07 November 2011

The Commonwealth Saga - Peter F. Hamilton

I've recently finished reading (for the second time) Peter F Hamilton's Commonwealth Saga series. This is only a two book series but they're both fairly lengthy volumes and packed full of everything a science fiction/spacer opera fan could want. I couldn't recommend this sequence any more - top rate sci-fi and a definite 10/10 for me!

Anyway here's a rundown of the two books (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_Saga)


Pandora's Star

The Saga begins in 2380, the human race has had wormhole technology for over 300 years thanks to the work of Nigel Sheldon and Ozzie Isaacs, and has colonized several hundred planets across hundreds of light years. On a distant planet, 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 investigations reveal that the enclosing of Dyson Alpha and Dyson Beta (as the stars become known) occurred quickly and simultaneously. These facts mean that the technology of the Dyson aliens, or possibly other unknown aliens, surpasses that of the Commonwealth; furthermore, 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. Commanded by Wilson Kime, one of the first men to walk on Mars, using a self-generating wormhole for propulsion, the Second Chance travels to Dyson Alpha.

As they arrive and begin to explore what appears to be an enclosure generator, it is shut down by an unknown mechanism and the barrier around the star disappears. Inside the first imprisoned star system is an incredibly warlike and aggressive species, a race that come to be called the Primes. They consist of intelligent immotiles that breed and control vast armies of sub-sentient 'motiles' via electronically extended neural interfaces. The few immotiles constantly vie with each other for territories and resources.

Primes had colonized Dyson Beta and enslaved its native inhabitants in the process. Beta's Primes started to routinely alter themselves through genetic manipulation and mechanical augmentation and therefore were referred to as alienPrimes by the Alpha Primes. They also broke away from the control of Alpha's Primes and thus a war began between two systems. The war continued until the barrier was erected around the stars.

After capturing two crew members of the Second Chance, one of whom was Dudley Bose, the Primes eventually discover the location of the Commonwealth. Upon learning of the Commonwealth's existence, the dominant immotile grouping, MorningLightMountain, makes it its primary objective to destroy the Commonwealth. MorningLightMountain believes that it is necessary to eliminate all other life in the Universe in order to secure its survival into the distant future, because it views all life that is not under its control as a potential threat.

Following the capture of the two crewmembers, MorningLightMountain discovers the concept of wormhole technology, and quickly creates its own generator. Using wormholes to transport and detonate nuclear weapons within the defenses of other immotiles, it secures its dominance over the Dyson Alpha solar system by becoming the only surviving sentient member of its species.
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, and are pursued by famed investigator Paula Myo, working on behalf of the Commonwealth government. Throughout both books, Ms. Myo becomes gradually convinced that the Starflyer may be real and has organized the liberation of the hostile aliens for its own purposes.

The Prime attack on the Commonwealth is devastating, including widespread use of nuclear weapons to both subjugate and contaminate the human worlds, resulting in tens of millions of human deaths.


Judas Unchained
Judas Unchained, the second part of the Commonwealth Saga, picks up where Pandora's Star's abrupt ending left off.

The story begins with the small human resistance that exists on what remains of the Commonwealth worlds attacked by the Primes. Human resistance forces have found two ways to fight back: using the Prime weapons (primarily directed-energy weapons) against the invaders, and disrupting communication between the slave caste (motiles) and the commanding caste (immotiles) of the Primes. Meanwhile, the humans in the remaining Commonwealth pursue other plans: to develop a set of weapons and warships to defend against the next Prime invasion and force the conflict back into Prime space; to develop a "quantumbuster superweapon" based on technology supplied, unbeknownst to most humans, by the Starflyer; and to prepare for the evacuation of known space altogether if necessary.

Eventually, the human forces decide that there can be no other solution to the conflict than to commit genocide and destroy the Primes entirely. However, it is revealed that the Primes are planning a much larger invasion, which humanity will be all but powerless to stop.

As the war rages, the human forces begin to build much faster, better armed, ships and fitting them with new "quantumbuster" weapons. These weapons function by converting the entire 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 via a feedback loop where the energy from the conversion is used to further expand the radius of the effect field. Despite the original plan to use it on the Dyson Alpha star and thus kill the entire prime race, a modified field version of a normal quantumbuster is eventually deployed on the Dyson Alpha forcefield generator, destroying the mechanism that was interfering with the generator's systems. This allows the mechanism to reactivate, trapping the Prime aliens inside and avoiding genocide.

Meanwhile, it has emerged that the Starflyer is in fact an AlienPrime which, by chance, escaped the enclosure event. The human forces engage in a desperate chase to prevent the Starflyer from escaping the Commonwealth. After defeating the Starflyer's army and encircling the Marie Celeste, The Guardians of Selfhood destroy the Starflyer with a massive directed hurricane, freeing humanity from its thrall.

