# Peter F. Hamilton -- Pandora's Star **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 12, 2007, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peter-f-hamilton-pandoras-star/407730 "2007-06-12T17:13:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Jayrot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Jayrot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jayrot)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2007, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peter-f-hamilton-pandoras-star/407730/1 "2007-06-12T17:13:16Z")
Just finished reading the 1000 page sci-fi epic. Awesome! I’m a slow and infrequent reader and was originally daunted by the big size, but by the last 3rd of the book, I was incredibly comforted to know that there was another 1000 pp. sequel waiting for me. Ran out the very next day after finishing to buy **Judas Unchained**. Anyone else into it? I’m usually late to the party on these kinds of things. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2007, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peter-f-hamilton-pandoras-star/407730/2 "2007-06-12T17:19:39Z")
Heh-heh. My wife and I were talking about our favorite TV shows last night and she asked me where _Lost_ fit in my rankings. My reply to her was that I can’t say until the series has ended its run - right now, it’s an easy top-10, but if they screw up the remainder of the series, it could easily drop out of a “favorites” list and into a “they f-ed it up list.” As an example, I used _Pandora’s Star_. When I finished it, I was calling it one of the finest space operas ever written, having everything I liked in the genre. HOWEVER… _Judas Unchained_ pretty much screwed the pooch, so much so that I can’t really recommend PS given how JU ended. You’ll see. ---
**Author:** ![Jayrot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Jayrot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jayrot)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2007, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peter-f-hamilton-pandoras-star/407730/3 "2007-06-12T17:24:10Z")
Jeez, that’s a bummer. I guess I can only hope that you and I differ on the definition of “screwed the pooch”. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2007, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peter-f-hamilton-pandoras-star/407730/4 "2007-06-12T17:25:58Z")
I guess it depends upon which storyline you want resolved to a satisfactory conclusion. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![RikWriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/49beb7/32.png) [@RikWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RikWriter)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2007, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peter-f-hamilton-pandoras-star/407730/5 "2007-06-12T17:30:38Z")
I liked them both. Peter Hamilton is a great space-opera writer. ---
**Author:** ![Stuffy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f17d59/32.png) [@Stuffy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stuffy)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2007, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peter-f-hamilton-pandoras-star/407730/6 "2007-06-12T17:39:46Z")
I read them about a year ago. While I wouldn’t go so far as to say he screwed the pooch, the ending wasn’t as satisfying as it could have been. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2007, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peter-f-hamilton-pandoras-star/407730/7 "2007-06-12T18:11:46Z")
**Jay** , do you mind a spoiler box discussion? Can you resist the temptation? 😉 No big thing if you don’t want us discussing JU, of course. ---
**Author:** ![Eleanor\_of\_Aquitaine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a88e4f/32.png) [@Eleanor\_of\_Aquitaine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eleanor_of_Aquitaine)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2007, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peter-f-hamilton-pandoras-star/407730/8 "2007-06-12T18:31:54Z")
I liked Hamilton’s Night’s Dawn series, and I’ve had _Pandora’s Star_ waiting on my shelf for over a year. I find his books a little daunting to start, but I’ll get around to it one of these days. ---
**Author:** ![Jayrot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Jayrot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jayrot)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2007, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peter-f-hamilton-pandoras-star/407730/9 "2007-06-12T19:43:14Z")
[QUOTE=JohnT] **Jay** , do you mind a spoiler box discussion? Can you resist the temptation? 😉 No big thing if you don’t want us discussing JU, of course. [/QUOTE] Go for it! Keep it spoilered and I won’t look. That way I can go back and read this thread again after I finish the book. I can only assume the unresolved (or poorly resolved) story line is that of MorningLightMountain or possibly Ozzie & Orion. I can’t imagine anyone being pissed that we don’t get a satisfactory resolution to what happens to Mark Vernon. You can tell me if I’m right or wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Jayrot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Jayrot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jayrot)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2007, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peter-f-hamilton-pandoras-star/407730/10 "2007-06-12T19:52:46Z")
