Werthead Posted October 3, 2006 Share Posted October 3, 2006 Some details on Peter F. Hamilton's next series have emerged. The Void Trilogy is set in the same universe as his recently completed two-volume The Commonwealth Saga, but set a thousand years further into the future. Some loose ends from the previous books may be addressed, such as the function and ultimate destiny of the High Angel and the Raiel. The plot synopsis suggests that humanity discovers an alternate dimension accessed via the black hole at the centre of our galaxy. This dimension is a form of paradise, and the mass-exodus of millions of humans through the portal threatens to destabilise the black hole and destroy the entire galaxy. At the same time, there is a rival 'faith' developing through the ability to download human personalities into a powerful AI network (probably the SI from the earlier books, although this is not explicitly stated). The three books will be entitled The Dreaming Void, Life of Dreams (has Hamilton been reading Jordan?) and Evolution's Dream and the first book will be released in late 2007, with the other two following in early 2009 and late 2010, with an 18-month wait between releases. No word yet on whether these books will be huge enough to kill elephants with, but I'd say it was fairly likely. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
saint777 Posted October 3, 2006 Share Posted October 3, 2006 Some details on Peter F. Hamilton's next series have emerged. The Void Trilogy is set in the same universe as his recently completed two-volume The Commonwealth Saga, but set a thousand years further into the future. Some loose ends from the previous books may be addressed, such as the function and ultimate destiny of the High Angel and the Raiel. The plot synopsis suggests that humanity discovers an alternate dimension accessed via the black hole at the centre of our galaxy. This dimension is a form of paradise, and the mass-exodus of millions of humans through the portal threatens to destabilise the black hole and destroy the entire galaxy. At the same time, there is a rival 'faith' developing through the ability to download human personalities into a powerful AI network (probably the SI from the earlier books, although this is not explicitly stated). The three books will be entitled The Dreaming Void, Life of Dreams (has Hamilton been reading Jordan?) and Evolution's Dream and the first book will be released in late 2007, with the other two following in early 2009 and late 2010, with an 18-month wait between releases. No word yet on whether these books will be huge enough to kill elephants with, but I'd say it was fairly likely. I purchased The Night's Dawn Trilogy. Are the Commonwealth and Void trilogies related to this series? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Werthead Posted October 3, 2006 Author Share Posted October 3, 2006 No. They take place in different timelines. There are a few similarities between them and they share some of the same ideas (wormholes play a big role in both of them) and themes, but they are different. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sir Thursday Posted October 5, 2006 Share Posted October 5, 2006 I'm really looking forward to these - there were plenty of things left open at the end of the Commonwealth Saga for exposition. I suspect that these books might just escape the Elephant-killer category, given that Hamilton has already laid down a good deal of the backstory in Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained. Still, an awful lot will have happened in the mean time, and I'm very interested to see what technologies he comes up with next. Hamilton has always been a favourite of mine for his ability to write timelines and trends of society that feel real, and hopefully he will be able to continue this trend in spite of the fact that he is going to be writing much further in the future than he has attempted with any of his previous series. Sir Thursday Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bastard of Godsgrace Posted October 11, 2006 Share Posted October 11, 2006 There is now a timeline of events between Judas Unchained and Dreaming Void, posted on Hamilton's website: http://www.peterfhamilton.co.uk//index.php?page=timeline Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Werthead Posted October 11, 2006 Author Share Posted October 11, 2006 Interesting. They find the Tochee homeworld and more High Angels. However, there's a ton of stuff in there that won't be very clear until the books come out. It does look like Hamilton is at least dipping his toe in the Singularity field, if not going all Vinge/Stross on us. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Werthead Posted October 11, 2006 Author Share Posted October 11, 2006 Ahh, PFH has submitted to the inevitable and set up a blog. Interesting to see how that goes. Apparently he suffered delays in the writing of the first book in the new trilogy due to house renovations (familiar...) and is trying to get back on track to deliver the book in January for publication in autumn 2007. Jim Burns is on board again as artist and the books will apparently be shorter than his other behemoths, although by how much is unclear. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sir Thursday Posted October 12, 2006 Share Posted October 12, 2006 There is now a timeline of events between Judas Unchained and Dreaming Void, posted on Hamilton's website: http://www.peterfhamilton.co.uk//index.php?page=timeline Very interesting indeed. I like the idea of Earth ending up with noone living on it...interesting idea. Also, the Raiel lost a war against the Void? But I thought the Void was a paradise...I'm really looking forward to this. Sir Thursday Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Werthead Posted January 16, 2007 Author Share Posted January 16, 2007 News from Peter F. Hamilton on The Dreaming Void: IT'S DONE!!! (and hopefully we'll see a few other authors sticking signs like this up in the next few months as well! ) It should be out in August or September this year from Macmillan. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
