Commonwealth Saga
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Commonwealth Saga is a science fiction series by British science fiction writer Peter F. Hamilton. The series is set in the same universe as his single novel Misspent Youth (2002), but set around 340 years later. The saga consists of two novels: Pandora's Star (2004) and Judas Unchained (2005). Like his earlier The Night's Dawn Trilogy, the Commonwealth Saga is an epic space opera extending across dozens of worlds and characters and over 2000 pages.
The series contains a large amount of information and action, and a multitude of subplots. The series uses this wide background to ask various moral and social questions of humanity. The Commonwealth Saga contains many styles of writing including drama and crime. There are many characters in the series all with their distinctive traits. The characters' paths join as the plot progresses.
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[edit] Technological Precepts
The series starts in the year 2380 AD where, due to the development of wormhole technology over faster-than-light drive systems, the Commonwealth Saga is markedly different from Hamilton's earlier work. One notable change is its initial lack of spaceships. Instead, interplanetary travel is accomplished by traveling through wormholes, often using a train. This mode of travel is a commonplace experience, considered similar to commuting. Hundreds of planets are linked in this fashion.
Death may be postponed indefinitely in the Commonwealth. Its citizens undergo a process called rejuvenation every fifty years or so. Rejuvenation is an intense year-and-a-half-long biological process by which their DNA is reset to give them an appearance in their late teens or early twenties. The process renders them effectively immortal. Although bodies may be rejuvenated or memories restored, most Commonwealth citizens must pay for rejuvenation insurance. Meanwhile, some citizens elect to forgo rejuvenation altogether. Rejuvenation is said to be akin to starting a new life, with those who have undergone rejuvenation being referred to as second-lifers, third-lifers, and so on. Psychologically, people tend to shake off the responsibilities of their previous life (although not in all cases) including employment and marriages. Memories can even be edited to facilitate easy transition to a new life.
Cyberware is used extensively in the Commonwealth, with most people possessing several implants. In particular, a common implant is the "memorycell" insert. The memory cell is a small device embedded in the body designed to record the memories and personality of the individual. Should a person ever die, their memories can be transferred into a clone. The process is called re-lifing. This can be traumatic - several characters undergo re-life in the novels and some emerge scarred due to the knowledge of their own death. One example of this is Dudley Bose. In case the memorycell is damaged or destroyed, every character with a memorycell insert also possesses a secure store of their memories. The secondary backup is often held by a third-party company that can be substituted for the memorycell in the re-life process should total body loss occur. This store must be manually updated, and can be less up-to-date than a memorycell.
Other common implants include a transceiver designed to interface with the Commonwealth's Unisphere, essentially an interstellar Internet, with information fed through wormholes on each Commonwealth planet. Each planet has its own Cybersphere while all the cyberspheres connect together to create the Unisphere. This system allows characters to contact each other easily from anywhere within the Commonwealth.
OCTattoos (Organic Circuitry Tattoos) are also a major technological device. These are tattooed on the skin and resemble colourful, often metallic tattoos, which serve hundreds of purposes from transferring credits, to serving as sensors. Although, their main function is to act as processors for other implants (which may function at reduced capacity if an OCTattoo is damaged).
Less common 'wet-wired' implants also serve many functions in the novels, including, but not limited to, implanted weapons, personal forcefields, explosives, and scanners. Often, such implants are less than legal, and must be installed by the shadier clinics in the Commonwealth. A character named Gore Burnelli is a notable user of wet-wiring, so much so that his entire body is coated in a golden sheen of technological implants.
Non-human sentient civilisations have been encountered by the Commonwealth in its expansion through the Galaxy. The most prominent of these are the elf-like Silfen, who appear to eschew most forms of technology, as well as any participation in the politics or events of the Galaxy, choosing instead to wander across uncharted alien worlds on Paths, the Silfen equivalent of wormholes. The High Angel is an enormous sentient starship of unknown origin, on which live several colonies of alien species, most of which keep themselves away from humans. However, the Raiel are the exception to this - a race of large, somewhat self-satisfied creatures capable of immensely complex computational calculations. All of the species encountered up to the start of the novel are peaceful, though few impart useful information to the Commonwealth.
Humanity has also spawned a powerful artificial intelligence called the Sentient Intelligence, or SI, which exists alone, its physical form spanning an entire planet. Like the Silfen, it offers little assistance to humanity, and its motivations are unclear. However, it does offer aid where it deems it right to do so. Perhaps due to its isolation, it tends to contact those who would offer it unparalleled levels of information on the happenings of the Commonwealth, providing such people with favours in exchange for information. These favours range from ensuring their safety through observation of their local Cybersphere's communications, to controlling what it can in the physical world to offer help.
