The Confederation Handbook - Peter F Hamilton

Peter Hamilton's name and work comes up fairly frequently in SF circles, as someone who writes epic space opera. I'll spare the reader my opinion of what I think of his supernatural horror cross-over in Nights Dawn, and proceed with this intriguing companion volume to that trilogy.

The Confederation Handbook is the book to get if you are interested in Hamilton's universe and don't want to plough through hundreds of pages of rambling subplots, irrelevant characters, and gratuitous sex scenes, to say nothing of hordes of undead. The book describes Hamilton's universe in 2611, just prior to the events described in RD. What you have is the basics of his worldbuilding here, details of the two clades (Edenists and Adamists) and their tech and what not, the xenocs (aliens), and various solar systems (really good stuff that!), and other assorted stuff. Nothing transhuman, the tech is basically late information / early interplanetary age vintage, apart from the FTL and Zero Tau sillytech (which Hamilton doesn't explain)

e.g. we read the energy patterning cells and FTL jumps take much less energy than is needed for standard in-system manoeuvering (delta-V) (p.56, under "fusion drive"). Calling them wormholes doesn't mean a thing, if they are wormholes they need as much energy as it needs to hold open a bit of space-time long enough for a ship to pass through the event horizon - a lot! (if exotic matter, consider how much is needed, this would have to be created then dissolved, if not, how do you keep the wormhole mouth open for the several seconds or microseconds needed to fly through it)

The cultures are just as bad - the Adamists remind me of ludds, the sort of people who cant cope even in the early information age. The Edenists at least are better, there is something plausible about them and their culture, that the Adamists lack. Other clades like the Cosmiks are fun; I was sorry there was so little written on them, they seem neat, and very much the sort one would expect to find around the low tech fringes of the Orion's Arm Universe. The Mercs are another favourite, it is worth reading The Reality Dysfunction just for the description of the mercs alone!

Those gripes about the sillytech aside, this is a very good, very enjoyable book, easy to read and full of lots of great ideas. Hamilton has a real talent for worldbuilding, especially when describing the details of the solar systems, which remind me a lot of Anders Sandberg's BIGV in their comprehensiveness (and also seem to be at a similar tech and cultural level - late information / early interplanetary age)

For fans of Hamilton's Night's Dawn Trilogy, the back of the book includes a short description of each of the main characters, and a list of others who appear in the books

Thankfully, there is not a single mention of the Possessed; which means this book stays nicely in the realms of proper SF

Definitely a lot of stimulating material here for anyone who likes worldbuilding.

Link to Amazon Books page (customer reviews and book extracts)