"TL,DR. There are very few SF stories that justify more than 120,000 words."- Jo Walton's blog on Hugo Nominees: 1998Jo Walton is the best sf books reviewer extant (IMO), as an author she is no slouch either. Unfortunately for her The Reality Dysfunction is the exception that proves the rule, this is one of the "very few SF stories" that she is talking about. Certainly a book this magnitude, clocking on at over 1,200 pages, is dissuasive for many people. If you are interested in reading this book but feel intimidated by the high page count I suggest you treat this one volume book as you would an entire trilogy. Read one third, go read another book, come back read the second third, go read yet another book etc. Don't worry that there are two more gargantuan volumes in the Night Dawn Trilogy, you may not even want to read them! Sandwiching shorter books between long ones work wonders for me. Of course nowadays long novels are in vogue, especially for fantasy novels, clearly books this size is exactly what a lot of readers want.The Reality Dysfunction is Peter F. Hamilton's breakout book, it established him as the leading exponent of huge sprawling epic space operas. Still, I have to admire the author's gumption in writing a novel of such an uncompromising length, which is certainly not the norm for science fiction. He clearly did not do it for the money, he could have written shorter faster paced books and they probably wold have been easier to get published. He has this huge story to tell and he wants to tell and he will tell it in as many pages as necessary. The success of this book and the series as a whole totally vindicated him. His shorter books are far less popular than his whale size space operas.The Night Dawn Trilogy is essentially about humanity's fight for survival against invaders from another dimension. The twist is that the invaders are not aliens. To say any more would be venturing into spoiler territory, though if you have read other reviews you probably know what I'm being coy about already. Actually before I read this book somebody told me it is about space zombies, I thought may be it would be something like Dawn of The Dead in space which sounded like a hoot to me though I was surprised such a story could span three elephantine books. Any way, it is not about zombies, there are no zombies in The Reality Dysfunction (I can't speak for subsequent volumes at this point but I doubt the zoms will show up), but I now understand the oversimplification.As he is working on such a huge canvas Hamilton takes time to setup his pieces, worldbuilding, characters developing (so damn many of them), and meticulous plotting. For the first 300 or so pages I had no idea where the story is going, or who the main protagonists or antagonists are. The book is not hard to follow though, Hamilton has a clear clean prose style, not much in the way of lyricism but the more prosaic style is more practical for this kind of epic space opera I think. There are already so many worlds, species, people and cultures to introduce without further befuddling the readers with a poetic narrative. The author saves his inventiveness for his creations, living organic spaceships, cities, houses, all kinds of weird gadgets, and more alien and strange creatures than you can shake a stick at. This book is also, to some extent, a sci-fi/horror mash up, there are scenes of supernatural horror that I did not expect to find in a space opera. A lesser author would probably make the whole thing ridiculous but Hamilton is no ordinary author and he made it work. This book is also, to some extent, a sci-fi/horror mash up, there are scenes of supernatural horror that I did not expect to find in a space opera. A lesser author would probably make the whole thing ridiculous but Hamilton is no ordinary author and he made it work.As mentioned earlier there is a huge cast of characters and sometime it is hard to remember who is who, but he does return to a few main characters more than others. Many of the characters tend to be archetypes, the evil charismatic genius sociopath, the rebellious teenager straight off a daytime soap who gets more than she bargained for, the bad boy turned good etc. Characterization is not one of the strengths of this book, though the characters are not so flat as to leave you with no one to root for or want dead. There are also a lot of sex scenes in this book which I don't find particularly sexy or relevant to the story, certainly this is not a book to read to your children.The book is longer than it needs to be, but not by too much; cutting down on the unnecessary sex scenes would probably shear off a centimetre or so from the book's thickness. But Hamilton makes it all worthwhile by the explosive end of this first volume where a small group of characters win a minor victory for humanity. The war itself has just begun of course.If you have never read Peter F. Hamilton before I would recommend reading Pandora's Star first. This is the start of an entirely different series which he wrote some years later than this book, it is better written, more refined, and the characters are better developed. Still, if you insist on The Reality Dysfunction as your first Hamilton I doubt you will regret the decision. I am certainly going to read the next obese volume The Neutronium Alchemist. Damn you Mr. Hamilton, you are practically monopolizing my reading time!__________________________________________Update December 2013: Just read The Neutronium Alchemist (my review) it is a substantial improvement on The Reality Dysfunction. I particularly enjoy the chapters from the possessed people’s point of view.
