The Commonwealth Saga is a series of science fiction novels by British science fiction writer Peter F. Hamilton. This saga consists of the novels Pandora's Star (2004) and Judas Unchained (2005). Hamilton has also written several books set in the same literary universe. Misspent Youth (2002) takes place 340 years before the events of Pandora's Star. The Void Trilogy, consisting of The Dreaming Void (2008), The Temporal Void (2009), and The Evolutionary Void (2010), takes place 1,200 years after the events of Judas Unchained; several of the main characters from Judas Unchained and Pandora's Star also appear in the Void trilogy.
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]
Like Hamilton's earlier The Night's Dawn Trilogy, the Commonwealth Saga is an epic space opera that extends across dozens of worlds and characters.[3]
The book opens with a short section providing backstory. As part of the first mission to Mars, a team of astronauts exits their spacecraft for the first time, only to see another man standing there, connected to an air hose that leads through a wormhole to a laboratory in California. The wormhole generator's inventors, Nigel Sheldon and Ozzie Isaac, chose to test it by beating the crew, by moments, to become the first humans to reach Mars. The saga then moves into the Commonwealth era in 2380, when humanity has used the wormhole technology to colonise several hundred planets across hundreds of light years.
On a distant planet, astronomer Dudley Bose performs the first detailed observations of a mysterious astronomical event known as the Dyson Pair Enclosure. Two stars, located roughly 1,000 light years from Earth (750 light years from the edge of Commonwealth space), disappeared some time in the past. The theory is that they have been enclosed inside Dyson spheres.
Bose's investigations reveal that the enclosing of Dyson Alpha and Dyson Beta (as the stars become known) occurred quickly and simultaneously. This implies that the technology of the Dyson aliens, or possibly of other unknown aliens, surpasses that of the Commonwealth; furthermore, did the Dyson Aliens enclose themselves, or did some other force enclose them? Was it for protection or to protect those outside the spheres?
To investigate, the Commonwealth builds its first interstellar ship, the Second Chance. Lacking contemporary astronauts, it gives the command to Wilson Kime, one of the members of the original Mars mission. Using a self-enclosed "flowing" wormhole for propulsion, the Second Chance travels to Dyson Alpha.
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.
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.
After capturing two crew members of the Second Chance (one of them Bose), MorningLightMountain discovers the location of the Commonwealth. Upon learning of the Commonwealth's existence, MorningLightMountain makes it its primary objective to destroy it. Having been in almost continual combat for its entire evolution, MorningLightMountain believes that it is necessary to eliminate all other life in the Universe to secure its survival into the distant future; it views all life that is not under its control as a potential threat.
Hamilton weaves several other stories into the main narrative of the Prime encounter. Among these is that of the ancient spacecraft Marie (sic) 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.
Judas Unchained, the second part of the Commonwealth Saga, picks up where Pandora's Star ends.
The story begins with the small human resistance that exists on what remains of the Commonwealth worlds attacked by the Primes. Human resistance forces have found two ways to fight back: using the Prime weapons (primarily directed-energy weapons) against the invaders, and disrupting communication between the slave caste (motiles) and the commanding caste (immotiles) of the Primes. Meanwhile, the humans in the remaining Commonwealth pursue other plans: to develop a set of weapons and warships to defend against the next Prime invasion and force the conflict back into Prime space; to develop a "quantumbuster superweapon" based on technology supplied, unbeknownst to most humans, by the Starflyer; and to prepare for the evacuation of known space altogether if necessary.
Eventually, the human forces decide that there can be no other solution to the conflict than to commit genocide and destroy the Primes entirely. However, it is revealed that the Primes are planning a much larger invasion, which humanity will be all but powerless to stop.
As the war rages, the human forces begin to build much faster, better armed ships and fitting them with new "quantumbuster" weapons that can destroy an entire planet. Later on, a more advanced quantumbuster is deployed, which is capable of inducing a main-sequence star to go nova. Despite the original plan to use it on the Dyson Alpha star and thus kill the entire prime race, a modified field version of a normal quantumbuster is eventually deployed on the Dyson Alpha forcefield generator, destroying the mechanism that was interfering with the generator's systems. This allows the mechanism to reactivate, trapping the Prime aliens inside and avoiding genocide.
Meanwhile, the Commonwealth forces slowly realize that Johansson is correct, and that the Starflyer is an AlienPrime that escaped the enclosure event. After crashing on Far Away, it has been plotting how to destroy both the Alpha Primes as well as dangerous humanity by manipulating events to force both races to commit mutual genocide. Beta Primes would then become the dominant lifeforms. Through a long trail of companies, it funded Bose's "discovery" of the enclosure and snuck agents aboard Second Chance with a device to deactivate the enclosure generator.
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.
A Dyson sphere is a hypothetical megastructure that encompasses a star and captures a large percentage of its solar power output. The concept is a thought experiment that attempts to imagine how a spacefaring civilization would meet its energy requirements once those requirements exceed what can be generated from the home planet's resources alone. Because only a tiny fraction of a star's energy emissions reaches the surface of any orbiting planet, building structures encircling a star would enable a civilization to harvest far more energy.