The SI is also the repository for humans who upload their "personality" or memorycell into a communal existence alongside the SI. Some characters are offered deals by the SI because they have a "deceased" relative's personality stored in the SI. The deals often lead to the person in question being granted elevated access and control over the technology in the novels in return for gathering information that the SI cannot access.
[edit] Pandora's Star
The Saga begins in 2300s, when astronomer Dudley Bose performs the first detailed observations of an astronomical event known as the Dyson Pair Enclosure. Two stars, located roughly 1,000 light years from Earth (750 light years from the edge of Commonwealth space), seemingly disappeared some time earlier. The theory is that they have been enclosed inside Dyson spheres.
Bose's observations from planets further from the pair subsequently reveal that rather than traditional Dyson spheres, it is more likely that some sort of force fields have enclosed the stars, as the enclosure occurred in less than a second. The enclosing of Dyson Alpha and Dyson Beta presents a question for humanity: did the Dyson aliens enclose themselves, or did some other force enclose them? Was it for protection or to protect those outside the spheres?
To investigate, the Commonwealth builds its first interstellar ship, the Second Chance. Using a self-generating wormhole for propulsion, the Second Chance travels to Dyson Alpha.
The force field is shut down by an unknown mechanism; the crew believes that it did nothing to shut it down. (The cause is not revealed until Judas Unchained.) As the title Pandora's Star may have hinted, what lies inside the first imprisoned star system is an incredibly warlike and aggressive species a race called the primes. They consist of intelligent immotiles that control vast armies of non-sentient 'motiles' via a hive mind. The few immotiles constantly vie with each other for territories and resources.
During the melee, Bose and another crew member are captured, and Bose's saved memories are interrogated by MorningLightMountain, one of the Prime immotiles. Learning the location of the Commonwealth, and gaining understanding of wormholes, MorningLightMountain uses the wormhole technology to destroy its rivals, making it the sole leader of the primes. MorningLightMountain believes that to achieve immortality it must spread itself across the entire universe, thus all life will eventually become its enemy. It views the Commonwealth as its first obstacle in the way of that grand objective.
At the same time, an underground human organization known as the Guardians of Selfhood is determined to prove the existence of an alien known as the Starflyer, which originated in the crash of an ancient spacecraft (the Marie Celeste) on the planet Far Away. The Guardians of Selfhood have been declared a terrorist organization by the Commonwealth's government. The sub-plot includes a famed investigator, Paula Myo, who pursues the "Guardians" to this end. Throughout both books, Ms. Myo becomes gradually convinced that the Starflyer may be real and has organised the liberation of the hostile aliens for its own purposes.
The prime attack on the Commonwealth is devastating, including the wide use of nuclear weapons to both subjugate and contaminate the human worlds. Resulting in tens of millions of human deaths.
[edit] Judas Unchained
The second and last part of the Commonwealth Saga begins at the abrupt ending of Pandora's Star.
Judas Unchained begins by describing what small human resistance exists on the decimated Commonwealth worlds which were attacked during the first phase of the Prime invasion. Human resistance forces have found mostly two ways to fight back: using the Prime weapons (primarily directed-energy weapons) against the invaders, and also disrupting communication between the slave caste and the commanding caste of the Primes. Meanwhile, the humans in the remaining Commonwealth pursue several parallel plans (1) developing a set of weapons and warships to defend against the next Prime invasion and/or force the conflict back into Prime space; (2) developing a "quantumbuster" superweapon based on technology supplied, unbeknownst to most humans, by the Starflyer, and (3) making plans to escape known space altogether if necessary.
The SI is revealed to be somewhat duplicitous, not committing to help humanity, and yet not refusing to either.
Humans decide that there can be no other solution to the conflict than to commit genocide, destroying the Prime aliens entirely. However, it is revealed that the Primes are planning a much larger invasion, which humanity will be all but powerless to stop.
Humanity begins building much faster, and better armed, ships. These ships are armed with "quantumbuster" weapons, which function by converting the rest mass of an object into energy, and are thus capable of destroying an entire planet. Later on, a more advanced quantumbuster is deployed, which is capable of inducing a main-sequence star to go nova. One such weapon is eventually deployed on the Dyson Alpha forcefield generator, destroying the Prime flare bomb that was interfering with the generator's systems. This allows the mechanism to reactivate, re-trapping the Prime aliens.
Meanwhile, while some humans battle the Prime aliens, others engage in a desperate chase to prevent the Starflyer (in reality, a rogue Prime alien) from escaping the Commonwealth. (This chase sequence is probably homage to a similar sequence in Bram Stoker's novel Dracula). After defeating the Starflyer's army and encircling the Marie Celeste, a coalition of Commonwealth forces destroy the Starflyer with a massive directed hurricane, freeing humanity from its thrall.
[edit] Criticism
Commonwealth Saga received generally positive reviews by critics. However, readers have complained that the saga is too long, delivering unnecessary details about characters' personalities, while introducing dozens of similar characters. Confusion could also be caused by the many storylines.
