Pandora's Star: 1 (Commonwealth Saga)

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George Williams (4 March 2017). "Sci-fi writer Peter F. Hamilton takes humans to a galaxy far, far away". The Australian . Retrieved 10 March 2018. These passages probably reveal more about Hamilton’s assessment of existing 21st-century human civilization than they do about what a 24th-century posthuman civilization would look like (if we can get there), but that’s not a criticism; the future’s inherent unpredictability usually ensures that science fiction is more about critiquing the present than describing what’s to come with much reliability. Hamilton’s preoccupation with this debate is engaging and useful despite its heavy-handed presentation.

Hamilton weaves several other stories into the main narrative of the Prime encounter. Among these is that of the ancient spacecraft Marie Celeste, found crashed on one of the Commonwealth planets, Far Away. An enigmatic figure, Bradley Johansson, claims the original passenger of the spacecraft is alive, an alien he calls the Starflyer. He claims that it is using mind-controlled agents to manipulate events in the Commonwealth, and that it caused the events that led to the discovery of the Primes. The Commonwealth forces dismiss Johansson as a crazy terrorist, and his attempts to interfere with the voyage to Dyson Alpha are thwarted. McClain Gilbert (Mac) [CS] Forward crew chief at the CST exploratory division on Merredin , member of the Second Chance mission and later a Navy captain of the starship Moscow Primes had previously colonised the solar system referred to as Dyson Beta using slower-than-light starships and had committed genocide against its native inhabitants in the process. Disconnected from their originating immotile groupings, and provided with novel biological forms, Beta's Primes started to routinely alter themselves through genetic manipulation and mechanical augmentation. This was an anathema to the Alpha Primes, who referred to them as AlienPrimes. With Beta's Primes no longer under the control of Alpha's Primes, a war began between the two systems. The war appears to have continued until forces unknown erected the barrier around the stars. Oscar Monroe[CS] Operations Director of the CST exploratory division on Merredin , a member of the Second Chance mission and later a Navy Captain of the starship Defender and after that the Dublin

When the Second Chance arrives and begins to explore what appears to be an enclosure generator, an unknown mechanism shuts it down and the barrier around the star disappears. Formerly imprisoned inside is an extremely warlike and aggressive species, a race that comes to be called "the Primes". They consist of intelligent "immotiles" that breed and control vast armies of sub-sentient "motiles" via electronically extended neural interfaces. The few immotiles constantly vie with each other for territories and resources, and by the time of the story, the strongest uses the technology gleaned by analysis of the human's wormhole-generation techniques to destroy all the other Prime immotiles and thus become the only one remaining Prime: MorningLightMountain. PandoraStar Frequency Therapy is the doorway to completely new possibilities of human potential. With targeted light pulses, the Deep Trance Meditation Machine puts your brain in the precise wave pattern that you want to experience. PandoraStar – a futuristic Deep Trance Machine PandoraStar Light Therapy – for a brighter Future

I’ve seen what societies like ours progress into. I’ve walked on their worlds and admired them firsthand. This Commonwealth is only an interim stage for a species like ours; even your Socialism will be left behind in true evolution. We can become something wonderful, something special. We have that potential. (259) As the Starflyer attempts to return to Beta, human forces engage in a desperate chase to prevent it from escaping. Their forces fail, but Johansson's Guardians of Selfhood have been preparing for this event, marshalling the weather of the entire planet and unleashing a massive directed hurricane that destroys the Starflyer's ship. Johansson is aboard the Marie Celeste, and the action ends with him preparing to kill the Starflyer. Anna Kime (before marriage with Wilson, Anna Hober) [CS] Wilson's wife and his Chief of Staff (former Sensor officer, Second Chance). Starflyer Agent on board the Second Chance.Morton[CS] Tara Jennifer Shaheef’s husband and murderer. Later a Navy Trooper and member of the Cat’s Claws Hoshe Finn [CS] Detective for the Darklake City Police working for the ice division/criminal investigation department Two additional novels, set in the time 263 years before (A.B.D.) and five years after (N.W.S.) "The Void Trilogy", were released in 2014 ( The Abyss Beyond Dreams) [1] and 2016 ( Night Without Stars). [2]