"When will you read a real book about real people, instead of all this escapism?" was the exasperated maternal remark when I made my last trip cross-Channel and stocked up not only on the tech tomes I rarely see through cover to cover, but a fresh pile of science fiction. Culture costs less off English shelves. So this year's decision to read nothing but sci-fi could be taken as a latest act of eternally adolescent rebellion.
My definition of good science fiction includes real people. Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke never did much for me ("2001" apart). It's not any lack of ideas, but too many cardboard characters. Ursula K. Le Guin has long been my humanitarian heroine. I've just devoured my first space opera, the "Night's Dawn Trilogy" by Peter F. Hamilton. One reviewer called him the "Wagner of the genre." I don't know about that, but he writes exceedingly well and suspends disbelief - particularly on the plot theme at the very heart of the matter - with a thunderously good yarn.
One night, I had real trouble dozing off, unsure as to where I was after Hamilton had left me among three parallel universes. Or was it still just two? Or manifold aspects of just the one? As I cast my mind back to where the first volume started, the sheer scope and scale of places visited since sank in.
"In hindsight it wasn't a good idea to write it at all," Hamilton commented once it was done. Tongue firmly in cheek, that's for sure.
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