It took a hell of a long time, but I've made it through The Reality Dysfunction, the first volume in a trilogy recommended to me by Ennis. It's a "space opera" about a futuristic society plagued by an evil force that "sequestrates," or maybe just possesses, people.The story takes place in the Confederation in the 2600s. The set-up is quite detailed and interesting. One group, the Adamists, lives on a failing planet Earth and various other planets. The Adamists are mostly like the people of today, but with neural implants that allow them to "datavise" or communicate directly with computers. They have starships and nuclear weapons and whatnot. Another group, the Edenists, has a different kind of technology that is organic. Edenists have genetic changes that allow them to have an affinity bond with each other and with their habitats, which are miniplanets made entirely of organic matter. This bond allows them to share thoughts and feelings inside their own heads, without speaking, and to see through other people's eyes. They also have spaceships that are organic and have personalities and memories. When Edenists die, the intangible part of them is absorbed into the habitat. The distinction between the two groups is essentially religious; they trade and coexist more or less peacefully.The plot of the book revolves around a new planet, Lalonde, which is being settled under a Dutch East India Company-esque scheme. Colonists have bought in, and come from Earth or other failing urban planets to farm. We see a group of the colonists struggling to get their village, Aberdale, up and running. This is fresh stuff--after all, in sci-fi like Star Wars and Firefly, the farmers are just there as redshirts or comic relief. However, an evil force appears on the planet and begins to take over villages and people in a mysterious way. The book has a huge number of characters, including Joshua "Self-Insert" Calvert, a strapping starship captain with remarkable sexual and technical skills, and many female figures that are almost characterized well enough for you to be able to tell them apart. There is a planet with a culture nostalgic for 19th century England and a bunch of marines who have huge machine guns welded to their forearms. So while Lalonde turns out to be central to the plot, it doesn't dominate in terms of number of pages. There is a lot going on here, and some if it must pertain to the later volumes of the trilogy, since it doesn't pan out in this one.This book is either rather good or completely terrible. The author is certainly inventive, but I often had occasion to wish that he'd handed over his ideas to someone else to write. The pacing here is frustrating. At times, he is so enamored of discussing planetary trajectories and technology that you wonder if you will ever see a sentient being again. There seems to be little structure governing the arrangement of scenes. There are problems with the POV. You'll be reading about Person A doing something from the point of view of Person B, watching them from 20 yards away. Then all of a sudden you're in Person A's head. Or, scenes of a space battle cut back and forth between the POVs of people in different, even opposing spaceships, with no notice. This problem is so basic to telling a story that I'd expect even a novice to avoid it instinctually.The novel is quite long and there are two volumes left. In the end, I feel about it the way I did about A Game of Thrones. It has its good and bad points, and I thought I was intrigued enough by the plot to read the sequels, but I never did. We'll see about this one.
What do You think about The Reality Dysfunction (1997)?
Thanks to Graham loaning me a copy, I learned that many of the books I had previously enjoyed, we actually quite weak and 2 dimensional by comparison.A much longer book than I would normally read (especially considering the whole trilogy is around 4500 pages) but I would would been happy if it had continued to be twice the length.Character development is great, and a good background is even given to people whose play only a small role in the plot. The technology is interesting and creative, but almost always serves to fuel the plot rather than to show off the authors imagination.Following this book I have continued to read just about every other book Hamilton has written, and loved them all.... he is one of the few authors I pre-order from Amazon.
—Ben Seymour
Awesome. When I went through law school and then bar school I was forced to eject many vital tidbits of information that were taking up valuable space in my brain: my address, my year of birth, etc. I have no idea how Peter F. Hamilton holds all of this massive universe, its technology and characters in one noggin. He clearly does not remember his wife's birthday or his underwear size. We all have to make sacrifices.The Reality Dysfunction is fun. Lots of fun. I flew through this book and forgave its flaws (there are some useless digressions but heck, I even enjoyed those). The action is incredible, the ideas are grand and the universe is relatively plausible. Hamilton's prose is not necessarily eloquent and sharp, but it is good. The story just powers through that.I'll address most people's two biggest critiques of Reality Dysfunction. First, yes it's long. The edition sold in Canada is over 1200 pages. Second, some people are disappointed with what the spooky threat ends up being (hereinafter: the "Spolier Bit"). With respect to the length, I'm no editor, but I'm sure this could have been clipped a bit with only a positive result. However, a good story is a good story. I'm over that. With respect to the Spoiler Bit, it's a matter of personal choice. Some like it, some don’t. I know those two comments are not entirely helpful, but my point is that they should not detract from what is a kickass book.In a nutshell, this is the first book in a huge space opera trilogy. It qualifies as "New Space Opera" with all the verisimilitude in the science that goes along with that relatively new term. The novel is set in the 26th and 27th centuries with much of the story happening in 2610 and 2611 within a group named the Confederation. A handy timeline at the start of the book is not only useful to following during your reading but gives you some background when you start. Humans have split into two groups: Edenists embrace the introduction of biotechnology into the human genome and all the wacky consequences and Adamists stick to mechanical and cybernetic technology. Adamists are less well off to Edenists, a group with is comparable to Iain M. Banks' Culture on some levels. There is a whole chunk of religious, political and technological interest in the book, but the real story comes in the form of an unknown invader that is threatening first a planet in the Confederation and then perhaps even beyond.I'm very excited to continue onto the next volume, The Neutronium Alchemist.
—Kane
Megan wrote: "I think you are right, unfortunately. But I'm not totally comfortable leaving my reviews here in full with that kind of policy, hence the blog. :)"Well I can't blame you
—Megan Baxter