I’d also like to add that one of the most interesting, unique, and compelling passages of Sci-Fi I’ve ever read is the part in **Pandora’s Star** describing the MorningLightMountain’s interaction with the captive Dudley Bose and Whatshername, written from the alien point of view. Cool! ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2007, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peter-f-hamilton-pandoras-star/407730/11 "2007-06-12T20:10:08Z")
All right. I’m at work right now and involved discussions won’t do, but I’ll get on it tonight. ---
**Author:** ![Stuffy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f17d59/32.png) [@Stuffy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stuffy)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2007, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peter-f-hamilton-pandoras-star/407730/12 "2007-06-12T21:25:41Z")
[QUOTE=Jayrot] I’d also like to add that one of the most interesting, unique, and compelling passages of Sci-Fi I’ve ever read is the part in **Pandora’s Star** describing the MorningLightMountain’s interaction with the captive Dudley Bose and Whatshername, written from the alien point of view. Cool! [/QUOTE] I agree, I wish there was a lot more of that, but the aliens psychology is really well thought out in both books. ---
**Author:** ![MacSpon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/34f0e0/32.png) [@MacSpon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MacSpon)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2007, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peter-f-hamilton-pandoras-star/407730/13 "2007-06-13T01:31:59Z")
I dunno, I thought _Judas Unchained_ wrapped everything up pretty well. It left me wanting _more_, admittedly, but that’s a good thing. For example, I will rejoice if Hamilton ever writes anything else about Paula Myo. 🆒 ---
**Author:** ![Declan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecae2f/32.png) [@Declan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Declan)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2007, 6:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peter-f-hamilton-pandoras-star/407730/14 "2007-06-13T06:31:34Z")
[QUOTE=MacSpon] I dunno, I thought _Judas Unchained_ wrapped everything up pretty well. It left me wanting _more_, admittedly, but that’s a good thing. For example, I will rejoice if Hamilton ever writes anything else about Paula Myo. 🆒 [/QUOTE] Yeah it would be nice if he did a prequel regarding the kidnapping of the babies, and the subsequent turn of events. Declan ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2007, 3:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peter-f-hamilton-pandoras-star/407730/15 "2007-06-23T03:41:04Z")
No, I didn’t forget this thread, I wanted to re-read the book and give the OP some time to get into it and possibly finish. Warning: I don’t mince words or concepts in the black box. You have been warned. 😉 [spoiler]I bought the hardback version of _Judas Unchained_ the very day it was released in the UK (paying international shipping, etc, as it wasn’t released in the US until 6-odd months later), I was looking forward to it that much. Like I said earlier, _Pandora’s Star_ was that rare book that satisfied everything I wanted in a space opera: an interesting interstellar civilization that flowed rather “naturally” from our timeline, an implacable enemy, a strong set of stock characters, told from the perspective of the movers and shakers of society (the lack of which irritated the hell out of me in regards to Brin’s _Uplift_ series.) Etc, etc. Page 618, from the beginning of chapter 13 – that’s where the fun ended. But first, the minor annoyances: Renne, Tarlo, etc. Boring. Every word spoken about them was a word not focusing on the major, important, interesting characters: Myo, Sheldon, Kime. For those of you who are wise in the ways of _Buffy_ these characters were JU’s equivalent of the season seven Slayerettes. I don’t need to know about Navy security, and I didn’t need to read all that merely to find that Rafael Columbia isn’t a Starflyer agent. Ozzie. We spent all that time (and the great ending to PS) for mere back-story on the Primes. What, Sheldon, et al, could not have received the information from the Bose motile? Oh wait: they did, thererby rendering the Ozzie story useless. :rolleyes: Even worse, it gave him a reason to resist genocide as much as he did. (More about that later). Mellanie. Wasn’t my favorite character in PS, reduced me to wondering how Nigel Sheldon felt about getting sloppy seconds. (The sequence beginning page 601). I couldn’t help but snort when she asked herself if she slept around too much. Huh, ya think? I wondered if she’ll get rejuved as a virgin. (The great unknown in the PS/JU universe - do people do it, is it even possible?) 