Talk:The Night's Dawn Trilogy

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Contents

[edit] Older stuff

Yea I really ought to finish this article. I just wish Hamilton didn't have to write such a rediculously long story. Anyway, on to my thought. Should we include information from "A Second Chance at Eden" and its related stories? They aren't technically part of the Trilogy itself but they are set in the same timeline. Shall we take a vote? Include or Don't Include? --||bass 23:13, Apr 11, 2005 (UTC)

I've added a few specifics to the technology section and some character descriptions. - GK Apr 22

I'm sure this is common sence for most people, but let me just remind anyone. For those of you who have a copy of the Confereration Handbook, remember to NOT post any character/object/location descriptions word-for-word. It's the quickest way to get our article deleted.--||bass 15:53, Apr 22, 2005 (UTC)

Okay, I've now also added a whole slew of planets to the page. It's looking a bit less like a stub now! Also, none of the stuff I've added is copied from anywhere else; I did consult other sources, but everything is written in my own words. - GK Apr 22

As long as we arent quoting directly from The Confereration Handbook, we're golden. I just wanted to make sure that we don't get in trouble. Though if anyone wishes to paraphrase from the handbook, by all means do so. It's probably the best authoratative source we can have for this article. --||bass 01:24, Apr 23, 2005 (UTC)

Fear not, I've never even seen the handbook. I am using sources like websites and the books themselves to remind me of names and facts, but I'm writing everything in my own words.

As far as including Second Chance at Eden stuff, I'd say no as things stand now. To include that you would have to change the article from "The Night's Dawn Trilogy" to cover the whole universe; call it "The Confederation Universe" or something. - GK Apr 23

I've put a chunk of the timeline on the page, but the formatting is all messed up. Wikipedia doesn't seem to like spacing things out for some reason. Anybody know how to fix this? - GK Apr 24

I replaced some of the spaces with chr(0160) as well as inserted a monospace font. It looks like it did the trick. --||bass 02:03, Apr 25, 2005 (UTC)

Holy crap! Someone finally fixed the timeline properly! Woo! --||bass 06:18, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)

Information on Voidhawks seem a little thin. For instance, there is nothing on the fact that a voidhawks captain "inseminates" the eggs just before the mating flight. Is this too much detail perhaps? I'm new to this place so I don't quite know how things are done yet.

It sounds fine to me. Night's Dawn is hardly a kid's book so I would think that any useful information would be welcome regardless. How could any information be "too much information" anyway? --||bass 00:53, July 19, 2005 (UTC)


I want some input on the recent edit made by 83.70.178.4. I don't agree with the user's comment comparing Edinist Affinity to entanglement for 2 reasons. 1: Entanglement works over any distence. Affinity does not. 2: Peter F. Hamilton has explicitly stated (on his website, the Q&A section) that he does not wish to provide a scientific explination for the way Affinity works. Any thoughts on this? --||bass 01:51, August 16, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Copying

This book is amazing and this page is not doing it any kind of justice. Im going to change some stuff. Do what ever you want with it. - MW, 2006.06.17

Would it be OK to grab some (most?) of this stuff and use it to develop a parellel project, namely the Confederation Handwiki?

- Tuvalkin, 2006.02.20

[edit] Habitat lifespan

someone said:

Ok seriously. Having to revert the habitat lifespan remarks over and over is getting old. "A lifespan measured in millenia" is still a limited lifespan. Habitats DO NOT have a limited life span. LIFE EXPECTANCY may be limited by various factors such as war, disasters, etc but life SPAN shouldn't be. If anyone can actually cite a chapter/paragraph in the book that says habitats have a lifespan that is limited to only a few thousand or even a few hundered thousand years. Please do so. But I recall absoloutly no mention of a lifespan limit for habitats, be in thousands or billions of years.

In chap. 22 of tRD (p.800 of the Pan book, ISBN:0-330-34032-8), Olsen Neale, Commander of the Confederation Navy office in Tranquility, says to Erick Thrackar, while discussing Jantrit: «The Edenists had never lost a habitat before, their life expentancy is measured in millenia.» I guess this ilustrates the point above, without proving or disproving it.

--62.48.171.17 19:20, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Where's all the info gone?

This page used to have a huge list of characters, technology, planets, etc - much of which I wrote. Where's it all gone? If it's been moved elsewhere that's one thing, but if it's just been deleted I'll be putting it back soon.

  • This is a wiki, not a fan site. Descriptions of every world mentioned, in depth into all of the secondary characters, is interesting for a fan, but is not nessesary or in any respect central to the flow of the story. The story is about characters and their interactions: i'd suggest that no more than an overview of the universe is required.
    • I'd respectfully disagree. A standard encyclopedia limits the scope of its articles because there is limited room available in even a multi-volume book. With wikipedia there are no such limitations, so no real reason to deliberately omit facts. BobThePirate 19:33, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
      • Agreed. So long as writers stay neutral and relevant, all is good. Because this is an electronic encyclopedia, it's not like detailed coverage of one article hurts another article or creates a set of books that won't fit on your shelf. :) --74.163.136.99 15:22, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
        • It is a bit unwieldy, though. I'm going to split it out into a couple of sub-articles. Bryan Derksen 04:52, 29 June 2007 (UTC)


          • Considering the general lack of info on this series on the Internet (there are no more that 5 or so pages that contain the word Orgathe), I'd thik it good if a proper database of characters, technology, locations, species and universes was available. Although I do agree that the information must be invariably 'neutral'. I'm not sure about relevant, though. Can information be in surplus, especially in a place such as wikipedia?

