Pandora's Star

Author: Peter F. Hamilton

The Commonwealth Saga is a vast, sprawling space opera that is spread over several novels and short stories. In a precursor to the main series, Misspent Youth, a rejuvenation procedure and memory crystals allow the people of the Commonwealth to live virtually forever. But the series really gets going with Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained, which are set some 300 years later when humans have discovered wormhole technology which has allowed them to colonise scores of planets across hundreds of light years. Then astronomers discover that two distant stars have been enclosed within Dyson Spheres virtually simultaneously.When a ship is sent to investigate, they unleash an alien race that believes the only way to secure its own future is to wipe out every other sentient creature in the universe. What follows is a desperate, devastating war in which the humans are finally able to lock the aliens within their Dyson Spheres once more, but only at tremendous cost.Set 1200 years after these events, the Void Trilogy, The Dreaming Void, The Temporal Void and The Evolutionary Void take the story further with an object called the Void at the heart of the galaxy. Although the Void resembles a black hole, it is not a natural object, and the Raiel believe it threatens all life in the galaxy. So when an expedition from the Commonwealth wants to enter the Void, it sets in motion all sorts of conflicts.Most recently, The Abyss Beyond Dreams is the first of two books set between the original Commonwealth series and the Void Trilogy. It concerns an attempt to infiltrate the Void and rescue humans trapped there, only to discover that the laws of physics are different and the key to escape is held by a race of merciless killers. Why It Made the List"Space Opera doesn't get much more epic," one reviewer said at the end of the Void Trilogy. A cast of thousands, a vast span of time and space, spectacular storytelling, science fiction really doesn't get much meatier than this.

Books in The Commonwealth Saga Series (5)

Judas Unchained

The Dreaming Void

The Temporal Void

The Evolutionary Void

The Abyss Beyond Dreams

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Peter Hamilton specialises in what Brian Aldiss called "wide-screen baroque", big sweeping sagas that guarantee the gosh-wow effect. And you'll find it just as much in his other great epic, The Night's Dawn Trilogy. These three huge novels, The Reality Dysfunction, The Neutronium Alchemist and The Naked God, along with a collection of stories, A Second Chance at Eden, are set in a distant future of sentient cities, nanonics, faster than light drives and a host of other amazing technologies. But in this galaxy-spanning future, humanity finds itself at war with its own dead, who are returning to life through a form of possession.