Superluminal communication is a hypothetical process in which information is conveyed at faster-than-light speeds. The current scientific consensus is that faster-than-light communication is not possible, and to date it has not been achieved in any experiment.
Gregory Benford is an American science fiction author and astrophysicist who is professor emeritus at the department of physics and astronomy at the University of California, Irvine. He is a contributing editor of Reason magazine.
In the Star Trek universe, the Dominion is an interstellar state and military superpower from the Gamma Quadrant, composed of hundreds of dominated alien species. The Dominion is commanded by The Founders, a race of shapeshifters, responsible for both the creation of the Dominion and all strategic decisions undertaken through its history. The Dominion is administered by the Vorta, clones specifically genetically engineered by the Founders to act as field commanders, administrators, scientists and diplomats. The Jem'Hadar, also engineered by the Founders, are the military arm of the Dominion and one of the most powerful military forces in the galaxy during the Dominion's height.
A prime is a natural number that has exactly two distinct natural number divisors: 1 and itself.
Orion's Arm is a multi-authored online science fiction world-building project, first established in 2000 by M. Alan Kazlev, Donna Malcolm Hirsekorn, Bernd Helfert and Anders Sandberg and further co-authored by many people since. Anyone can contribute articles, stories, artwork, or music to the website. A large mailing list exists, in which members debate aspects of the world they are creating, discussing additions, modifications, issues arising, and work to be done.
"The Search" is the 47th and 48th episode of the science fiction television show Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
Xenoarchaeology, a branch of xenology dealing with extraterrestrial cultures, is a hypothetical form of archaeology that exists mainly in works of science fiction. The field is concerned with the study of the material remains to reconstruct and interpret past life-ways of alien civilizations. Xenoarchaeology is not currently practiced by mainstream archaeologists due to the current lack of any material for the discipline to study.
The Naked God is a science fiction novel by British writer Peter F. Hamilton, the third book in The Night's Dawn Trilogy, following on from The Reality Dysfunction and The Neutronium Alchemist. It was published in the United Kingdom by Macmillan Publishers on 8 October 1999. This was the first novel by Hamilton to be published in hardcover in the United States, on 22 October 1999. As with the first two volumes, the US paperback was split into two volumes, entitled Flight and Faith, published in November and December 2000. In February 2009 Orbit Books issued the first one-volume paperback edition of the novel in the US.
A megastructure is a very large artificial object, although the limits of precisely how large vary considerably. Some apply the term to any especially large or tall building. Some sources define a megastructure as an enormous self-supporting artificial construct. The products of megascale engineering or astroengineering are megastructures.
Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars is a military science fiction television miniseries written by Rockne S. O'Bannon and David Kemper and directed by Brian Henson. Following the original series' cancellation in September 2002, it aimed to wrap up the cliffhanger and tie up some elements of the series in general. It was broadcast on 17 and 18 October 2004. Henson and others have attributed the return of Farscape to the ongoing campaign of fans. Production began in December 2003. In May 2004 the Sci-Fi Channel, now owned by NBC Universal, announced that it would run a two-episode conclusion titled Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars.
Transformers: Energon, known in Japan as Transformer: Superlink, is a Japanese anime series which debuted on January 9, 2004. It is a direct sequel to Transformers: Armada. It is also the first Japanese Transformers show where the Transformers are computer-generated (CG), in a cel-shaded technique similar to the Zoids anime, which was a trend that would continue into the next series, Transformers: Cybertron.
Jim Burns is a Welsh artist born in Cardiff, Wales. He has been called one of the Grand Masters of the science fiction art world.
The Void Trilogy is a space opera series by British author Peter F. Hamilton. The series is set in the same universe as The Commonwealth Saga, 1,200 years after the end of Judas Unchained.
The Inheritance Trilogy is a series of military science fiction books written by William H. Keith Jr. that focus on the United Star Marine Corps. The trilogy is the sequel to the Heritage Trilogy and the Legacy Trilogy.
The Saga of Shadows is a trilogy of space opera novels written by Kevin J. Anderson. First announced in 2011, it is a sequel to Anderson's seven-book series, The Saga of Seven Suns (2002–2008). The first novel, The Dark Between the Stars, was released by Tor Books on June 3, 2014. The second book in the series, Blood of the Cosmos, was published on June 2, 2015. The third novel, called Eternity's Mind, was released on September 13, 2016.
The Chronicle of the Fallers is a space opera sequence by science fiction author Peter F. Hamilton. Hamilton announced in 2011 that he was developing a new trilogy set in Commonwealth Universe. He later decided to cut the trilogy down to two parts. Cover art for The Abyss Beyond Dreams was unveiled on March 19, 2014. The book was published by Pan Macmillan in October 2014. The sequel, A Night Without Stars, arrived in September 2016.
List of works by or about British science fiction author Peter F. Hamilton.
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