williamjm Posted January 16, 2007 Share Posted January 16, 2007 News from Peter F. Hamilton on The Dreaming Void: IT'S DONE!!! (and hopefully we'll see a few other authors sticking signs like this up in the next few months as well! ) It should be out in August or September this year from Macmillan. Good news. Any bets on how many pages long it will be? I'll go for about 950 pages, which would be a relatively short Hamilton. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Werthead Posted January 16, 2007 Author Share Posted January 16, 2007 Good news. Any bets on how many pages long it will be? I'll go for about 950 pages, which would be a relatively short Hamilton. In hardback? Only compared to The Naked God (1,174 pages). The Reality Dysfunction was 932 pages and The Neutronium Alchemist 970 pages in hardback; Pandora's Star was 882 and Judas Unchained was 949 pages. So 950 would be about average. He has said he wants these books to be shorter, but he's said the same about every one of his books since The Naked God and that didn't work out. I'd shoot for 750 in hardback up to about 950. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
caladanbrood Posted January 17, 2007 Share Posted January 17, 2007 I can't wait for this series to come out. Hamilton is a class above most other sci-fi authors out there at the moment, and that timeline certainly whets the appetite for this series. Sounds like the Commonwealth will be a very interesting place to be in 3600! I imagine it'll all go horribly wrong for them at some point, and the AMA will turn out to be evil and mind-sucking, or some such, which always makes for a good juicy epic Does sound like he's got some very promising ideas with this one too, what with the "higher human" stuff. Creating two seperate classes of human has always provided conflict, throughout history and fiction. Yay for Hamilton! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Calibandar Posted January 17, 2007 Share Posted January 17, 2007 I'm thinking I might give Hamilton a second chance. I wasn't keen on The Night's Dawn series ( for one because I hate the idea of undead and dead coming back and threatening the living, lamest enemy ever) but when Pandora's star came out I started to doubt. This new series looks very cool, far in the future as well. I'll be picking up the New Space Opera anthology in June anyway and then I can read the bridging short story Blessed by an Angel. What sort of races and factions did Hamilton feature in the two Commonwealth books? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luzifer's right hand Posted January 17, 2007 Share Posted January 17, 2007 Hivemind, giant corporation, powerful space hibbie, "good" terrorists, infiltrating Alien, space elves, uber-AI, mysterious sentient-spaceship...and so on Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Werthead Posted January 18, 2007 Author Share Posted January 18, 2007 I'm thinking I might give Hamilton a second chance. I wasn't keen on The Night's Dawn series ( for one because I hate the idea of undead and dead coming back and threatening the living, lamest enemy ever) but when Pandora's star came out I started to doubt. This new series looks very cool, far in the future as well. I'll be picking up the New Space Opera anthology in June anyway and then I can read the bridging short story Blessed by an Angel. What sort of races and factions did Hamilton feature in the two Commonwealth books? Erm, there weren't any undead in NDT. The dead came back by possessing the bodies of still-living people, imprisoning their consciousness (unless they were hardcore, like Quinn, who reversed the process). However, there were some severe twists in the tale. As far as I'm concerned, the NDT is the best space opera since Dune (with the caveat of not having read Simmons or Vinge yet) and it is better than Commonwealth. However, if you disliked the NDT for the concept rather than the writing, you may find it possible to enjoy Commonwealth, especially as I can reveal the the dead or undead do not play a role in the story. Luzifer's summary was good. But a few more details: The Intersolar Commonwealth Alliance of 600-odd human worlds linked together by permanantly-erected, freestanding wormhole portals with train lines running through them. Ruled over by family-owned merchant corporations and the CST, the coproration which controls the wormhole network. By 2380 humanity has created a form of rejeuvenation. Basically, once the subject gets old and enfeebled, they can undergo 'rejeuvenation'. This takes 18 month or so. At the end of this process, they are returned to the physical age of about 20. They can do this repeatedly. By the time of Pandora's Star, the oldest humans are more than 300 years old and have been rejeuvenated 4-5 times. They can also back up their memories in computer