Customer Reviews

Second Chance at Eden, A

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

After reading Hamilton's Night's Dawn Trilogy (The Reality Dysfunction, The Neutronium Alchemist and The Naked God) I found myself WANTING to learn more about the universe that he had so wonderfully created.

I found this little book full of short stories set in the same universe as that series and was totally impressed. There are hints to the stories in A 2nd Chance at Eden in The Naked God (When Calvert tells Ione that his dad had once traveled through time and she didn't believe him, for example.)

There is also a VERY valuable and fascinating story of Edenism which paints its esteemed leader in a much different light than most would think after reading the entire Night's Dawn series.

So, check it out, and enjoy!

Just what the Night's Dawn trilogy needed: A set of short stories in chronological order that lay out the future history of his universe up until Volume I begins. For those intending to read the Night's Dawn books, I would actually recommend reading this first, as it introduces each of the major technologies and political entities prevalent in the trilogy one by one, while at the same time exploring their darker side and giving you some historical insight for the events of the trilogy. And don't worry: the major thread of Night's Dawn is a completely new storyline so this volume will ruin nothing.

Hamilton is a brillant, versatile, sexy writer who knows how to control information and how to throw action and intrigue together in the right mixture.

You know, I'll leave the reviewing of the stories themselves contained in this book to others, but just want to add that in the ebook version the punctuation is awful. Seriously.

It seems as though the OCR software the publisher used to convert this book over to Kindle format didn't pick up very much punctuation. The number of periods missed in the first short story alone boggles the mind. It's depressing to see a publisher care so little about their customers (and their authors!) that they would foist something this horrible onto them. Soon though, publishers will join the buggy-whip manufacturers in the dead-pool of obsolete jobs and after attempting to read this book on the Kindle, that can't happen too soon.

Beware the ebook version! It will make you cringe.

I'm so pleased that I came across this book. Quite by accident, I've been introduced to Peter F. Hamilton's work, and if the rest of his material is this good, I guarantee I'll be reading it all. I disagree entirely with the reviewers who claim that a reader has to know Hamilton's six volume trilogy (!) Night's Dawn to get maximum pleasure out of the stories--in the foreward Hamilton says that some of these stories predate the concept of the trilogy, and one of them (Candy Buds) even gave rise to it. I certainly had no trouble knowing where I was, thanks to the time lines provided by Hamilton, and each of the stories seemed admirably self-contained in terms of the necessary plot points.

To the stories themselves--there's an excellent mix here, some mostly snapshots, others quite long and detailed. Some deal with an individual at a time of personal crisis (Deathday, which owes much to Ray Bradbury's Mars is Heaven), others concern paradigm shifts for the entire Human civilization (A Second Chance at Eden, a truly beautifully written and plotted story). Hamilton is at the gentler side of hard sci-fi. While his stories all contain technology far beyond our current grasp, there's no necessity for a Ph.D. to understand it. He's much less demanding than Greg Bear in his most substantial works. Indeed, the technology is mostly there for the context, and the stories are primarily about human motivations rather than fun sci-fi toys. For the most part this isn't escapest space opera at all, but a keen examination of man's condition. And like the best literature, it's so well written that the reader is mostly unaware that this is the case--the sole exception being New Days Old Times, which is a bit more obvious in its message. Nevertheless, I highly recommend this collection, and I look forward to the delivery of my copy of the first volume of Night's Dawn, which I ordered even before finishing this book!

I don't usually buy a collection of short stories. Many authors just have one really good story which sells a group of loss leaders. However, I was very much surprised at the uniform quality of all the stories in Hamilton's collection. I especially liked the "Lives and Loves of Tuala..." story whose conclusion's ethics we will probably have to deal with in our world as cloning becomes mainstream. On the basis of this one volume alone, the author shows himself to be a writer of first rank scifi. I have also read his Night's Dawn series and almost like this preamble to that series even better. A collection of jewels.

Having never read Peter Hamilton and being leery of picking up the first book of a long series that might disappoint I bought a "Second Chance at Eden". This is a magnificent collection. The first story starts the collection off with a bang with its clever surprise ending. The novella "A Second Chance at Eden" is worth the price of entry by itself. This fine gem is a rare science fiction mystery story that works. You'll not only be stunned by how the crime was done but also why. It is the best novella I have read in a while. The novella "Escape Route" is an engrossing action adventure that in any other story collection would be considered its high point. There is no weak story in this collection. On the strength of this collection I have bought all of Peter Hamilton's other books. I am looking forward to reading them. Do yourself a favor and buy "A Second Chance at Eden".

This collection, a mix of new and reprint stories, is set in his
"Night's Dawn" universe. The stories collectively form something
of a prequel to the Reality Dysfunction, and Hamilton presents a
detailed future-history timeline as interstitial material.

The core of the book is the previously-unpublished title novella, a
twisty murder-mystery/police-procedural set in the first Edenist
bitek habitat, a He(3)-mining outfit in orbit around Jupiter. The
protagonist, a tough, competent corporate cop with a shaky
marriage, is straight out of Greg Egan or Ed McBain. The setting is
nicely-extrapolated nearish-term hard-SF -- not a dead-demonic
possession in sight, thank heavens. I found it cleaner & more
plausible than his "Greg Mandel" sf-mysteries. Highly
recommended.

The other stories range from excellent (Tiarella Rosa, Escape Route)
down to a couple Hamilton might better have left in the trunk.
All feature his trademarks: a glossy, hi-tech future, larger-than-life
characters, lots of sex & violence. It's interesting to see Hamilton
working at shorter lengths, and US readers are unlikely to have
seen these stories before, except perhaps "Escape Route", reprinted
in the Dozois Year's Best for 1997

Happy reading!
Pete Tillman

First, the good part.

