From /home/matoh/tmp/sf-rev Fri Aug 22 16:38:11 1997 From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Aug 18 15:22:43 1997 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!eru.mt.luth.se!news-stkh.gsl.net!news.gsl.net!sn.no!uninett.no!news-feed.inet.tele.dk!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!news-peer.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!Sprint!netnews.com!eecs-usenet-02.mit.edu!news.media.mit.edu!news!wex From: daclay@interact.net.au (Excession) Newsgroups: aus.sf,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: An AUS.SF review by Dac - The Reality Dysfunction Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 22 Jul 1997 17:24:36 GMT Organization: InterACT Technology Group http://www.interact.net.au/ Lines: 76 Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: tinbergen.media.mit.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:1446 The Reality Dysfunction, by Peter F. Hamilton. Review Copyright 1997 David Andrew Clayton Synopsis : seven hundred years in the future, Humanity has begun to spread out through the galaxy, hundreds of planets, thousands of modified asteroids. A few alien races ('xenocs') have been found, some of them have joined humanity, one mob as observers, another as vaguely interested co-habitants on new colony planets. On the frontier world Lalonde, nothing much goes right, and as the book begins to get interesting, Lalonde gets shafted again and again. [minor spoilers below] This is a big book in more ways than the obvious. Trade paperback format, 950pp, and more ideas stuffed in it than five normal novels in today's market. Hamilton's book evokes that 'sense of wonder' one gets from reading great SF. In the same way that Hyperion wowed me, this book grabbed hold and was almost unputdownable (if I wasn't into playing Quake so much ...). Hamilton's universe is kinda like Niven's Known Space. There are things going on that aren't clear to the humans. Humanity has split into two factions -- the Edenists and the Adamists. Edenists use a psi-like power called 'affinity' to communicate with both each other, and 'bitek' creations of various levels of intelligence ranging from pre-sentience to super-intelligent collections inhabiting bitek space-based habitats. Adamists prefer nanotechnology, and are into neural-nanonic and physical enhancement in a big way. Technology rules, as well as god. The Adamists consider the Edenists to be heretical, but to say more would spoil the story. The protagonist is an exceptionally lucky young fellow called Joshua. He's out looking for a big find in a xenoc ring of debris, much like Pohl's Gateway -- a big find can set you up for years! Joshua discovers his big find, and goes on to become a young space captain. This guy is depicted as a constant sex-machine. He has it away with half the female characters in the book, and they all love him. Why? Who knows. The main story is centred around a sequestration phenomenon, through various eyes and persons we are told of what's happened in the Edenists past, what skeletons lurk in their closets, and why the Adamists are adamantly non-Edenist. This sequestration imbues normal people with superduper inexplicable powers -- lots of keen battles between relatively unarmed people who have been taken over, and armed-to-the-teeth adamists with an impressive range of devastating weaponry. The entire human confederacy is eventually confronted with monsters from humanities recent past, and monsters of an entirely similar nature in their uncounted billions. I really liked this book. Peter Hamilton is a new author to me, I've never heard of him before, never read any reviews of his works. I picked up the book by sheer chance, and I'm very pleased I did. The down side? It's part one of a series. (Aren't they all these days?) The book finishes well enough, but there are heaps of major plot lines to follow, and the confederacy is obviously going to have some major problems in further books. On the increasingly absurd Sid and Nancy scale, this deserves a tuna steak with an incredible sauce. %A Peter F. Hamilton %T The Reality Dysfunction %I Macmillan %C London %D 1996 %G ISBN 0-333-67563-0 %P 958pp %O Trade paperback, Aus$24.95 David Andrew Clayton # Please remove NO_SPAM when dac@pcug.org.au # sending email replies. I post therefore I am. # From /home/matoh/tmp/sf-rev Fri Aug 22 16:41:08 1997 From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Aug 18 15:22:51 1997 From: "John Shiali" Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: "A Quantum Murder" by Peter F. Hamilton Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: Sun, 10 Aug 1997 09:54:35 -0000 Organization: Excalibur Inc. Lines: 53 Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Message-ID: ~Reply-To: "john" NNTP-Posting-Host: kangaroo.media.mit.edu Path: news.ifm.liu.se!genius.dat.hk-r.se!news.lth.se!eru.mt.luth.se!news-ge.switch.ch!news.grnet.gr!news-feed1.eu.concert.net!infeed1.internetmci.