30 September 2011

"What you talkin' about Willis?"

04 September 2011

Area 51 novels

UPDATE #1: I found Area 51:Nightstalkers on TUEBL!
UPDATE #2: Complete epub collection HERE
  
Here is a quick overview of a very good series of sci-fi/adventure novels that I have recently read. If you like books with lots of action, twists and turns, technology and conspiracy then you'll love this series. Like a cross between Dan Brown, Stephen Coonts and David Weber. Highly recommended!

The Area 51 novels are a series of science fiction novels by American author Robert Mayer, under the pseudonym Robert Doherty.


In the opening book of the series, it is revealed that in the late 1940s, two flying saucers (called "bouncers") and a mile long spacecraft with an interstellar drive were discovered in the remote Nevada desert, with information that leads to the locations of seven more abandoned flying saucers hidden beneath the frozen tundra of Antarctica. As the massive "mothership" is too large to relocate and so little is known about its alien technology, a secret military base is built around the area surrounding the mothership, known as Area 51. It is here that the United States government spends the next sixty years trying to unravel the secrets of the alien technology.
1. Area 51 (1997)

Once information has been obtained by General Gullick, the base's commanding officer, an attempt is made to activate the mothership. When the ships drives are briefly activated, Dr. Werner Von Seeckt, a former Nazi scientist and original member of the Majestic 12, gives a recounting of the history behind what he has seen since his involvement in the alien artifacts to Majestic 12's newest member (and the President's Scientific Adviser) Lisa Duncan. Von Seeckt reveals that there may have been a direct connection to the development of the first atomic bomb and an Airlia artifact that was found in the bowels of the Great Pyramid of Giza. The Airlia were a race of aliens that arrived on Earth thousands of years ago and it becomes quickly apparent that they had a profound influence on the development of human history. Von Seeckt feels that the flight of the mothership and the activation of the interstellar drives must be prevented at all costs. Confirming this fear we are introduced to an archaeologist named Professor Nabinger, whose studies on runes found in ancient Egypt have found a message that refers to "the power of the sun", "something forbidden", "home", "a chariot", and "death to all living things".

The hero of the series is a former Special Forces operative Mike Turcotte who joins the elite security force assigned to guarding Area 51 code named Nightscape. He knows nothing of the secrets the top-secret military installation holds until he is caught up in the desperate series of events to stop the mothership flight after participating in a strange operation surrounding the government conspiracy aimed at keeping the American public in the dark lies in the Groom Lake complex.

The story then expands over the next 6 books to weave a more and more complex web of human history and Airlia influence that results in the unraveling of the ancient mysteries surrounding the pyramids, the Great Sphinx of Giza, Easter Island and its Moai and Rongorongo tablets, the Face on Mars in the Cydonia region, the Great Wall of China, the Foo Fighters, the Roswell UFO incident, the Tunguska event, the Black Death (also known as the bubonic plague), the Ark of the Covenant, the Holy Grail, Excalibur, and Stonehenge. The reader is taken all over the globe, visiting Africa's Great Rift Valley, the top of Mount Everest, Tunguska, an ancient Chinese tomb, and even into space as the events of the series unfold, eventually leading up to what will bring about World War III.
The final two books in the series (Nosferatu and Legend) are related to the story, but do not follow the timeline of the other books and for all intents and purposes "The Truth" is the conclusion of the main story.

Nosferatu is an attempt by Doherty to explain the origins of the myth of the vampire, owning it yet again to the alien race known as the Airlia. The first and last few chapters take place a few weeks after the events of The Truth, but most of the action occurs in the past, in such locales as Egypt, Greece, Romania, and China. Because of the unusual timeframe, which does reveal plot elements from all previous books, knowledge of the mainstream Area 51 plotline is recommended. Legend is similar in idea to Nosferatu. Donnchadh and Gwalcmai are the main characters, and the book relates their adventures in Atlantis and ancient Earth to set up the major plot elements in Camelot.

Nightstalkers is the latest in the series although is a major departure from the original plot line and characters, etc. This book is published under the author's real name of Bob Mayer and released through a different publisher. 

2. Area 51: The Reply (1998)
3. Area 51: The Mission (1999)
4. Area 51: The Sphinx (2000)
5. Area 51: The Grail (2001)
6. Area 51: Excalibur (2002)
7. Area 51: The Truth (2003)
8. Area 51: Nosferatu (2003)
9. Area 51: Legend (2004)
10. Area 51: Nightstalkers (2012)