Peter F. Hamilton, where to start?

I've been curious about Peter F. Hamilton, but don't know where to start.

I've been looking specifically at:

The Reality Dysfunction, because I know that the Night's Dawn trilogy is very popular.

Pandora's Star, because the back cover just makes this one sound interesting.

Fallen Dragon, because a stand alone book sounds tempting.

Mindstar Rising, mainly because I like the title (that cover though... ugh).

Which of these (if any) would make a good introduction to Peter F. Hamilton? Is he worth reading at all?

Put the book down. Step back. Turn about slowly. And walk away.

It's not worth it. And each of his books is 1000 pages, so you'll waste so much time learning this.

Ian, you read it and don't like it- I've heard so many scary things about these books I've kept away.
In Reality Dysfunction- what is this about the ghost of Al Capone being a character, and being like a real cheesy TV gangster?

The first edition cover of Mindstar Rising was better (it was a paperback original).



Despite Ian's protestations the book is a smidgeon over 400 pages and a pretty reasonable read. It exhibits few of his later excesses. It is also partially set in the town where I live.

Of the others Fallen Dragon is probably worth trying as it gives a flavour of his other long books but without as many plot threads on the go.

I've enjoyed everything he's written. Mindstar Rising is probably a good starter - it's shorter than the others, but still a full novel, and the story stands alone so you don't need to read the other Greg Mandel books if you're the type that likes to finish a book they've started, but don't enjoy it enough to read the others.

The Greg Mandel books are indeed short - they were written before Hamilton discovered bloat. Unfortunately, they're also very Little England, and written with parochial Tory sensibilities.

The Night's Dawn trilogy is a bloated monster. And Hamilton managed to fill it with his signature bits and pieces - a super-competent maverick who's a hit with all the ladies and owns the best spaceship, a nubile young heroine, and an entire world made to order for suburban sherry-swilling Tory wannabe squire-types. With serfs.

Even discounting the sheer size of the paperbacks, it's not for me, I'm afraid.

Well lets just he is not for everyone and even if you like his style you have to be in the mood for him. It's like the difference between sitting down to watch a movie verses watching entire TV series esp with the Night's Dawn trilogy in paper back form your looking at 3500+ pages. So don't start there if you do read him.

I personally started with Pandora's Star and its sequel Judas unchained before I knew much about the author. At the time it was just what I was looking for after spending much of the previous year reading short fiction I was ready sit and spend sometime in one setting.

Man, I kinda want to try him. Hell, I can handle Ben Bova's writing. I even bought (but haven't yet read) Simon Green's Deathstalker books.

But Ian made a powerful case with a super-competent maverick who's a hit with all the ladies and owns the best spaceship, a nubile young heroine, and an entire world made to order for suburban sherry-swilling Tory wannabe squire-types. With serfs.

That really does sound pretty bad. Though it must be said that everything but the Tory England stuff sounds like your average Robert Heinlein or Ben Bova book.

(Who am I kidding? I'll probably now pick up Fallen Dragon just to see if it's as bad as all that.)

He's one of my favourite authors, but ...

Getting addicted to PFH is a serious undertaking, and should only be approached if you're out of work or retired. I've just bought The Dreaming Void (791 pp). I'm giving it to my father for safe-keeping until I retire in 15 years time.

Well Noisy, if he's one of your favorites, where would you suggest a newbie start?

Night's Dawn trilogy. The ending is crap, but the journey is a roller-coaster. After that, the Greg Mandel stories will come as a welcome rest. Then, when you've recovered, move on to the Pandora's Star/Judas Unchained books which have a more satisfying resolution but seem more draining. You'd better be prepared for the long haul. I've reviewed Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained.

>8 jseger9000: The Tory stuff is probably equivalent to Bova's politics. Although, to be fair, Hamilton can churn out a better sentence than Bova's deathless prose.

The Deathstalker books are... amusing for about 3 seconds. Read the first one. Then wipe all knowledge of the others from your mind. It's a space opera, set thousands of years in the future, with aliens, and web sites.

Nobody wants to talk about the resurrected Al Capone in The Night's Dawn Trilogy?

Shouldn't people be warned about this, or it's not a big deal?
Or did someone pull my leg about this???

Yep, Al Capone is in there. But there's so much other freaky stuff going on that he's just part of the scenery.

Peter paints on such a wide canvass that some parts are way over the top but other parts keep my interest. In Night's Dawn the genetic manipulation crowd vs. the naturals ( I think it was called bitek) was a good thread of the story. That's something I lightly track in the real world, the battles over genetic manipulation.

