What do You think about A Second Chance At Eden (1999)?
This collection of stories, one of which is a novel by 1960-1970s standards, is set in the universe of the bizarrely popular Night's Dawn Trilogy. All of the stories here are better than any of or all of the volumes in that trilogy. The novel is a murder-mystery, something that Hamilton does well. One of the stories features the crew of the Lady MacBeth,, familiar to all Night's Dawn readers. Other stories have disparate settings and themes and that is what makes this book much better than most of Hamilton's other works; some of these stories are actually about something more than either space operatic adventure or whodunnit. Some of them have a classic sting-in-the-tail SF short story construction. If you liked any Hamilton at all, you should enjoy this collection.
—Robert
This collection is a little uneven, and in keeping with that, it highlights all my most and least favorite things about Hamilton's writing - the sexism is a little more visible, the techno-exposition is a little more random, the world-building is a little more startling. All the stories in Second Chance at Eden are set in the same world as the Night's Dawn trilogy (Reality Dysfunction, Neutronium Alchemist, Naked God), across a wide swathe of the future timeline. The title novella is actually my favorite of the collection, though I don't know if I would've felt the same way if I hadn't read the rest of the series. While it is a perfect introduction to the affinity technology that's central to the Night's Dawn trilogy, I'm not sure I would have been so engrossed immediately in the plot if I hadn't already been interested in Edenism. A couple of the stories - "Sonnie's Edge" and "The Lives and Loves..." - were actively disappointing, not to mention dripping with (different kinds of) sexism. "Deathday" is a really effective horror story about revenge and isolation, but it's also a really interesting SF story about how genuinely other alien life would be. "Candy Buds" is a standout, whether you're familiar with Night's Dawn or not, and the central concept is so damn cool I can barely stand it. "Escape Route" is a solid, engaging action story, even if the final twist is a little deus ex machina and a little ridiculous, and "New Days Old Times" is an engaging slice-of-life story about a normal woman on a normal colony planet, separate from all the macro-political shenanigans going on elsewhere in the collection. I have my issues with Hamilton's "ethnic-streaming" colony concept, but at least with this story he makes a reasonable argument for why it would've been a popular strategy. I just have trouble believing that anti-Semitism and other forms of racism will still be so prevalent in the year 2245 that the kind of harassment portrayed in "New Days..." would be possible.All that being said, if you read and enjoyed Night's Dawn, I would recommend A Second Chance... without reservation, as a gap-filler for the trilogy. If you haven't, I'd still recommend it, but with the annotations noted above.
—Lauren Donoho
Another amazing piece of Hamilton's infinite imagination. Or better said 7 amazing pieces - 3 of them are directly related to the Night's Dawn series (through events or characters), the others are just set in the same universe.Candy Buds was the seed from which emerged Night's Dawn, as Hamilton tells: "During the early nineties I wrote several short stories centered around the affinity technology. They didn’t belong to any particular hard and fast version of future history, I was just interested in the potential of the idea. Then along came David Garnett, who had just bought “Candy Buds” for his New Worlds anthology, and said: You should turn this into a novel. Impossible, I told him. That was back in the days of my foolish youth, before I learned the hard way that the editor is always right. He convinced me to go away and think about it. “Night’s Dawn” was the result. OK, so I didn’t get the last laugh, but at least I managed to frighten him with the size of volume one, The Reality Dysfunction, all 374,000 words of it."A must for fans.
—Claudia
