The Dreaming Void
Reviewers exhaust superlatives when it comes to the science fiction of Peter F. Hamilton. His complex and engaging novels, which span thousands of years--and light-years--are as intellectually stimulating as they are emotionally fulfilling. Now, with The Dreaming Void, the eagerly awaited first volume in a new trilogy set in the same far-future as his acclaimed Commonwealth saga, Hamilton has created his most ambitious and gripping space epic yet.The year is 3589, fifteen hundred years after Commonwealth forces barely staved off human extinction in a war against the alien Prime. Now an even greater danger has surfaced: a threat to the existence of the universe itself.At the very heart of the galaxy is the Void, a self-contained microuniverse that cannot be breached, cannot be destroyed, and cannot be stopped as it steadily expands in all directions, consuming everything in its path: planets, stars, civilizations. The Void has existed for untold millions of years. Even the oldest and most technologically advanced of the galaxy's sentient races, the Raiel, do not know its origin, its makers, or its purpose.But then Inigo, an astrophysicist studying the Void, begins dreaming of human beings who live within it. Inigo's dreams reveal a world in which thoughts become actions and dreams become reality. Inside the Void, Inigo sees paradise.
Stats for nerds
4recommend
4mentions
4people
2010–2025years
100% recommend
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- It's an exceedingly common theme in sci-fi, but particularly the space opera genre. In any literary universe where humans occupy multiple planets, at least one of those planets is an agrarian society who has renounced all the higher technology that brought them there.
Peter F. Hamilton loves talking about this. Offhand, I can't think of a single one of his books that doesn't at least mention this concept. He really likes to explore the very long-term evolution of the relationship between humans and technology. You get simple low-tech societies governed and protected by the most sophisticated AI it's possible or conceivable to build, lots of backwater planets with no money for technology, idealistic societies that set up a new way of life, farm planets, all sorts.
Look at 'The Dreaming Void' trilogy. It's very explicitly a juxtaposition between high 30th century intergalactic technology and a society living on a planet where electricity simply doesn't work. It's one of my favorites.
- In the same universe, Dreaming Void, Temporal Void and Evolutionary Void. I read the Temporal Void a year or two ago without reading the first and despite not completely understanding the story, loved it. Went back and read the whole series this year, and found it fantastic.
- I found The Dreaming Void a few years ago while wandering a library desperately trying to find a good science fiction book to read - none of the suggestions I got from friends were there. I'm so glad that none of the suggestions were there.
- I'm a big fan of Sci-Fi because I feel it makes people think about what they want the future to be, as well as avoiding the re-hashing of historical and current events that many fiction books set in the present do. With that in mind a list of great books to read:
The Diamond Age - Neal Stephenson Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson Gridlinked - Neal Asher Neuromancer - William Gibson The Reality Dysfunction - Peter F. Hamilton The Dreaming Void - Peter F. Hamilton Fallen Dragon - Peter F. Hamilton Altered Carbon - Richard Morgan Market Forces - Richard Morgan Blindsight - Peter Watts The Electric Church - Jeff Somers Tunnel in the Sky - Robert A. Heinlein The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - Robert A. Heinlein 1984 - George Orwell
