with Pandora's Star. I don't want to argue a case for people to like this book, some will love it while others won't. We all enjoy different types of stories and authors - so let me give my opinion to those who are contemplating reading this book. READ IT & ENJOY! I was very happy to see another 'BIG' book from Hamilton. I am also a fan of short story collections, but sometimes it's nice to be engulfed by a deep story which can be enjoyed over many weeks or months of reading : ) Parts of the book I enjoyed much: Scenes where the characters are being chased or trying to elude others (Hamilton wrote these parts well - I couldn't put the book down!) Detailed enviroments of 'other' worlds - At one point Hamilton places some characters into freezing climates with limited means to warm themselves, I could feel the cold! The great dilemma when humans find an alien race trapped inside a barrier! We wonder why they are trapped there, Who constructed this barrier to keep them there & more importantly why !? Mankind must travel farther than ever from earth to study this barrier and the aliens trapped inside it, all the while being warned by a group of humans who claim to know that these aliens WANT US TO COME AND RELEASE THEM and in doing so will spell disaster for humanity! Of course there is so much more to this book, some of the concepts such as 're-life' (once you die, the ability to have your body cloned and regenerated at a much quicker rate with most of your past memories intact) make this book so interesting * I enjoyed the characters very much, especially the way they interacted with others, thought out and interesting. I give this book 5 stars because it does what I think a good book should do --- tells a great story! --- For those who enjoy BIG STORIES, DETAILED WORLDS, MYSTERIES, HUMANITY at it's BEST & WORST and SCIENCE FICTION ! ______ give this book a read _______ : )

I've read most everything Peter F. Hamilton has written and Pandora's star is the best yet. The author has introduced just a limited number of technology concepts that we have to accept in order to enjoy the universe he has created; in fact there are just three: wormhole technology, rejuvenation and the Silfen paths (although the latter has still to reveal its importance to the plot). This is the trademark of really great SF authors. I liked the elegant simplicity of interstellar travel: by train ! Shocking at first, it is most logical once you've accepted the existence of wormholes. And rejuvenation (with its associated memorycell technology) is also very important to the plot, as it fundamentally changes the human attitude towards death. See the suicide attack latter in the book. There is a side effect that hasn't been fully explored: murder may be seen only as an inconvenience by the victim. This book has everything: mystery and drama, space battles, new places to be explored, politics, love scenes, several alien species including one really evil (or two? we are waiting for the sequel). My only gripes are the really abrupt ending and the lack of depth for the Prime character, shown as single-minded (pun intended) to destroy any life in the galaxy. All in all, a real page turner. Highly recommended.

Pandora's Star (2004) is the first novel in the Commonwealth Saga duology. Sometime in the near future, after many delays, America sent the first expedition to Mars, only to find an Englishman waiting for them outside the interface to the world's first artificial wormhole. Compressed Space Transport, the company built to exploit the new technology, became the basis for the Commonwealth, which by 2380 AD has expanded to roughly four hundred lightyears in diameter. The Commonwealth has found various sentient species among the stars and has both diplomatic and commercial relationships with two starfaring species. The Silfen look like elves, talk in riddles, and supposedly have non-mechanistic pathways among the stars. The High Angel is an artificial sentient controlling a monstrous spaceship, probably with FTL capabilities, that has outriders containing cities full of various alien species apparently collected along the way. In this novel, Dudley Bose discovers that Dyson Alpha, one of a pair of stars surrounded by Dyson spheres, was enclosed in less than a second. Former speculations about the pair assumed a material enclosure, but only a force field could have been erected in that elapsed time. Since the stars are far outside the reach of the current CST network, the Commonwealth decides to build a spaceship with its own wormhole generator to go out and investigate the anomaly. The Guardians of Selfhood are a militant group that are waging a war against the Starflyer, an alien that they believe traveled in the vacant arkship found on the planet Far Away. Bradley Johansson, the founder of the Guardians, has stated that the Starflyer controls the minds of the personnel of the Research Institute that is examining the arkship and that the alien has long since moved into human space to influence the public through its dupes and slaves. The Guardians broadcast a shotgun message claiming that the Starflyer is behind the move to travel to Dyson Alpha. They start working against the project and eventually try to destroy it. Paula Myo is a Chief Inspector at the Serious Crimes Directorate. She has been hunting Bradley Johansson for one and a half centuries. It is her only unsolved case. She is dispatched to investigate the attack on the spaceship and catches many small fry, but not Bradley Johansson. This story is reminiscent of The Mote in God's Eye. Curious humans follow an anomaly to discover a very expansionist, aggressive society isolated from the rest of the galaxy, but soon find themselves with a tiger by the tail. Moreover, crewmembers are trapped by the natives. However, this novel builds upon and surpasses the Niven & Pournelle opus in the threat level and strangeness of the aliens. Moreover, it depicts the breakout of the alien Primes into human space. The story is written in the same multi-threaded format as the Night's Dawn Trilogy. The various characters, and their threads, sometimes are confusing. The story also builds slowly to a cli

I have read a lot of these big SF multi volume epics. Kim Stanley Robinson is good, Vernor Vinge is great, Neal Stephenson is undoubtedly brilliant, and I read Alistair Reynolds or Kevin Anderson when there's nothing new by the other luminaries. But then Peter F Hamilton puts out a new novel and everything else is put into perspective. (Although Misspent Youth left me a bit cold, but I forgive him now that Pandora's Star is here.)Other reviewers have compared his work to Arthur C Clarke or Asimov, but in reality there is no comparison. Respect to the old guard, but Hamilton writes way better than either of them. I cut my teeth on those guys, so I don't say that lightly. So, Pandora's Star, what can I say? I started it yesterday and I am on pae 271 right now, but I am so excited that I had to put up a review already (even though it means taking a few minutes out from reading).Hamilton's writing is perfect. He has an uncanny, almost supernatural, grasp of the form, and his agile plotting, the nuances, the characterisation are all flawless. I love this guy. The science is hard, the bad guys are wickedly complex and the heroes are all too human. The way it unfolds is utterly fascinating.Pandora's Star is a detective story, and as such is unputdownable. Rolled in to boot are the epic quest and a breathtaking vision of society three hundred years hence. Like the Night's Dawn books, Pandora's Star makes me wish I lived in Hamilton's imagination.The Hard SF Opera has become a kind of cliche - the same ideas roll around from one author to the next, recombined in new and different ways. Some authors are happy with this, but there only are a couple who, in my opinion, consistently create masterpieces in the genre. Greg Egan is one. And Peter F Hamilton is the other.