[edit] Piłsudski?

It has been few years since I read this trilogy, but wasn't one of the planets named after Józef Piłsudski?--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 19:22, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dues Ex Machina

"which is the final saviour of the human race is a clear example of Deus ex machina". I disagree. Is this the opinion of the writer of the article, or did somebody else say it? Scorchsaber 21:38, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

No, a few people have said it on Amazon and on forums. You can kind of understand it in a way. The storyline is basically resolved by a semi-omnipotent godlike being throwing a switch, rather than the characters resolving the problem through their own actions. However, I'd hesitate about putting such a statement in the article as it would seem to be POV. If a proper critical website or a print review mentioned the deus ex machina element, that would be one thing, but just saying it in the article would seem to be offering an opinion.--Werthead 23:34, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Okay, it seems someone with a dislike of Hamilton has gone through the page adding unsourced commentary and POV opinion, calling Joshua Calvert a 'Mary Sue' and lambasting Hamilton's 'infodump' style. I have pruned such comments. Such criticism may be indeed be fair, but Wikipedia is not the place for it. I had to carefully look at the last section as well which seemed to be going too far in the opposite direction, before remembering that the first book's cover blurb describes the Confederation as a 'golden age' of human history. Also adjusted a more straightforward error: The Neutronium Alchemist was published in 1997, not 1998.--Werthead 23:40, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Spellings

Someone attempted to change the spellings in this article about a British work to Americanized spellings. Wikipedia policy is to favor the spellings that go with the subject, if obviously one or the other. I've reverted those changes, but have left in two changed words:

  • "Judgment" is apparently still favored over "judgement" in both dialects, according to Cambridge Online Dictionaries and Merriam-Webster Online.
  • "Outmanoeuvre" was misspelled for either dialect, but is now corrected for UK spelling.

I also note that "Tranquillity", a proper noun in this context, is the correct (UK) spelling even in the my American edition of The Naked God. Finally, Cambridge does not list either form of "biomechanical", but MWO lists only the unhyphenated version, so I've restored that, too. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 03:54, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Mea culpa. I didn't know some of those words differed in British English. Well, a couple things improved. Jason Quinn 16:52, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Themes

I'm surprised by the themes section. I think there is a clear central theme to the story, that relates to the universe being a deeply, fundamentally flawed place, a ticking timebomb ready to suck all of itself into oblivion. All of the sentient life, anyway. I mean you've got a deep dark secret that is so foul that an elder race committed suicide (which of course makes no sense whatsoever since the secret happens to do with where sentients go when they die), and at the end of the series, salvation is attained by chucking the inhabited planets right out of the universe, right?

And the section really seems to be straining the point about a future world where human nature is essentially unchanged when it is talking about a millieu when humans and their spaceships whisper telepathically, "I love you" to each other. I mean come on. This is a very strange universe that has been depicted here. Transentient 16:28, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

First poster, you understand nothing: the Laymil commited suicide because they understood that only the dead that were not psichologically ready to die ended up in the beyond. They killed themselves knowing that they would not end up trapped in the beyond. Calvert does not transport the Confed worlds "right out of the universe", but merely outside the galaxy, so that humanity would be unable to continue its expansion and focus more on internal stabilisation. He sends Quinn to the end of the universe, to lead those trapped in the Beyond out and to the "Omega point", where all sentient souls gathered at the end of time to recreate the universe. Second poster, the captains of voidhawks and blackhawks express love so simply because of the profound intimacy given by affinity. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Preda (talk • contribs) 20:06, August 23, 2007 (UTC).
Be careful of themes, they can often be original research. We oughta be careful that we aren't just posting radnom theories.

The strongest theme throughout these books is how socio-economic systems effect individuals potential. That capitalism limits what one can achieve and that socialism is a better system. The planets are moved at the end so that they could work together and not independently, the souls are stuck in the beyond because they had not been self realized enough when they died. etc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.49.29.212 (talk) 07:39, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm not convinced it's as simple as "Capitalism vs Socialism" - if you take the Kiint and their comparatively Utopian existence as an example, I see that it's about the evolution to a society which values fulfilment (personal, psychological) and equal opportunity for all to indulge in that pursuit. As an example, the Kiint appear to be in pursuit of knowledge and want for nothing; the (Adamist) humans have a hierarchical society where individuals are exploited or society is "managed" (by political or religious means) with or without their knowledge. The book points the finger squarely at religion and politics which attempt to govern the thinking of individuals and people end up feeling unfulfilled. As a result, unless they are at the top of those hierarchies - they are not "self-determining" enough to feel fulfilled and therefore their souls are trapped in the beyond because they haven't had the opportunity to feel fulfilled while alive. But it's not all bad: humans have hope, which propels them along in the face of adversity and this hope is what is needed to encourage development to the egalitarian society which will help the race become (paraphrasing) "socialogically mature". Nick in syd (talk) 10:48, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Truth Behind Human Existence

This is a bit wishy-washy, really, certainly not all that useful for someone who hasn't read the books (I'm still reading the first). Perhaps we should inlcude more information on this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 211.30.132.2 (talk) 00:45, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sales?

If the Trilogy has really sold 19 million copies, that would be impressive and amazing, making it one of the biggest-selling works of SF of all time. However, I cannot find any sources at all for this statement.--Werthead (talk) 17:44, 31 May 2008 (UTC)