😉 All right, here’s the major grief I had with this book. Beginning with chapter 13, JU changed from a story about interstellar warfare between two civilizations and became a 300-page chase sequence to catch one creature. The story _shrank_, became smaller in scope and scale, somehow less important. And I was never convinced that the fate of the Starflyer was more important than the overall struggle between the humans and MLM and the distributed Primes – after all, the Starflyer was headed to Dyson Beta to unlock its people, so the all the humans had to do was wait for the DB shield to fall and nova bomb it. But what about the unknown stars, the dozens of stars where MLM was installing motiles and immotiles? Once Nigel’s super-quantumbuster did its thing at Hell’s Gateway, it was taken as an given that the Dyson Alpha Primes were beaten, that all mankind had to do was nova 1 star every 30 light-years to wipe out all the Primes, and that MorningLightMountain had no choice but bow to the inevitable. But I never accepted that premise because MLM knew that the shield could be messed with and would be done so once every 1,000 years or so. So the solution to the Prime problem was completely wrong – the shield wasn’t infallible at all, it could be tampered with by the Starflyer, it could be tampered with by humans, it will be tampered with again. Ozzie’s “OMG, I can’t live with myself if we wipe these genocidal bastards from the Universe” did nothing but give the Primes another chance to break out of the shell. We were told that it would outlast stars, but it was bizarrely resistant to purposeful tampering by “simple” starfaring creatures. It had a “lifetime of the universe guarantee” but failed in the first 1,000 years. Where the hell did the Animonies get this thing – Kmart? So the solution was stupid. And instead of focusing on solving the problem, a faux moral dilemma was introduced and resolved which resulted in nothing being solved. And it was done merely to neatly tie up the MLM spinoffs and the Beta Prime dilemma so Hamilton can write a 300 page action sequence that focused on chasing one Prime trying to leave a civilization that is going to bomb it out of existence no matter where it ends up - and since everybody knows it is heading home, there’s no need to capture the thing and perform some elaborate “revenge” project that itself made no sense.[/spoiler] ---
**Author:** ![dynamitedave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ed655f/32.png) [@dynamitedave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dynamitedave)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2007, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peter-f-hamilton-pandoras-star/407730/16 "2007-06-24T20:19:59Z")
Well put **JohnT**. I agree pretty much with your comments. I hadn’t realised PS was only part 1 and as I was getting to the end couldn’t figure out how the story was going to be resolved in the few pages left :smack: Perhaps Ozzie and co were going to find an old control room with a big button :rolleyes: I was relieved to find there was a part 2 ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2007, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peter-f-hamilton-pandoras-star/407730/17 "2007-06-26T23:14:53Z")
Thank you, DD (he says bumpily). 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Pushkin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ee59a6/32.png) [@Pushkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pushkin)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2007, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peter-f-hamilton-pandoras-star/407730/18 "2007-06-26T23:35:30Z")
I loved the Night’s Dawn trilogy and the Greg Mandel stories, but I just can’t get into Pandora’s Star. I’ve found a similar problem with Heinlein, his short stories and a lot of novels I like, others, like Number of the Beast and Time Enough for Love were torture to try and read. YMMV of course 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Galwegian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/galwegian/32/3426_2.png) [@Galwegian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Galwegian)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2007, 10:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peter-f-hamilton-pandoras-star/407730/19 "2007-06-27T10:19:11Z")
Hamilton seems to start with great concepts and ideas, (interstellar diesel trains, space exploration by wormhole among my favourites) but can’t seem to resolve his stories fully. In the Night’s Dawn trilogy, the _deus ex machina_ ending was a huge letdown, as was the pat ending of Pandora’s Star / Judas Unchained. (I don’t know how to do spoiler boxes, or I’d say **exactly** what I thought of Ozzie and Orion’s resolution! :dubious: ) He has a new one in the Commonwealth universe coming out in August, _The Dreaming Void_, set AFAIK about a thousand years after Pandora’s Star / Judas Unchained. It’s the start of a new trilogy, so it should be worth a look. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2007, 11:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peter-f-hamilton-pandoras-star/407730/20 "2007-07-02T11:41:49Z")
That’s good news, **Galwegian**. I’ll be sure to buy it the day it comes out as well. 😉 **Jayrot** , you have time to finish the book yet? [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peter-f-hamilton-pandoras-star/407730.md?page=2)