The first volume of a new trilogy by Peter F. Hamilton and set in the same futureverse as Pandora’s Star and Judas Unchained, The Dreaming Void opens 1500 years after the conclusion of the latter where both much and little have changed. The vicious Prime aliens are gone and defeated, back behind that strange impenetrable barrier and Humanity is mostly safe, its main battles within.
That safety prompted a huge population expansion, especially since first memory cells and fast-grown clones and later biological nanotechnology, followed by downloading when physical existence wears thin, mean that few suffer real death; accordingly, pretty much everyone alive from the first two books is still around, though many have assimilated into ANA, an advanced computer that is directly embedded in space, after first spending a period of time as an independent entity within ANA. Another major bit of biotech is Ozzie’s gaiafield, altered neurons that use the concept of quantum entanglement to offer direct brain to network connectivity.
Yet human emotions continue to retain primacy over technology and so disagreements drive political machinations. There are Advancer (something like a forced Darwinian evolutionary movement) and Higher (who believe in embedding technology, cyborg-like, into one’s body) factions, political movements and economic opportunists. Most have counterparts/partners within ANA, there is a ruling council in ANA and ANA itself has a powerful personality and independence of action driven by the meld of those who it assimilated.
Off the canvas but out in the Galaxy somewhere, mentioned by the author but playing no part as yet here, are new sets of worlds founded by the Dynasties of the previous era. After the Starflyer War almost all members took flight from the Commonwealth on the evacuation fleets Nigel Sheldon and his counterparts built when defeating the Primes was still a question. That these people will come into the plot in a future volume seems a reasonable assertion.
Complicating all these differences is a second, even larger, stellar barrier called the Void, discovered by humanity nearly a 1,000 years before the events of this book but known to Raiels, the semi-friendly aliens, for nearly a million years. Much larger than the barrier segregating the Primes, the Void also appears to periodically expand. The periods are extremely long in human terms but each expansion devours all star systems in the new space, presumably as fuel, and one feels the general sentiment to be that the next devourment phase could happen at any moment.
The Void is impervious to all attempts by the Raiel, humans or others to probe its nature or travel through it. It has had such a significant impact on the Raiel psyche that they have retained physical existence long after the point where every other known group of sentients have ascended to a post-physical state (for comparison, this is something the most advanced humans are already close to achieving), because they continue to search for a way to protect younger species.
Yet at least one group of humans breached this barrier and settled a planet inside. As is the style of most epic science fiction series, including Hamilton’s previous masterpieces, Dreaming Void context switches between different main characters and one of them is Edeard, a young resident of this special place. While Edeard and his fellow citizens of Makkathran are aware that most of Humanity lives outside the Void and their forebears originated there, none are aware of how this happened. Ozzie seems to have played a part but Ozzie is also offstage and not commenting.
In fact, this is one of the book’s core mysteries since the outside the Void humans have the same question. One human, Inigo, somehow received dreams of Edeard’s life (which Hamilton presents to readers as interludes through this volume) and established a church/political movement called Living Dream that quickly achieves political dominance on its planet of origin as well as a dozen additional worlds through economic, er, solidarity.
Spreading Inigo’s dreams through the gaiafield drives mass belief that Edeard’s world is the ultimately good existence. A “Second Dreamer” has begun contributing new dreams of Makkathran and the leaders of the Living Dream–Inigo himself fled public view 70 years ago–have decided that these dreams will enable a second trip through the Void and are building a fleet to take their billions of members on the pilgrimage.
Many other people, human and alien, believe that the mooted pilgrimage will not be able to travel through the Void and, most likely, trigger a devourment phase that could threaten life of all sorts for as much as hundreds of light years.
I was fortunate to pick up my copy in New Zealand since it hasn’t yet been published in the US, but apparently I have a long wait for the second volume, The Temporal Void, since Hamilton doesn’t plan to turn it in to the publisher until April.
recommended!
BillSaysThis 