In Pandora's Star the evolution of the aliens that don't negotiate was pretty good. Can't remember their names. Other segments bored me.

I read the first Mandel book but have no desire to read the rest of them. The first MMPB of Night's Dawn would be good place to start. If you don't like it it's not that many pages invested.

I'd suggest reading Peter Hamilton's A Second Chance at Eden as a good place to start. As a book of short stories it would allow you to see if you like the style of writing.

Tory Politics? Robert Heinlein, that great American Tory writer? Yes!

Greg Mandel? Second chance at Eden? the genetic manipulation crowd? Gregor Mendel? Yes!

Man as God? Who will take on that role? Robert Heinlein? Yes!

Man has managed to turn everything he touches to sh@t. What makes us think cloning will be any different?

i thought God was Robt Heinlein's alter ego in his books...I've had arguments w/ my wife and sister over Heinlein...i'll grudgingly admit that his juveniles were good...but jeez..once i hit "Stranger in a Strange Land" as an undergrad i got totally turned off..Ayn Rand in space.
Newt, as awful as he was/is, doesn't get to play, since no one bought his book as best as i can recall.
Personally I blame R. Raygun myself..
bob
(i realized, looking though my collection and memory that in re the REAL topic at hand..i've never read any Hamilton..or at least don't remember it if i did!)

Finally adding my growing number of Peter Hamilton books to LibraryThing, I was surprised to see relatively few others with them -- reading the posts surprised me again. I must admit I really enjoyed his Night's Dawn trilogy, and am 1/2 way through the Commonwealth Saga. Space opera entertainingly done, but if you like your novels succinct, he's not for you. I find his description amazing -- the details exemplify his richly and thoroughly imagined worlds, and some of the details really matter down the road, while others don't (figuring out the difference is half the fun).

In response to jseger (in the one-more-opinion category), I agree with Noisy "Night's Dawn trilogy. The ending is crap, but the journey is a roller-coaster." It was a worthwhile ride for me, though the first book The Reality Disfunction definitely starts slowly; it is not just another aliens story (though at first you'll fear it is), but delves into political and religious issues that have been dealt with before in scifi, but their treatment here is still throught provoking and unique. Absolutely, "You'd better be prepared for the long haul." but oh, what a journey.

Is length always a bad thing? What makes a long book worth the read?

I was at Borders with a 30% off coupon, so I bit the bullet and bought Fallen Dragon. (Amazon no longer lists this as available new. Is it about to go out of print?)

I have no clue when I'll read it though. Looks like it's time to rearrange my TBR pile.

#18 - Bob,

Ayn Rand in space.
Newt, as awful as he was/is, doesn't get to play, since no one bought his book as best as i can recall.
Personally I blame R. Raygun myself..

To quote Professor Farnsworth: What, what, what?

I got lost when you mentioned Newt. Did you mean Newt Gingrich or is my lack of Heinlein knowledge showing?

rant on/ sorry..was referring back to the Newt Gingrich and noting that he'd never have gotten in except for the Reagan fiasco. I blame a lot of what happened in the USA on the Gipper - convinced the citizenry that all you needed to do was cut, cut cut taxes and the rest would take care of itself. Of course that mindset filtered down to the county level..and even trying to get teachers decent wages or roads fixed goes bonkers since the the electorate thinks taxes are unamerican and the gvt is out to get them..(of course, by this point, it is). The days are long gone when LBJ waded out into the flooded NOrleans at night and, in effect, "we're the US government and we're here to help." Now we have sht for brains playing guitar and they doing an aerial flyby and saying.."yup, looks wet down there." Shouldn't post past a couple of drinks..but wtf. Raygun was the first sci-fi prez...hey...a shield against russki missiles? not a problem..Govt sux? well..let's make it bigger and bigger and have it do less and less. There is no social contract left, to speak of. Rant off.

I know there are lots of fans out there, but count me in the "I've tried to like Hamilton and failed" camp.

My review of The Reality Dysfunction: Emergence can be summed up as "many characters are introduced, most are killed off quickly, and I wish the others had been too".

I almost never give up on books, but I gave up on Pandora's Star after 500 pages. There were sooooo many books in my to be read stack that looked more appealing than sticking it out for another 192 pages.

It's very easy to understand why people wouldn't like Hamilton. I can understand that there is the full range of opinion about him, out there.

There are some authors who elicit reactions that I can't understand. I can't understand someone not liking Ursula K. LeGuin, and I can't understand anyone liking Hal Duncan.

