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darkstar_pl 's review for:
Pandora's Star
by Peter F. Hamilton
Pandora's Star marks my foray into the space opera genre. I must say, I've been expecting something else - more like Star Trek, I guess (space voyages and adventures). Nonetheless, Peter F. Hamilton delivered a solid read with a very interesting vision of humanity's future - that is plausible and seems very real.
We already work on genetics, can produce artificial organs and even clone whole animals (say hello to Mary the sheep), if we could just go one step further and clone man, we would only need one more thing - memory crystals, where everyone dumps their memories and feelings - think of them as your file backup in the cloud. Without them, even being fully genetically compatible, a clone is just a heap of meat that looks and works like you, but doesn't behave like you and certainly isn't you. But if we could dump our memories to an external storage device and then clone our body and download the memories to it... It would virtually mean immortality, something that humans have been seeking forever - be it literal or written in letters (poetry).
The inhabitants of Hamilton's universe (our universe projected a few hundred years forward) have achieved exactly that - there is no final death - if your body dies, you go for a re-life procedure and end up in a clone with all your memories. If you don't die, you can still rejuvenate your body every few decades and stay forever young and strong.
Living like that re-calibrated human brains, we've become more peaceful and warfares just died out. But there is another threat, a threat that only the Guardians of Selfhood - a terrorist group lead by a raving lunatic - Bradley Johansson - believes, a fairy tale they claim is real and dangerous - the Starflyer. The Starflyer is not real, it's a conspiracy theory which says that there's some alien working inside the human Commonwealth and its only goal is to bring peril to us. It doesn't help that believers turn to terrorist methods that we know all too well from 20th and 21st century. No one has seen it, no one has heard it, there is only the word of one men who claims he's been enslaved by it and used by it and then fortunately the Silfen (another alien race) freed him. Now he smuggles weapons and performs the acts of terror killing innocent people - all that to save the human race. Er, yeah, right...
You'll find a bit of detective story, some action (but I wouldn't say the book is action packed), adventure / other worlds and a very realistic image of ourselves in the future. All in all, Pandora's Star has been a great read and I'm looking forward to the second tome. It is a hefty one, counting almost 1000 pages (in print), but it's nowhere close to dull and it certainly doesn't feel too long. I think it should appeal to every hard sci-fi fan, even if this would be the first book of the genre that you read - if you like sci-fi movies, games, anime, whatever, you're gonna like Pandora's Star.
We already work on genetics, can produce artificial organs and even clone whole animals (say hello to Mary the sheep), if we could just go one step further and clone man, we would only need one more thing - memory crystals, where everyone dumps their memories and feelings - think of them as your file backup in the cloud. Without them, even being fully genetically compatible, a clone is just a heap of meat that looks and works like you, but doesn't behave like you and certainly isn't you. But if we could dump our memories to an external storage device and then clone our body and download the memories to it... It would virtually mean immortality, something that humans have been seeking forever - be it literal or written in letters (poetry).
The inhabitants of Hamilton's universe (our universe projected a few hundred years forward) have achieved exactly that - there is no final death - if your body dies, you go for a re-life procedure and end up in a clone with all your memories. If you don't die, you can still rejuvenate your body every few decades and stay forever young and strong.
Living like that re-calibrated human brains, we've become more peaceful and warfares just died out. But there is another threat, a threat that only the Guardians of Selfhood - a terrorist group lead by a raving lunatic - Bradley Johansson - believes, a fairy tale they claim is real and dangerous - the Starflyer. The Starflyer is not real, it's a conspiracy theory which says that there's some alien working inside the human Commonwealth and its only goal is to bring peril to us. It doesn't help that believers turn to terrorist methods that we know all too well from 20th and 21st century. No one has seen it, no one has heard it, there is only the word of one men who claims he's been enslaved by it and used by it and then fortunately the Silfen (another alien race) freed him. Now he smuggles weapons and performs the acts of terror killing innocent people - all that to save the human race. Er, yeah, right...
You'll find a bit of detective story, some action (but I wouldn't say the book is action packed), adventure / other worlds and a very realistic image of ourselves in the future. All in all, Pandora's Star has been a great read and I'm looking forward to the second tome. It is a hefty one, counting almost 1000 pages (in print), but it's nowhere close to dull and it certainly doesn't feel too long. I think it should appeal to every hard sci-fi fan, even if this would be the first book of the genre that you read - if you like sci-fi movies, games, anime, whatever, you're gonna like Pandora's Star.