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The Reality Dysfunction Part I: Emergence | 
 enlarge | Author: Peter F. Hamilton
Publisher: Aspect
Category: Book
List Price: $7.99
Buy Used: $0.01
You Save: $7.98 (100%)
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Rating:  215 reviews
Sales Rank: 114712
Media: Mass Market Paperback
Pages: 592
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 6.8 x 4.2 x 1
ISBN: 0446605158
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN: 9780446605151
ASIN: 0446605158
Publication Date: July 1, 1997
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Average used book, may have price sticker on front cover, shelfwear. BUY WITH CONFIDENCE: 100% Positive feedback. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed!!!!! Compare our prices and service to the competition!
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Amazon.com
This is space opera on an epic scale, with dozens of characters, hundreds of planets, universe-spanning plots, and settings that range from wooden huts and muddy villages to sentient starships and newborn suns. It's also the first part of a two-volume book that is itself the first book of a series. There's no question that there's a lot going on here (too much to even begin to detail the plot), but Hamilton handles it all with an ease reminiscent of E. E. "Doc" Smith. The best way to describe it: it's big, it's good, and luckily there's plenty more on the way.
Product Description
This is space opera on an epic scale, with dozens of characters, hundreds of planets, universe-spanning plots, and settings that range from wooden huts and muddy villages to sentient starships and newborn suns. It's also the first part of a two-volume book that is itself the first book of a series.There's no question that there's a lot going on here (too much to even begin to detail the plot), but Hamilton handles it all with an ease reminiscent of E. E. "Doc" Smith. The best way to describe it: it's big, it's good, and luckily there's plenty more on the way.
Download Description
Too big to fit in this space! In the far future, humanity has divided along a single major line. The Edenists are genetically engineered space-dwellers with telepathic affinity to their biotechnological homes and ships. Adamists are effectively the Luddites of the future, willing to pioneer new worlds much as their ancestors did hundreds of years previously. The two clash on a primitive world called Lalonde, involving a huge cast of characters including a beautiful teenage girl who has inherited a vast technological empire; a freebooting adventurer in search of alien treasure; a renegade Edenist criminal; an alien race which observes human behavior; an ineffectual priest shocked by the world he has come to settle . . . and many, many more.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 210 more reviews...
 A Big Disappontment June 14, 2008
A. J. Vivolo (Seattle, Wa)
No matter how I tried I could not get into this book. I got to page 198 then put it into the recycle bin.
The book goes on and on jumping from one character to another to another...more jumbled then anything. And all this introduction is incredibly boring since nothing exciting happens. Even the space battles are very drab.
The conversations between characters are very cheesey, and wore on me quite quickly. I felt as though I was reading a book for a young teen.
 If you have a Kindle... April 7, 2008
Kevin Dunn (Las Vegas)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Just FYI, if you have a Kindle and are interested in this book/series, there is a compilation of all 3 (or 6 depending on how you look at it) books listed as The Night's Dawn Trilogy available for download for a little under $8. That's obviously a fair amount cheaper than buying the books individually and you don't have to lug around 3000+ pages. I am enjoying this series immensely but am only about halfway through so will have to reserve my final judement. Oh and I just noticed the ability to insert a product link so here it is:
The Night's Dawn Trilogy
 Promising, but doesn't quite deliver March 14, 2008
Daniel Boren (Beaverton, OR United States)
I only read the first book in the series and I am not planning to read the rest. I was disappointed because it really had a lot going for it, but it kept getting derailed. It often seemed like it veered off from being a science fiction novel into being a horror novel and then off to being a bad romance novel. Also, it kept introducing new plot lines that seemed to always take off in some unrelated direction. They usually got tied back in, but it generally took awhile to get there and even when they got tied back they were still a sidetrack. The science fiction parts were promising with lots of very interesting ideas. With some editing, it could have been an excellent book.
The evil entity that shows up seemed more like something from a horror novel, it seemed to have all kinds of magic abilities. Some of its magical horror actions just didn't come across as very science fictiony.
Also, the book not only had too much sex, but too much ridiculous sex. At one point the main character is staying at an influential man's house as his guest and the main character is sleeping with both the man's wife and his daughter. This is in addition to many other encounters that took up way too many pages of the book. I'm not a prude, it just seemed rather unrealistic and took up a lot of space in the book. You can predict that sexual mores will be more relaxed in the future, but I just don't see people boffing at the drop of a hat.
Fascinating, Exciting, Absurd, and Frustrating February 17, 2008
Gregory Tetrault (Collierville, TN United States)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The Reality Dysfunction (parts 1 and 2) could be retitled "The Author's Dysfunction." The books start with some interesting sci-fi scenarios such as living and intelligent spaceships and habitats and human genetic modifications to achieve telepathy. There also are some interesting plots such as the Confederation's struggle to eliminate antimatter weapons and the investigation of an advanced alien society that committed mass suicide thousands of years past. These alone would have made a great, long novel, especially since Peter Hamilton writes well. Unfortunately, Mr. Hamilton could not leave well enough alone. He adds character after character (scores of them by the end of these two books), plot after subplot, location after location. Even more unfortunately, the overriding plot becomes a ghost story. The spirits of the vilest human dead, who have lived as miserable disembodied energy-beings for centuries, suddenly gain access to living persons whom they possess. The first thoughts of these vile re-embodied spirits are to help other vile spirits possess their own living hosts. (I found this unlikely, since the spirits hated each other in their afterlife existences.) But, the ghostly plot gets worse. The spirits, who instantly traveled hundreds of light-years (How did they get that ability?) to possess their human hosts, now have incredible super powers. They can screw-up all electronic devices, throw firebolts, instantly repair or reshape their bodies, work together to bring down buildings, and change planetary climate. And, in yet another subplot, one of the returned spirits is Al Capone, who will probably organize them like his old Chicago mob.
This ghost story now is absurd beyond any believing, because most science fiction does not include violations of the first law of thermodynamics (you cannot get energy from nothing) and of the second law of thermodynamics (high energy systems tend to fall apart unless more energy is added). Even fantasy books with magic usually require some source of magical power.
I should have read more critical reviews before buying (thankfully, in used paperback format) the entire six-book series. You should not read this series unless you can put your logic, reason, and science knowledge on hold.
Feels half finished February 15, 2008
R. A. McQuay (Garner, NC United States)
The hardest part of writing a story is ending it well. Hamilton avoids that pitfall by just not ending his stories. He writes a great intro and exciting action scene then just abandons the story to start a new one. My problems with it as of the first five chapters are...
1. The first four chapters are basically half finished short stories with little or no relation to one another. Each is a good start but ultimately unsatisfying alone.
2. There is a lot of fictional techno-babble. When I read a story I like to feel as if I could be part of that story. After four chapters I started to become acclimated but the constant barrage of unfamiliar language and culture keeps destroying the immersion factor.
One review mentioned realistic space combat. I'd like to know what universe they live in that ships can make 70G+ acceleration or 7G+ right angle turns with human crews, especially unsecured civilian passengers. Sure people are hurt but you can't call any of this realistic with a straight face.
The author is obviously talented and very creative but in his intense effort to prove himself is more or less alienating the reader and failing to create a coherent narrative. Hamilton would be far more enjoyable with a more disciplined and less epic storytelling approach.
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