[edit] Intersolar Dynasties
In the Commonwealth Saga universe, the majority of the Commonwealth's economic power is held in the hands of a few so-called Intersolar Dynasties. These families capitalised on the exponential expansion following the discovery of wormhole technology, so much so that they bought their own planets. The major dynasties include:
The Sheldon Dynasty
Headed by Nigel Sheldon, one of the inventors of wormhole technology (the other was Ozzie Isaacs) and owner of 51% of CST, with Ozzie owning the remaining 49% citing his "dislike for all that corporate stuff." His dynasty is the largest and richest out of all of them, due in large part to his sole control over the Commonwealth transportation system. His dynasty's planet is Cressat, which is off-limits to all those who are not given permission. Nigel has many wives, and they are commonly referred to in the book as his harem.
The Halgarth Dynasty
Discoverers of the Marie Celeste on Far Away, the Halgarth dynasty controls the force-field technology market in the Commonwealth, having adapted the technology from the crashed spaceship. The Halgarth dynasty's private world is Solidade.
[edit] Races
[edit] Dyson Aliens (Primes)
[edit] Silfen
The Silfen were the first intelligent alien race the Exo Protectorate Council encountered. They don’t use any technology that allow them to travel space by conventional means; nevertheless humans find that Silfen are spread across the galaxy. They travel along paths that connect different places and planets in the galaxy.
The Silfen have humanoid features and are in their overall appearance much like the Elves from classic fantasy fiction - this is until they open their mouth. Hundreds of razor sharp teeth on circular sets quickly destroy the heartfelt sympathy. Relations to the Silfen have always been friendly. The Silfen do not bother with the human expansion into space and rarely interfere with the affairs of the Commonwealth. They are much more concerned with themselves and spend their lives traveling the paths, exploring worlds and experiencing life.
While on Silfen planets, the technology used by the Commonwealth does not work. Although the obvious exception to this is the Wormholes equipment, the more advanced the technology, the less likely it is to work while on these planets. No reason has ever been given for this, the Silfen tend to simply scratch their heads and talk in riddles when questioned.
On Silvergalde (which is considered some sort of a regional capital of the Silfen, simply due to the numbers that live on the planet) there are some human settlements. The people there have adapted to a life without the sophisticated technology the commonwealth would usually offer. When Silvergalde was first classified it was quite obvious that something was out of kilter on this world: Three times the size of Earth with only a gravity of point nine, an internal composition of mainly silicate with no metal ever found in the crust, a small molten core generating a magnetic field but no tectonic activity, no volcanoes, no geological reason for the continents to be separated, no impact craters on the surface... and most telling no fossil of any kind ever found. The exploratory division had every reason to believe that the globe was artificial. But the real proof appeared after the humans reached the surface to be greeted by the slyly amused Silfen. Classifying the vegetation and animal life turned up a dozen DNA types; all of them living in equilibrium with each other, they had to have been imported, and none of them from any world that the Commonwealth was familiar with.
The Silfen culture, as much as is known about it, is centred on the exploration of the self. It has many rituals although few are ever witnessed. One of their Silfen rituals involves the hunting of ice whales on the vast plains around the poles of an ice planet they visit. During this ritual the younglings must hunt down and kill one of these humongous creatures that roam the ice deserts using only the traditional weapons are bow and knife. This enterprise very often costs the life of many Silfen warriors.
[edit] Barsoomians
The classification of the Barsoomians as a separate race is rather controversial within the Commonwealth as they are of human descent. They originated from a radical ultra-green group on Earth. Their concepts included the unrestrained genetic modification within themselves and their environment, thereby leaving mainstream society behind. As this kind of extreme remodelling of the human genome was still unthinkable on Earth, they sought a place of their own, where they would eventually be able to proceed undisturbed with their developments and they found it on Far Away. Certainly most Barsoomians still resemble a human very much. But as they tend to cloak their appearance under massive robes of mostly semi-organic fabric and veil their features behind a distorter field, it is hard to tell how far they have indeed developed from their genetic origin. In a time where many Commonwealth citizens re-profile themselves, for example: in sports that depend highly on the media like wrestling, producing ridiculous freak-variants of the human body, even a cloaked Barsoomians presence easily triggers the notion of something even more bizarre and disturbing. The colony on Far Away mostly consists of research facilities and they hardly ever visit the major cities thus spurring the fantastic speculations about them and their doings. It is nevertheless a well-known fact that the Barsoomians supported the Guardians of Selfhood on Far Away with gargantuan creatures that serve them as horses during combat.