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!howland.erols.net!news.maxwell.syr.edu!logbridge.uoregon.edu!enews.sgi.com!news.sgi.com!eecs-usenet-02.mit.edu!news.media.mit.edu!news!wex Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:1482 "A Quantum Murder" by Peter F. Hamilton Review Copyright 1997 John Shiali [contains minor spoilers for this volume and the preceding book about this character --AW] This is the second of the Greg Mandel books, and whereas the other can be described as SF action thrillers, this book leans more towards the whodunnit area. Edward Kitchener, brilliant but unconventional scientist and double Nobel Prize winner, is slaughtered in the distinct style of an imprisoned serial killer, whilst in the desolate retreat he shares with a few select students. Greg Mandel, psi-boosted investigator is called out of an early retirement and back into the limelight as Event Horizon try to find out what happened, and what Kitchener was working on that could have made him a target. Although this book is more of a puzzle story, and the solution telegraphed by the halfway mark, the way the resolution is carried out is unsatisfying and smacks too much of a convenient get-out. The reader is asked to make difficult leap of faith in order for the resolution to work. Where the book makes up for this hugely is in the colour and richness of the background. Lincolnshire is still suffering from global warming, the conglomerates still battle, techmercs still fight, but we get to see how our favourite characters such as Julia Evans, Royan, Eleanor, Suzi, etc. have progressed since the last book. In the way that you might read one of Iain M. Banks' Culture novels and get a huge kick from finding out more about the Culture themselves, so too Peter F. Hamilton fills in more of the world and history inhabited by Greg Mandel and the people around him. Although you won't get as big a kick out of this book as "Mindstar Rising," it is a good read, and highly recommended if you intend to read the third book, but like finding that your favourite ice-cream has changed it's recipe and doesn't quite hit the spot for you anymore, you are left with a slight feeling of anti-climax. This is far more a reflection on the impact that "Mindstar Rising" has than on the quality of "A Quantum Murder," no doubt due to the change of recipe employed by Hamilton this time around. %A Hamilton, Peter F. %T Quantum Murder, A %D 1994 %G ISBN 0-330-33045-4 %I Pan Books Ltd. %C London, UK %O paperback 4.99 UKP %P 376 pp John - Anglepoise lamps? Not under MY roof. From /home/matoh/tmp/sf-rev Fri Aug 22 16:45:29 1997 From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Aug 18 15:23:28 1997 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lejonet.se!newsfeed1.telia.com!masternews.telia.net!newssrv.ita.tip.net!ubnnews.unisource.ch!ubnspare.unisource.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.grnet.gr!news-feed1.eu.concert.net!infeed1.internetmci.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!howland.erols.net!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!su-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!logbridge.uoregon.edu!enews.sgi.com!news.sgi.com!eecs-usenet-02.mit.edu!news.media.mit.edu!news!wex From: "John Shiali" Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: "Mindstar Rising" by Peter F. Hamilton Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 10 Aug 1997 12:33:56 GMT Organization: Excalibur Inc. Lines: 66 Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: kangaroo.media.mit.