Most contemporary SF adventures read like fantasy novels, only with the swords and magic replaced with ray guns and psychic powers. Few authors seem to be able to break free from this formula, but Peter F. Hamilton managed to do so with his epic "Nights Dawn" series.
As the third and final volume, The Naked God, opens, things are looking bad for the living as the spirits of the dead continue to escape the Great Beyond. Al Capone and the Organization continue to vex the Confederation Navy as the reality dysfunction spreads to more and more worlds. Not only is the Confederation itself on the verge of collapse, but the satanic Quinn Dexter is on Earth!
The only hope for humanity is a last-ditch effort from two ships, the finest that the nanotechnologically advanced Adamists and the genetic masters of the Edenists have to offer. But what can two ships do against a problem that, like the dysfunction, seems to originate beyond the universe itself?
Throughout this series -- which also includes The Reality Dysfunction and The Neutronium Alchemist -- Hamilton combines good science fiction principles with a thoroughly entertaining story.
They see the universe
The plot is vast and complex, and Hamilton provides the reader with a suitably omniscient viewpoint by narrating events through ultra-powerful but passive alien guardians, giving us an almost literally god's-eye view of the situation as it unfolds.
Unfortunately, he sometimes gives in to the temptation to use the aliens as a device for unnecessary exposition. In a series this complex, the reader simply must be familiar with earlier books in the series, in which case this background material is redundant, or else later books will be impenetrable no matter how many explanations Hamilton hands out.
At least for U.S. readers (who won't even get to see Naked God until January), there's another "alien" perspective in Hamilton's work: the British point of view.
Hamilton is unabashedly English, and the Nights Dawn books draw heavily on colonial schoolboy novels. Protagonist Joshua Calvert, in particular, brings civilization to the great unwashed using nothing but pluck, good genes, and the coolest starship in human space.
Throughout the series, blood will tell, those who rule best are born to the post, the measure of a noble is his ability to sacrifice, and we are all better off if someone is watching over us. The final resolution of The Naked God seems to overturn some of those ideas, but the way Hamilton frames the issues underscores the British flavor of his subject matter.
Significantly, there are two major political powers in the Nights Dawn series -- a constitutional monarchy and a democratic communal anarchy -- and it's fairly clear who Hamilton sympathizes with.
Apocalypse now
As the end of a sprawling epic, The Naked God itself is satisfying, although a bit abrupt. Everything is tied up neatly, and the setting is fundamentally altered by what has happened.
Admittedly, the resolution to the dysfunction itself is a bit anticlimactic, but it fits well with the tone of the overall ending. Some of my discomfort probably comes from Hamilton's final mix of science and metaphysics that fits the rest of the story, but may not be for all tastes.
William Gibson once said, "The best science fiction is not about the future, it's about today," and the Nights Dawn series seems quintessentially '90s to me.
One of the major characteristics of this decade has been fear. This has been a decade of "don'ts." Sex will kill you, so don't do it. Speech will corrupt you, so don't listen. Trust no one. Under all its space-opera trimmings, the Nights Dawn series responds to that fear, asking the question, "How do we cope when the ultimate question is answered, and that answer really sucks?"
You may or may not like the answer to that question that Hamilton comes up with, but The Naked God is a solid finish to a great series. Don't leave the millennium without it!
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