I think Hamilton is generally great. But then, I do like a long book.

The Night's Dawn trilogy does have its flaws. Al Capone's presence is an odd touch, but it sort of works -- not the best part of the series, by any means, but I don't think it's a serious flaw. In general, though, Hamilton uses that vast number of pages to do some pretty good writing. In particular, parts of The Reality Dysfunction -- once the central conflict gets going, but before its nature is properly understood -- are genuinely scary. The societies and races portrayed are all given a lot of depth.

I'd also recommend the Pandora's Star / Judas Unchained two-parter. Really long, again, but there's a lot of enjoyable world-building in there.

If you're worried about investing a lot of time in Hamilton before you're sure if you'll like it or not, Fallen Dragon would be a reasonable choice. I'd avoid Misspent Youth, though. I think he's trying too hard in that one to avoid writing a "typical PFH novel", and in the process ditches the things he's best at.

Among the main pleasures of his books are the sheer scale and detail of the worlds and conflicts. If that sort of thing floats your boat, you can't do much better. If you think long = bloated = bad, then not much of his work is going to appeal.

#22 - Bob,

No problem. I'm right there with you on Raygun and all the rest of #22. What worries me is that I've noticed over the last eight years or so I've gotten a terrible sort of nostalgia for Newt Gingrich and his 'Contract on America'.

At least he wasn't trying to smokescreen his 'screw the poor' attitude while simultaneously wrapping himself in the flag and the Bible.

#25 - Monkey,

I can tell when a poster is in the UK because you guys seem to have a much wider selection of books. I've not heard of Peter F. Hamilton's Misspent Youth. Why does it have (in one version) the same cover as David Brin's Kiln People?

I think it says something that the US is such a large country, but my unresearched opinion is that we seem to have less variety (at least in our sci-fi). I know there are a number of books by popular authors that just aren't printed in the US or quickly go out of print.

I've always wanted to take a trip to the UK. I've already warned my better half that once we are there I'm likely to load up on books and music.

A lot of UK authors are not published in the US, and a lot of US authors are not published in the UK. Strangely, we seem to get the best of yours, but you don't necessarily get the best of ours. Oh, and there are those British authors - such as Ian McDonald and Charles Stross - who first made it into print in the US.

I shied away from Hamilton for a long time because of the Tory tag. Then I read the Greg Mandel books and got on with them far more than I expected to. The rightist milieu is part of the setting rather than a formal agenda that Hamilton pushes.

Which poses the question: do we read for comfort, or to be stretched? Do we prefer books that reinforce our world-view, or challenge it? Should we read within our comfort zone, or outside it?

I've read The reality dysfunction (first part of Night's Dawn) and although it took some time, I didn't find it hard going. Yes, I recognised the central characters for the figures from Central Casting that they were; but overall, I had no problem with the book. (Now, if I'd carried on and read the other two volumes in succession right there and then, that might have been a very different story...)

The Night's Dawn trilogy contains about ten different plot threads going all at once. It is far too much. There are plenty of good ideas, but about half of the characters should be cut so that you can actually follow the plot. The same criticism goes for Pandora's Star/Judas unchained, but to a slightly lesser extent.

If you want to read Fallen Dragon, I would suggest you have the weekend free, and if you want to read The Night's Dawn trilogy, or Pandora's Star/Judas Unchained, have the whole week free.

in re #28. The same goes doubled or trebled for sci-fi/fantasy authors from NZ and Australia. Some of my favorite, relatively recent, series have made it northwards from the antipodes!

Yes, Orbit have been a bit sneaky there. They're publishing Australian authors in the UK as if they were debut writers - when they've all ready racked up sales Down Under (or, in the case of Sean Williams, in the US too). It's an underhanded way of appearing to support new writing talent, but without the risk.

#27

Ha, I hadn't seen the cover connection. It seems to be the German Publisher being cheap and reusing cover-art from somewhere else.

I think the myriad of plot-strands in a long novel is almost what defines Hamilton's wide-screen space-opera. The only ones which aren't are the Greg Mandel books and Misspent Youth.

I can quite understand people not liking Misspent Youth. The main characters are pretty horrible people for a start - and there is much obsessing about sex by the main character (a dirty old man of sorts) which leaves little room for a sympathetic portrayal of women. It bears little resemblance to everything else he has written (although it is set in the same universe as some of the space operas).

It helps to take notes when reading the Night's Dawn trilogy :) The author will drop a name once and then expect you to remember it 500 pages later. I do admire his ability to give everyone names, though. I always find it hard to come up with names.