This is a great collection of stories, some ok, most good, and the novella of the same title as the collection (Second Chance at Eden) being a truly great story.

As you can read from other reviews, these stories are told in the same universe as the _Night's Dawn_ trilogy, but also serve as introduction of various concepts that will be introduced in _Night's Dawn_. So it's a great way to ease yourself info the series, or to try out Peter Hamilton's writing style and see if you like him before you plunge into the massive 6 book "trilogy." If you like this collection, you'll certainly like his later series. This is somewhat different from my reaction to reading Hamilton's _Mindstar_ stories where the writing was very different, with excruciating details of every incident, plodding story line and unlikeable characters. Unlike the _Mindstar_ writing, most of the stories move at a fast pace and great concepts are introduced and explored.

Second, the ok part.

There are some weaker stories in the bunch, like the _New Days Old Times_ which struck me as a social lecture on intolerance rather than being a good story, parts of _Candy Buds_ and _Deathday_ where there was way too much emphasis on getting to the point and exploration of a character that we don't like (sort of like _Mindstar_...), but these are more than made up for the gripping stories and mind-expanding ideas shown in _Sonnie's Edge_, _The Lives and Loves of Tiarella Rose_, _Escape Route_ and finally, clearly the best of the lot, _A Second Chance at Eden_. If anything, you should get the collection just to read that one story which takes up about half the book.

You have to judge Hamilton by the _Second Chance_ story. If you don't like that, you probably won't like the rest of the Hamilton corpus. If you love it, then it's a good sign that you should try out Hamilton's other writings.

Lastly, the not-so-good part (and thus the 4 stars).

One bizarre thing I have noticed with some of his short stories and his novels is that he has a recurring pattern of portraying an oldish man who is tired, world-weary, somewhat cynical, sometimes sarcastic (imagine Humphrey Bogart), meeting a young (sometimes very young) extraordinarily (as Hamilton tells it) beautiful woman who is immediately and inexplicably drawn to him, often leading to instant sex (like in five minutes of meeting him). Sure, this may happen, but it happens consistently, often, and with the same type of characters over and over again. For example, the Greg Mandel character in _Mindstar Rising_ novel, Chief Parfitt and Hoi Yin (Wing-Tsit Chong's assistant) in _A Second Chance at Eden_, Laurus (the main villain) who has a penchant for young women in _Candy Buds_, Eason who uses the interesting plot development to woo the young woman in _The Lives and Loves of Tiarella Rosa_ since her mother is "too old".

What is up with that?

One or two times is ok, or if they're different each time that's ok too. But no, it's the same type of characters, same situation over and over and over again, ad nauseum. It's distracting and verges on disturbing. Even though these aren't major parts of the story or the plot in most cases, and it's more than made up for the rest of the great story line, I still wish I didn't have to get distracted in the middle of the story and think, "huh, this is weird - that's the 100th time that Hamilton is writing about the old, cynical, world-weary character (or the author himself) having an interest in younger women and the younger woman just inexplicably having sex with him instantly upon meeting him, without having any explanation, motivation or attraction."

I wouldn't mind if the relationships were realistic, but they're not, and just bizarre or cardboard at best. Maybe the author needs to grow up or something.

I read "The Reality Dysfunction" and "The Neutronium Alchemist" last year. "The Naked God" is on my shelf but I wanted something lighter before I jumped into the 1000-page "Naked God." "A Second Chance at Eden" was a great way to refresh myself about key cultural and technological backgrounds of Hamilton's future-history.

All seven stories in this collection have intriguing premises and the timeline Hamilton provides gives you a great sense of continuity of societal development.

"Sonnie's Edge" has a slick, near-future, cyber-punk mentality and outlines the very beginnings of the "affinity bond" that plays such an important role in the Night's Dawn novels.

"Second Chance at Eden," by far the longest story in the book, describes life aboard the first Edenist habitat. The plot is a murder-mystery: how can there be an unsolved murder inside a conscious asteroid that sees all? Enough twists and turns to keep you guessing until the end.

"New Days Old Times" is centers on the political struggles that emerge when Govcentral tries to force colonists from different ethnic backgrounds to live together.

"Candy Buds" was probably my favorite story in the book. The mafia boss of the planet Tropicana takes in a young girl whose blind brother has the ability to create beautiful fantasies ingestible through edible neuronic symbionts. Despite his intentions, the relationship between the old man and the girl is quite touching, but there's always the undercurrent that not all is as it seems.

"Deathday" is a haunting tale set on a desolate planet where a forlorn widower hunts the chameleon-like xenoc beast that desecrated his wife's grave. The most depressing story in the book, but also very powerful.

"The Lives and Loves of Tiarella Rosa" recounts the tale of a fugitive terrorist who hides from the authorities when he is taken in by a family on an oceanic world. But who is taking advantage of whom?

"Escape Route" features Marcus Calvert, father of our hero Joshua from the Night's Dawn trilogy, as he discovers a derelict xenoc starship while looking for precious metals in an asteroid field. But he's not the only one after riches, as Marcus and his crew struggle against mercenaries with hidden agendas.

This collection is more than a supplement to Hamilton's saga. It's a wonderful way to flesh-out the universe of the Night's Dawn and to gain a deeper appreciation of Peter F. Hamilton's impressive imagination.

I first read Hamilton's epic series and mostly continued reading them because the future he envisioned I found fascinating. The story was somewhat predictable. I picked up this book thinking I'd get more of the same. You do get more of Hamilton's interesting world, especially a history of how the social groups and technology he describes in his epic series come about. However, the stories are anything but predictable. Every single story, I thought I had figured out and there would be no more surprises, turned out to have a twist at the end that completely astonished me. It was great being fooled each time. I highly recommend this one to everyone even readers that didn't like his epic series. I think tech and story fans alike will enjoy this one.