A Second Chance at Eden
Peter F. Hamilton proves he has an affinity for the future
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A Second Chance at Eden
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By Peter F. Hamilton
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Warner Aspect
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$6.50/$8.50 Canada
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Paperback, Jan. 1999
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ISBN 0-446-60671-5
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Review by Curt Wohleber
 hile the third part of Peter F. Hamilton's massive and wildly popular Night's Dawn trilogy isn't due out for another year, this collection of stories should tide readers over until The Naked Gold hits store shelves. All of these tales are set in the same future history as Night's Dawn, assembled in chronological order from the year 2050 to the 26th century. The stories include a cyberpunkish tale of 21st-century blood sports, a chilling story of extraterrestrial horror, and a rollicking space opera featuring Captain Marcus Calvert and the cash-strapped crew of the tramp freighter Lady Macbeth.
The title story, "A Second Chance at Eden," is a locked-room murder mystery in which the "room" is an eight-kilometer-long space station called Eden that is under complete computer surveillance. The story also deals with the "affinity" technology, which figures prominently in the Night's Dawn series. "Affinity" permits the telepathic control of genetically engineered creatures and biotechnological devices. On the Eden, affinity-links to the station's governing artificial intelligence create a sort of neural Internet, a collective consciousness that may be the next step in human evolution.
Other stories portray life on the rough-and-tumble galactic frontier, where the biggest threat is still human nature. And in "Deathday," a grief-stricken widower learns the law of the jungle works just a bit differently on the planet Jubarra.
Wild times on the galactic frontier
It's not clear in what order Hamilton wrote these tales--a few have been revised to fit into his detailed future timeline--but some of the stories seem to show readers a gifted journeyman writer still learning his craft. Hamilton has a fondness for Wild West, frontier motifs, and his portrayals of low-tech, subsistence agriculture are hard to reconcile with interstellar travel and biotechnology, and puzzling when Hamilton elsewhere treats economics with a sophistication rare in science fiction. More troubling is the recurrent theme of the sexual exploitation of women, including very young women. Though Hamilton evidently disapproves, he doth protest a bit too much.
The only real clunker here, however, is "New Days Old Times," a hand-wringing who's-going-to-bring-in-the-harvest-now melodrama that takes a bleak view of the human condition without telling readers anything new. "Escape Route," by contrast, is a brash, self-assured story of the crew of the Lady Macbeth on a dubious prospecting mission. Where other stories tend toward a uniformly grim and gruesome tone (one bad fellow is literally digested to death), "Escape Route" unveils Hamilton's knack for well-modulated suspense as Calvert and company explore an alien starship and learn that it's not gold in them thar asteroids their employers are looking for.
It's clear that Hamilton has crafted his future history with great care, allowing his stories to unfold against a rich backdrop of rival political factions, mysterious alien races and intriguing technologies. A Second Chance at Eden showcases both the emergence of a strong new writer and the evolution of a soon-to-be classic science fiction milieu.
It's good to know that Hamilton is equally deft with short works and novels. I hope he writes more.
-- Curt
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Deep Time: How Humanity Communicates Across Millennia
Pushing our bytes into the future
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Deep Time
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By Gregory Benford
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Bard/Avon Books
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$20.00/$26.00 Canada
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Hardcover, Feb. 1999
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ISBN 0-380-97537-8
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Review by D. Douglas Fratz
 n his non-fiction book Deep Time, SF author Gregory Benford addresses a topic rarely considered outside the science fiction community: how can humanity communicate information to other intelligent beings thousands of years in the future? The resulting treatise ranges from examining the efforts of ancient cultures to today's often fumbling attempts to communicate to posterity. It ends with consideration of what human society is inadvertently conveying with its stewardship (or lack thereof) of Earth.
Benford begins with a brief review of the wonders of the ancient world, only a few of which (such as the Sphinx) survive today, as well as more recent (and often ludicrously mismanaged) attempts to create "time capsules" to be opened by future generations. Most of the book, however, chronicles three major projects--in which Benford has been involved--seeking to communicate across millennia.
The first was a project to store nuclear waste in the New Mexico desert for 10,000 years. What sort of markers could communicate the danger to a future humanity who may well be re-emerging to technology after a collapse, and will be unlikely to be able to decipher any current language? The second project was a failed attempt to place an engraved diamond disk aboard the Cassini spacecraft, which was launched to explore Saturn and Titan. What information could be conveyed about 20th-century humanity to far-future space travelers, who may not be human?
The final project was one advocated by Benford a decade ago, the Library of Life. He proposes that intact samples of flora, fauna and ecosystems be collected, deep-frozen, and stored for future scientists before the species and ecosystems are inevitably destroyed by burgeoning humanity. He makes a lengthy case for humankind's responsibility to document the incredible diversity and complexity of current ecosystems.
Let's hope someone is listening
The first two projects Benford chronicles are interesting government-sponsored affairs, although the depth of detail he goes into is occasionally tedious. The nuclear waste plan was reasonably successful, although readers can certainly question (as Benford himself does) the utility of the basic concept. It is interesting primarily in demonstrating the thought processes that are in many ways unique to the science fiction field. The project to develop the Cassini probe diamond disk was also reasonably successful in the conceptual sense (the disk was well thought out), but an utter disaster in the final analysis. It never flew to Saturn due to a combination of scientific selfishness and bureaucratic cowardice.
The most interesting section of the book deals with the Library of Life proposal. Benford uses the project as a springboard to discuss the often overlooked but well-documented fact that humanity has been wreaking massive and irreversible changes on natural ecosystems for thousands of years, long before the advent of industrial technologies. He makes a profound and convincing argument that humankind must begin to use technology to do what short-sighted political forces appear incapable of doing: become effective stewards of the planet through bold new ways of thinking. It's easy to argue at length about the details. For instance, Benford makes the common mistake of considering the long-chain-carbon molecules in petroleum an irreplaceable resource, when in actuality even today many long-chain organics are synthesized or derived botanically. But his overall thesis here is sound: humanity must seek to use its technology to actively manage the Earth.
It is this message that makes Benford's book an important one for thoughtful science fiction readers, and anyone else willing to seriously consider humanity's long-term future on the planet Earth...and beyond.
One can only hope that some of the key scientists and policy makers outside the SF field will read Benford's book.
-- Doug
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