#34

He just gets a telephone directory and sticks pins in it. He also tries to get the names spread out a little in the alphabet as well.

#34 I don't see what is so good about a person being given a name in a story. If they are only a minor character, I don't need to know their name.

And a few reminders of what minor characters have done would be quite good.

Let's see, here. Guy comes into a store-y on page 136, kills the butler accidentally, hides out in Idaho for 460 pages and suddenly the subject of the dead butler pops up, and the guy becomes important and the narrator would tell us something important about him, but there are twelve minor characters, how do we tell them apart? What magic phrase do we have to utter to help us recognize this minor character instead of one of the other eleven minor characters?

#37 -it's even better than that. In one of Hamilton's novellas (I think) it takes something like 300 years to solve a murder. IIRC, it was a murder.

That's Watching Trees Grow, I think. I'd forgotten about that one -- that's a good short one.

I recently finished The Dreaming Void. While it is certainly an incredibly long novel, I didn't find many parts where i was bored. Keep in mind that Hamilton writes the most epic of epic science fictions. I mean, this novel not only covers a galaxy but also sort of covers two realities (sort of), and its only the first book of a trilogy! In any case i thought it was great and would certainly recommend you reading it if you have the patience to have a nice sit down without distraction and just soak it all in.

I'm halfway through Pandora's Star, and it is still holding my interest. I kind of like big sprawling space operas, though. I'm hoping he can tie up all the storylines by the end.

Pandora's Star did sound pretty good to me too.

I just read Alastair Reynolds' excellent Pushing Ice, so I'm going to read a few other types of books before I plow into another space epic. I do love a good hard sci-fi doorstopper though.

Pandora's Star does improve along the way, certainly.

mindstar, is a good yarn with a kind of whodunnit story, and an interesting take on they way england might be run in the future. I can't say I noticed the Tory stuff, but I don't really follow politics.

I aslo really enjoyed the Dreaming Void, and am hanging out for the next book!

I'm glad to have found this thread, I was about to ask people's thoughts on Peter F. Hamilton. I'm a big fan.

Start with Pandora's Star, then go on to Judas Unchained. Then, if you want to read something in the same universe but don't want to start the Reality Dysfunction or Dreaming Void series, go to Great North Road, which is pretty much a stand-alone novel. If you want to continue in that universe, I would then go to the Dreaming Void series, which I thought was excellent. I'm currently reading his Salvation series, but that is in a different universe. Avoid Misspent Youth, it was annoying.

Sure, they are long, but they are a lot shorter than Brandon Sanderson novels and a lot less meandering too.

>45 Karlstar: You realize that this thread is 12.5 years old and noone had posted here for 12.5 years, right? :)

I really hope this is not a new policy to resurrect long dead threads...

>46 AnnieMod: I did! However, I'm a fan and was hoping to just pick up the discussion rather than start a new thread. Would you prefer I start new ones?

>47 Karlstar: There are two schools of thought there, of course. I think the dominant one is the one that thinks that starting a new thread unburdened by old comments from people no longer on the site is to prefer. But there are those who favour reusing an old one and building on that one, to avoid duplication and to drag back old posters into the discussion. But you are certainly free to choose whichever one.

>48 anglemark:

Well summarized.

For myself, I prefer to avoid what I consider to be needless proliferation of threads. But it's best if instances of thread "necromancy" be confessed as such when they are performed, to avoid confusion about the currency of earlier posts.

>47 Karlstar: Depends on the thread.

Had you started with "Let's see if these recommendations had changed - what everyone thinks now?" or something along these lines, I would probably have jumped in discussing Hamilton as opposed to pointing out dates. As the question is "where to start" and it seems answered and as if you are answering it and not reopening a discussion, it just felt like you did not realize the time-span.

In addition, LT had had a bit of a problem with the new Talk system losing some settings and cookies for some users that led to older threads resurfacing and people answering without realizing they are old. Thus me making sure you know it is an old one :)

Yes, with changes to Talk, it may be that "Everything old is new again!"

>50 AnnieMod: Fair point, as I answered a very old question, though I did notice the time span. I guess I preferred to post to that thread, rather than making a new thread then being told there was already an old Hamilton thread, by someone who likes searching through old threads.

In any case, I am a big fan of Peter F. Hamilton, particularly the Commonwealth Universe books. I have read Salvation, have not gotten to the next one yet.

I'm happy to see the continuation of old threads. I would never have searched out this topic but had a vague interest in the back of my mind that was satisfied by seeing it pop up front.