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:1484 "Mindstar Rising" by Peter F. Hamilton Review Copyright 1997 John Shiali [contains spoilers for this book and the predecessor, Mindstar Brigade --AW] Peter F. Hamilton's first book in the Greg Mandel series is pleasingly and convincingly set in an England ravaged by ten years of far-left-wing Socialist government and the increasing effects of global warming. Mandel is an ex-soldier turned Private Detective. Product of a short military experiment in psychic powers (The Mindstar Brigade), he can read minds to a limited degree and has some better than average intuition, thanks to a biological implant. A veteran of Gulf War II, Greg Mandel smartly fits the action hero mould along with the ability to actually think his way out of problems. After secretly working with and nurturing the rebels that eventually overthrow the Socialist government, Mandel find himself finally having to live up to his cover identity of Private Dick. He is called in to help Philip Evans. Evans is an aging industrialist who suspects a spoiling operation against some of his Orbital production factories, at a crucial time when he is moving his company, Event Horizon, back from its offshore havens and factory ships in order to benefit from the New Conservative government back in England. Event Horizon is on the verge of a new era of superconductor based power storage, and Philip Evan's dream is to have England become an primary economic power again by being in the vanguard of this new technology. As usual (unless you like your books very short and boring), nothing is as it seems, and soon Mandel finds himself drawn into more than just a little checking on how honest some of Event Horizon's Orbital Engineers are, and into a full scale corporate war, where the dirtiest player wins. Peter F. Hamilton manages to write both story and characters well, and the reader soon warms to the clever psychic soldier Mandel, flighty Julia Evans, a broken Royan, a young and determined Eleanor, streetwise punk soldier Suzi, etc., and all the other characters to whom we are introduced. The story is not purely action driven, but also has a puzzle element which the reader is drawn into as Mandel tries to figure out the circles within circles that are part of conglomerate and political life in the 21st century. Mandel's psychic abilities are just enough to give him an edge, but not enough to make things easy for him and they certainly give an interesting side to his character Ultimately, where Hamilton scores most highly is his ability to create a convincing and believable new version of England, where global warming has taken hold, big corporations battle each other, both economically and through the use of clandestine tekmercs deals. The people are trying to pull themselves out of a decade of rotten government, and hackers have broken into every phone exchange so that you can hire them to do your dirty work. If you like your action with a bit of thinking, and your storyline with believable characters, then this book is a must read. %A Hamilton, Peter F. %T Mindstar Rising %G ISBN 0-330-32376-8 %D 1993 %I Pan Books Ltd. %C London, UK %O paperback 4.99 UKP %P 438 pp John - Reyrolle Protection is under investigation after sales of sub-standard crocodiles were reported. From /home/matoh/tmp/sf-rev Fri Aug 22 16:48:05 1997 From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Aug 18 15:23:51 1997 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!newsfeed.sunet.se!news99.sunet.se!news01.sunet.se!sunic!02-newsfeed.univie.ac.at!newsfeed.de.ibm.net!ibm.net!newsfeed.Austria.EU.net!EU.net!howland.erols.net!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!su-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!logbridge.uoregon.edu!enews.sgi.com!news.sgi.com!eecs-usenet-02.mit.edu!news.media.mit.edu!news!wex From: "John Shiali" Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: "The Nano Flower" by Peter F. Hamilton Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 10 Aug 1997 12:38:06 GMT Organization: Excalibur Inc. Lines: 57 Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Message-ID: ~Reply-To: "john" NNTP-Posting-Host: kangaroo.media.mit.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:1485 "The Nano Flower" by Peter F. Hamilton Review Copyright 1997 John Shiali [This review contains minor spoilers for this book and for the first two books about this character. --AW] In this third novel, Greg Mandel is once again pulled from his peaceful retirement by Julia Evans, owner of Event Horizon. For fifteen years, Evans has used Event Horizon to create England's economic renaissance. With processing wetware in her head, two AIs of herself and one of her grandfather Philip to help her, she has made Event Horizon a major force in the world. However, things are starting to go wrong. Her husband Royan, the mutual friend of Greg Mandel, whom she rebuilt from the crippling injuries sustained during the uprising against the previous hard left government, has disappeared. Rival