systems. Mankind has also created the unisphere, an incredibly powerful and hyper-advanced version of the Internet which can be accessed from any point in Commonwealth space (both the unisphere and rejeuvenation were introduced in Misspent Youth, which takes place in the same universe in the 2040s, but it's also PFH's worst book and not really worth bothering with). The Sentient Intelligence (SI) Basically the closest PFH comes to addressing the Singularity. Earth's most powerful AI systems develop self-awareness and sentience, but rather than destroy humanity they merge into a powerful mega-AI called the SI, which agrees to advise and protect mankind in return for autonomy. It helps humanity develop sentient-inhibitors to prevent future generations of computers achieving sentience. Its motives throughout the books are unclear, though it has a thirst for knowledge and apparent affection for several individual humans. The Guardians of Selfhood Cult originating on Far Away, one of the Commonwealth's outermost worlds, which believes that an alien entity called the 'Starflyer' escaped from the wreck of a starship found on that planet and is now unleashing evil within the Commonwealth. Initially dismissed as cranks, the Guardians have become a serious terrorist threat by the time of the books. The High Angel An alien sentient spacecraft of enormous size. Sentient and self-aware, the High Angel travels around the Galaxy (maybe between galaxies) collecting civilisations and storing pockets of them (willingly) within itself to learn more about them. The High Angel's motives are inscrutable, although it is friendly to humanity. Of the Angel's many alien samples living aboard, only the hyper-intelligent but somewhat aloof Raiel have agreed (or 'deigned') to communicate with humanity. The Silfen An extremely difficult-to-comprehend alien race, often called 'space elves'. They babble incoherently but seem to have some kind of design. They follow 'paths' which lead from world to world, possibly through wormholes far more advanced than anything mankind has built. Some humans have been able to follow the paths as well. The Commonwealth is at a loss to explain how they work. The Dyson Pair Pair of stars located roughly 1,000 light-years from Commonwealth space. Notable because several decades prior to the start of the novels, both stars vanished from Commonwealth telescopes in a matter of hours, leading to the conclusion that an alien intelligence had either snuffed them out or build Dyson Spheres around them at record speed. Because the Commonwealth does not have starships, it has decided not to investigate further, instead choosing to wait until the natural expansion of Commonwealth space brings the Dyson Pair within wormhole range (in another 200-300 years' time). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Werthead Posted March 15, 2007 Author Share Posted March 15, 2007 Peter F. Hamilton has put up an extract of his new novel, The Dreaming Void (Book 1 of The Void Trilogy), on his website (see link). The book will be published in the UK in August 2007 and in the USA in spring 2008. Book 2, previously entitled Life of Dreams (no, PFH has not read Robert Jordan as far as I know), has had its title changed to The Temporal Void. Before starting work on it, PFH will write a second short story set in the same timeline called The Demon Trap, to appear in Gardener Dozois' new anthology Galactic Empires which will appear late in 2007. The first short story, Blessed by an Angel, will appear in another anthology called The New Space Opera, due in June this year. The link also allows you to view a timeline filling in the 1,100-year gap between The Void Trilogy and PFH's previous work in the same timeline, the Commonwealth Saga Duology. However, The Void Trilogy will apparently largely be a stand-alone story and you will not need to have read the previous series to enjoy this work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bastard of Godsgrace Posted March 16, 2007 Share Posted March 16, 2007 Wow. Very interesting excerpt. I wonder who is this woman. Mellanie Rescorai? Description seems to fit. Will this Gardner Dozois anthology be another strictly SFBC shit? If so, then ugh Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sir Thursday Posted March 16, 2007 Share Posted March 16, 2007 Wow. Very interesting excerpt. I wonder who is this woman. Mellanie Rescorai? Description seems to fit. Mellanie Rescorai was a stunner though, but this woman was described as: Nor did her looks make her stand out, she had a flattish face and a cute-ish button nose; some of the time her slim copper shades would be across her eyes, while often she had them perched up in her short dark hair. I guess she could have changed a bit in the 1000 years she's had to live... Sir Thursday Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Werthead Posted May 6, 2007 Author Share Posted May 6, 2007 PFH's new blog entry confirms that The Dreaming Void will be published in August 2007 in the UK and Spring 2008 in the USA. He's polishing off a short story called The Demon Trap (about Paula Myo) for Gardner Dozois' Galactic Empires anthology before getting back to work on The Temporal Void. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spiralx Posted May 6, 2007 Share Posted May 6, 2007 Looking forward to this! Wonder if the Paula Myo story is about her catching the Cat? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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