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From the Product Description: The year is 2380. The Intersolar Commonwealth, a sphere of stars, contains more than six hundred worlds interconnected by a web of transport "tunnels" known as wormholes. At the farthest edge of the Commonwealth, astronomer Dudley Bose observes the impossible, over one thousand light years away, a star . . . disappears. Since the location is too distant to reach by wormhole, the Second Chance, a faster-than-light starship commanded by Wilson Kime, a five-times-rejuvenated ex-NASA pilot, is dispatched to learn what has occurred and whether it represents a threat.Opposed to the mission are the Guardians of Selfhood, led by Bradley Johansson. Shortly after the journey begins, Kime wonders if the crew of the Second Chance has been infiltrated. But soon enough he will have other worries. Halfway across the galaxy, something truly incredible is waiting: a deadly discovery whose unleashing will threaten to destroy the Commonwealth. . . and humanity itself. |
See Also: Peter F. Hamilton's Night's Dawn Trilogy
Hamilton sets up a futuristic society called the "commonwealth" that is somewhat reminiscent of the confederacy that he created in the Night's Dawn Trilogy (The Reality Dysfunction, etc).
The big difference is that there are no spacecraft -- none at all! The human colonized planets are all connected via a series of wormholes that allows instantaneous travel between the commonwealth planets. This is all established in a rather cheesy scenario in the first chapter of the book -- you'll know what I mean when you read it. Fortunately, the story only gets better and better as it goes forward.
The primary focus of the story is the "Dyson Pair". The Dyson Pair is a pair of stars, named Dyson-A and Dyson-B respectively that are observed to have an incorrect emission spectrum. The stars are too far away to reach by human wormhole, but the scientists hypothesize that Dyson Spheres were constructed around the stars. A Dyson Sphere would be a momentous construction project for a civilization to undertake, and it's believed that it would take many years for its construction.
Since we all know that light travels at "the speed of light", we know that when we make visual observations of a star, we are seeing into its past. Thus, the commonwealth scientists know that the dyson sphere was constructed sometime in the past. There happens to be a commonwealth planet that is far enough away from the Dyson Pair, that it sees the unmodified (pre-sphere-construction) spectra of the stars. Thus, the scientists can know an approximate date range when the sphere must have been constructed.
The story beings with one lonely scientist, Dudley Bose, who is observing the Dyson Pair from this far away star (i.e. he's able to see the stars before the sphere is constructed). He's watching for some signs that the sphere construction is taking place. Presumably he expects this to be a gradual, long term observation. But... It happens in the blink of an eye. Constructing a dyson sphere would be a monumental task for a civilization, but constructing something of that scale instantaneously would be nearly unthinkable.
This sets off a wave of speculation -- is the artifact really a dyson sphere or is it some other kind of barrier? Is it meant to keep something out? or to keep something confined inside? Was it created by aliens in the dyson star system, or by some outside third party?
Given the humans normal progression at building wormholes (each wormhole has a finite range), it would take humans several hundreds (or even thousands) or years to reach the dyson star system. The obvious answer is to launch a crash-course at building a starship that can create it's own wormhole, and ride it to the dyson pair to conduct an investigation and find out what's really going on.
That's pretty much the premise of the story. If you've read Hamilton's other epic series (The Reality Dysfunction and it's sequels), then you have a good idea of what to expect -- space exploration, epic space battles, warfare, mystical alien species, ...
Pandora's Star is only the first installment of the series. It will be continued or concluded in "Judas Unchained".
Personally, I really enjoyed the story. Typical of Hamilton's work, the first volume contains a great deal of background material, and character development for dozens of people that you will have to keep track of. Sometimes it can get a little bit overwhelming trying to remember just who everyone is, and what subplots are being developed. The descriptions of the technology is first-rate -- the wormhole transportation system and rejuvenation procedures fit the story naturally, and the future civilization that Hamilton creates seems reasonable and realistic.