companies are offering technology that far outstrips anything previously seen, threatening to swallow Event Horizon, or leave it blown away in their dust. Julia Evans then receives an anonymous and unusual flower, whose genes are millions of years in advance of anything on earth. Of course, the only man who can figure out what is going on is Greg Mandel. This is quite simply, a brilliant book. There is a fully rounded world here, with everyone out on the make and with an angle to play. Big corporations move their pieces on the chessboard, trying to outflank each other. They use tekmercs and hard-liners where necessary, hackers and stealth where they can. Hamilton shows us wonderful characters again: Suzi the streetfighter turned tekmerc, and her nemesis, the vicious Leol Reiger who likes to humiliate his opponents if he hasn't already killed them; Julia Evans has grown into a clever and sharp business woman who fears nothing more than the loss of Event Horizon; Charlotte, the high class prostitute who finds herself being hunted for what they think she might know; And of course Greg Mandel. Although resigned to his happy retirement, with his family and farm, he finds that the lure of action again ensnares him once again. The Nano Flower is a fast-paced thriller that insists that you stop and think, forces you to get to like the characters, and surprises you with constant twists in the storyline as you unravel the convoluted web that the inhabitants of Greg Mandel's world have woven. A must read if you like techno-thrillers. %A Hamilton, Peter F. %T Nano Flower, The %D 1995 %G ISBN 0-330-33044-6 %C London, UK %I Pan Books Ltd. %O paperback 4.99 UKP %P 566 pp John - "To you it's a potato; to me it's a potato. But to Sir Walter Bloody Raleigh, it's country estates, fine carriages and as many girls as his tongue can cope with." - Blackadder II: "Potato" From /home/matoh/tmp/sf-rev Fri Aug 22 16:48:23 1997 From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Aug 18 15:23:52 1997 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!newsfeed.sunet.se!news99.sunet.se!news01.sunet.se!sunic!02-newsfeed.univie.ac.at!newsfeed.de.ibm.net!ibm.net!newsm.ibm.net!ibm.net!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!su-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!logbridge.uoregon.edu!enews.sgi.com!news.sgi.com!eecs-usenet-02.mit.edu!news.media.mit.edu!news!wex From: "John Shiali" Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: "The Reality Dysfunction" by Peter F. Hamilton Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 10 Aug 1997 12:45:35 GMT Organization: Excalibur Inc. Lines: 83 Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Message-ID: ~Reply-To: "john" NNTP-Posting-Host: kangaroo.media.mit.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:1486 "The Reality Dysfunction" by Peter F. Hamilton Review Copyright 1997 John Shiali The year is 2600 AD. Hundreds of colonised planets span the galaxy, everything from low-tech gardens of Eden, to high-tech synthetic asteroids where people have been surgically enhanced, to races where they have spent centuries altering their genetic lines. Planetoids may be sentient, Captains are born in tandem with their organic craft and share a telepathic link, zero-gee sailors have their legs removed and another pair of arms grafted on instead. Mankind is about to realise it's potential to become anything it wants to be. Then, on a backwater agricultural planet, an invisible alien observer, not quite on our plane of existence, gets a little too close when a criminal is lynched. Now a doorway has been held open between this world and wherever you go after death, and whatever is in there wants life back desperately. Like a disease, sequestration spreads from one person to another, bodies being taken over by those who have previously died, but now find that they have a chance to live again, and nothing seems to be able to stop them. Just like Larry Niven's "Known Space," and Iain M. Banks' "Culture" novels, Peter F. Hamilton has succeed in creating the huge sweeping vista of a star-spanning race ,with many societies, where the only constant is diversity. Hamilton makes the background fully fleshed out and deep; you want to read the book to find out more about the setting he has used, and yet it is all very different from Banks or Niven. Just when you though that nobody could better the "Culture" without stealing some of Banks' ideas, Hamilton has proved that it can be done and done well. Where Hamilton