[edit] High Angel
As a life form the High Angel is surely the most outstanding known in the Commonwealth as it is an obviously artificial lifeform. In 2163 Compression Space Travel’s exploratory division opened a wormhole to a star system. When they were unable to locate any H-congruous planets they almost closed the wormhole to resume exploration in another system but the sensor dish picked up a powerful, regular microwave pulse. The object that radiated them appeared to be a rocky moonlet over 60 kilometres long and 20 wide that sprouted petals of pearl-white light - an angels wings.
After initial analysis revealed that the rock was actually the host body to twelve giant artificial domes, biospheres, sitting on the end of tall metallic stalks. What they had found was a star ship, a living behemoth capable of FTL travel. Not that it was any kind of life that humanity understood; a machine that had risen to sentience or a space born life form that had evolved or was engineered to it’s current nature. The High Angel wasn’t forthcoming about its origin, saying only that its purpose was to provide a habitable environment to the planet-based species it encountered in hope of learning about them. It was “resting” in orbit around Icalanise.
After some negotiation it agreed to open three of its domes to humans, who would use it primarily as a dormitory town for the astro-engineering companies. The 3 Domes, New Glasgow, Moscow Star and Caracoal are home to a population of over fifteen million individuals. Already two new domes have been negotiated and New Auckland and Babuyan Atoll are almost fully grown and will soon be ready for human occupancy. As for the other nine original domes, humans only know that the Raiel, who consented themselves to contact the humans, live in one. Although lights and shadows have been seen moving in some and one is permanently dark, nobody knows what the other domes house.
[edit] StarFlyer
An immotile from Dyson beta. The Starflyer was on board a space ship when a force field was put up around its home system of Dyson beta. With the Starflyer unable to go home it traveled to a new system - Far Away. When it arrived in this system it fired a flare bomb into the systems sun to create a high speed distress call, the fallout of which killed nearly all life on the world. It was on Far Away that the Starflyer waited until humans colonised the world, drawn there out of curiosity by the flare the Starflyer created. When the first humans made contact with the alien it enslaved them much as it had done with Dyson beta's native inhabitants. It then used the humans to gather as much information on the Commonwealth without revealing itself. It was only after Bradley Johansson (who was among the first that were enslaved) encountered the Silfen on the Starflyers orders and was subsequently freed from its influence by them. He them formed the Guardians of Selfhood to make the Starflyers intentions known to the rest of mankind.
[edit] Raiel
An adult Raiel is larger than a bull elephant. Their forward body looks like an octopus with a collar of tentacle limbs ranging from a pair at the bottom which had evolved for heavy work, four metres long with paddle-like tips and a base thicker than a human torso. Down to clumps of small manipulators like energetic nests of boa constrictors. On each side of their head they have five small hemispherical eyes and eight short, stumpy legs on each side of the underbelly. Without knees or ankles they simply propel the Raiel along with a continuous smooth waddle. Humanity through the High Angel only knew the Raiel Species. It is very likely that otherwise they would have never bothered to commute with human at all. In some way the Raiel look down on humans from a great intellectual height. They lack human’s emotionality and have dedicated themselves to the study of the physical dynamics of the universe rather than to what it contains. Their dome on the High Angel is a gloomy maze-like city structure built of solid metal that is always cloaked in darkness except for occasional lights that are emitted from somewhere. Not many humans are allowed to venture into their premise, that’s why only little is really known about the true nature of the Raiels living on the High Angel. It is though speculated that it might have even been the Raiel that built the High Angel, but given their little interest in alien life it hardly seems convincing that they would put up with so much work to create a star ship that solely analyses life. Despite their inherent rational a small number of Raiel are very attracted to the idea of having emotional experiences and get addicted to the use of human memory crystals in TSI (Total Sensory Input). Of course it is very dangerous to illegally obtain such memory stores, but even more these Raiel would be deeply ashamed if their kind was to find out that they regressed into emotional dependency.
[edit] Korrok-hi
The Korrok-hi are a large furry alien encountered by Ozzie Isaacs while stuck on the frozen Silfen world. They are roughly eight foot tall and covered with the fluffy fur with wide dark eyes visible at the top. It is not possible to see whether they have legs. They communicate by making a loud chant-like hooting noise. The Korrok-hi are very suited to the cold world on which they find themselves.
[edit] In the same Universe
Other books set in the 'Commonwealth Universe' are Misspent Youth and the forthcoming Void Trilogy. Misspent Youth is set in the near future (approx. 2040) and focuses on the first human to undergo rejuvenation. It is in this book that Peter F Hamilton lays the foundation to the Commonwealth Saga. The Void Trilogy will continue within the same universe, but set 1500 years in the future. Characters that are featured in the Commonwealth Saga will make appearances in the Void Trilogy.
[edit] See also
Also by Peter F. Hamilton
Technological concepts
[edit] External links
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Works by Peter F. Hamilton |
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The Greg Mandel trilogy • Mindstar Rising | A Quantum Murder | The Nano Flower |
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