I'm
now 2 out of 3 books through Peter F Hamilton's SF Void trilogy. The
Temporal Void was a lot of hard work.
The
Void is an artificial universe created by aliens, into which humans
have ventured to live the sweet life. Unfortunately when they get
there, there's no technology and they live their lives like 18th
century nomads. Not only that, they speak like them as well.
Contradicting that, though, is the occasional introduction of
futuristic tech that throws everything out of kilter. Why would this
EVER happen in the 36th century? WHY? If you had the
technology to travel from Earth into the Void to live in one of the
planets inside it, why would you lose all that tech once you lived
there?
The
book's inclusion of magic added to the issue that this failed to fall
in line with the SCIENCE FICTION genre it purports to fall under. It
felt much more like a fantasy novel than its predecessor The Dreaming
Void, with so much emphasis being placed on religion (the society
depicted worship Ozzie, some kind of creator who allegedly actually
existed in the backstory; the Skylord is an actual character that
talks to people and advises them like an omnipotent being; they
worship another Jesus-like absent character called The Lady, they
fear Honious (hell); they use contemporary northern-English dialect
like 'aught' (pronounced 'out') in the same paragraph as sentences
with the verb shoved dramatically to the end (“Only in a nation
where equality reins can this happen.”)
I've
read a few SF novels in my time and a lot of them do feature ye-olde
dialogue that should belong in the 18th century. Why? Even
if you take away tech, would language also regress? Would behaviour?
Christ, marriage as an institution is in decline right now in 2016.
Do you really thing people are still going to get married 1500 years
into the future? And even if you did, would you really need
permission from the woman's father?
Another
example of behaviour regressing- expelling bandits from a town rather
than jailing or rehabilitating them, leaving them “out there” to
attack anyone unlucky enough to be traveling between towns.
One
minute the characters have ge-eagles- cyborg animals bred with linkup
tech so that people can see through the eyes of these birds as they
soar over the town- the next they're admitting they don't know what
exists beyond the lands they currently occupy. If they have NO access
to tech, how have they got these ge-eagles? Oh, and why are so many
buildings made of wood? Do they have NO records of The Great Fire of
London? And who the FUCK has a big brass pocket watch in the 35th
century? ARRGH!
I've
made so many notes about the lack of tech, but a lot of what annoys
me is how society has gone backwards, not just science. Would you
still have independent bakeries, or would you actually have the means
to make bread in your own home? Or have one local shop that sells
everything, like a Coop?
Characters
have long, fancy names like Kristabel, which other characters refer
to in full. You never hear her called Kris, or Edeard being called
Ed. Not believable.
The
bast parts of the novel for me were the parts away from the void- the
sections featuring Paula Myo the investigator and Trobulum the
physicist, and also a character called Mr Bovey, described as a
'multiple'- someone with one personality shared between numerous
bodies. I loved the bionics- improvements to the human body to make
people physically stronger and more athletic- and the memory cells,
meaning that people could be “re-lifed” if they died with the cell
intact. THAT is science fiction. Way too much of the novel was spent
away from this, explaining very little of how the void's expansion
affects the societies that live in nearby threatened worlds.
A
slog to get through, and not what Science Fiction should be. Not a
patch on The Dreaming Void. Next up, The Evolutionary Void, the final
third in the trilogy. (My copy is signed by the author. Details
here.)