makes a real departure is in the number of plotlines and how he handles them. Rather than following a main plot and maybe a couple of sub-plots, Hamilton has around a dozen plots on the go at any one time -- imagine an eight hour mini-series starring a cast of hundreds of top name actors and thousands of extras. You are introduced to characters, and learn a little about them and what is happening to them. Then you switch to a different plotline for a while. Then a third, and then back to the first one for a while. You have to concentrate on several storylines at once, and see how they fit into the big picture of what is going on in Hamilton's universe. Sometimes you see part of a plotline or character from an unusual angle as two plotlines interact. You may follow a character for a while, interspersed with other stories, right up to the point of where you know they are going to be sequestered. That character may then make a brief appearance in another plotline and never be seen again. Although this is a demanding format for the reader -- but not as difficult as Banks' "Feersum Endjinn" -- it is worth persevering. As you have a complete view on what is happening, and can link different information from different plotlines, you find yourself mentally shouting at the characters, trying to help them beat the odds. It is just like when your favourite film character goes back into the basement and you know that the homicidal knife-wielding manic is down there. Hamilton manages to keep you engrossed and following the plotlines, even through the book's mammoth length of almost a thousand pages. I've seen US paperback imports that have been sliced into multiple volumes, but the UK paperback is the same as the hardback i.e., massive. I don't know if there will be follow-up books, but there is no resolution to the overall plotline so it seems likely that there will be another volume of at least the same length before we can find out if Hamilton's universe beats the sequestration that threatens to overwhelm it. If you start this story you are commiting to more than the initial thousand pages, but however long it takes, this is a journey you must take if you read science-fiction. Where Hamilton's Greg Mandel books showed an evolving and sharpening talent, "The Reality Dysfunction" puts him on the map with Iain M. Banks with such a bang that you have to wonder if he snuck off to some Tibetan monastery and has come back as a master of the art. Hamilton produces a virtuoso performance - a book that will alternately have your mouth hanging open or banging your fists on the table in frustration that you can't tell the characters what you know in order to help them out. Make sure you get to experience it too. %A Hamilton, Peter F. %T Reality Dysfunction, The %D 1996 %G ISBN 0-333-63427-6 %C London, UK %I Macmillan General Books Ltd. %O hardback 16.99 UKP %P 955 pp John - Darth Vader wears lace panties! From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Sep 20 11:40:25 1999 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!news-peer-europe.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!netnews.com!howland.erols.net!news-out.digex.net.MISMATCH!dca1-hub1.news.digex.net!dca1-feed1.news.digex.net!intermedia!news.ums.edu!haven.umd.edu!hecate.umd.edu!sipb-server-1.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!usenet From: daccles@ozemail.com.au (Excession) Newsgroups: aus.sf,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Peter F. Hamilton's _Night's Dawn_ trilogy. Followup-To: aus.sf,rec.arts.sf.written Date: 15 Sep 1999 13:46:01 -0400 Organization: OzEmail Ltd, Australia Lines: 98 Sender: wex@tinbergen.media.mit.edu Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Message-ID: Reply-To: dac@nospam.pcug.org.au NNTP-Posting-Host: tinbergen.media.mit.edu X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.3/Emacs 19.34 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se aus.sf:2047 rec.arts.sf.reviews:2458 Peter F. Hamilton's "Nights Dawn" trilogy Review Copyright 1999 David Andrew Clayton _The Reality Dysfunction_ (referred to as TRD) _The Neutronium Alchemist_ (" TNA) _The Naked God_ (" TNG) I originally picked up TRD entirely "on spec". A fat new Trade Paperback science fiction book from an author I'd never heard of, and the first part in a trilogy as well. That isn't how I normally start out with a new author, especially one I've never heard before. The cover blurb for TRD lured me into getting the book -- and the hefty size. At over 1,000 pages, it was the biggest TPB book I'd seen in quite a while. I forget how long ago it was that I got the first book, my way back machine is stuffed. When I started the novel, I didn't know that it was going to be a trilogy! The novel opens up with some snazzy pyrotechnics and juicy space-operetic scenes, and then gets down into introducing characters, and characters, and more characters. Mr Hamilton has taken the chapter shuffling style of David Brin as his very own; maybe it's some kind of game he's playing with the reader "how long will it take them to figure out where this is occurring?" -- I found it kept me on my toes, since character viewpoints changed not only at the start of chapters, but between paragraphs on a page. TRD, as well as TNA and TNG are all extremely convoluted and complex books. TRD was a romp, and I was enthused, but didn't see how he was possibly going to tie up the threads -- until I reached the 'to be continued' at the end. Grr. Many months later, I splashed out on the hardcover version of _The Neutronium Alchemist_. In the intervening time I had read some of Mr Hamilton's 'Mindstar' books, mystery SF novels set in a slightly futuristic, post Global Warming England, and mostly liked them. Opening up TNA was a surprise; straight into the story. No preface, no "this is what happened before", no list of characters, just whammo, straight back into the story as if there had been no break. Again, this was a 1,000+ page novel, and lots and lots of stuff happens. The same point of view chopping and changing permeated the book, and whilst a few mysteries from the first book were adequately solved, the major plot lines were still wide open, and a slew of new plot lines were thrown at the reader. Complexity piled on complexity. By the time I had finished, and Al Capone was really starting to look like doing the Confederation a great deal of damage, I was thirsting for answers. I pestered the local bookshop, and was told "don't expect the final novel until October 1998". The 'when it is done' of the literary world can be so annoying -- sometimes being on the bleeding-edge of reading new SF can be counter-productive. :-) Apparently, Mr Hamilton decided to put together a collection of short stories instead of finishing the Night's Dawn trilogy, and whilst that collection (_A Second Chance at Eden_) was satisfactory, it didn't satisfy my NEED TO KNOW what was happening in the Night's Dawn saga. Just last week, around August 19th, an IRC chat revealed that _The Naked God_ was available in TPB format in shops in Sydney. I instantly acquired details, and ordered one to be delivered. Of course, that was on a Friday, so I didn't get the book until the Wednesday of the next week :-(. TNG is a whopping 1,174 pages in length. It's printed on very thin pages, and since it's in trade paperback format, it's very difficult to hold whilst reading in bed! As I now expected, Mr Hamilton rushed straight into the story, no preamble of any kind. I noticed some quite subtle and some very unsubtle references to popular culture, and other books/stories that PFH has written, which gave me pause to grin and chortle. The story, if anything, grew even more complex than the previous two installments had managed to portray. Nothing really gets resolved until the last two hundred pages. Much action ensues, with death and suffering aplenty. It's very difficult not to spoil the novels by letting out information in a review of this sort -- I'd like to talk about Valisk, and Dariat, or Norfolk, and the Beyond. In _The Neutronium Alchemist_, you don't find out what the alchemist IS until nearly the end of that book, but I can't easily say what Hamilton does with these concepts in the final book, without spoiling things for readers. The final hundred pages wrap things up nicely, ties up probably all the loose ends, and left me feeling exhilarated as well as wrung-out. Whilst TNG isn't a non-stop rollercoaster ride, it's pretty damned impressive, and the finale is worth the 3,000+ pages of precursor! I liked this series a whole bunch, and recommend it to anyone who doesn't mind complex stories filled with dozens of characters and a million different viewpoints. %A Peter F. Hamilton %T The Naked God %T The Reality Dysfunction %T The Neutronium Alchemist %I MacMillan %D 1999 %G ISBN 0 333 72503 4 %P 1174pp. %O Trade Paperback, $AUS25.00 David Andrew Clayton # Please remove NOSPAM when dac@NOSPAM.pcug.org.au # sending email replies. I post therefore I am. # ICQ 6862357 : ObWierd 1999 / 3 = 666.33333333333