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{{work}}
'''''The
The story is set in the 27th century, after humanity has developed faster-than-light travel through the use of artificial wormholes. Human society has been divided into two cultures that are more or less at peace with each other: Adamists, who are your typical space-going humans separated and diversified by living on a variety of worlds with different governments, economies and ecosystems, and the Edenists, who have genetically modified themselves to allow universal telepathy between each other, and their biotechnological (or ''bitek'') constructs. Both are loosely bound in [[The Federation|The Confederation]], which also includes two species of sentient aliens (or ''xenocs'').
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Some friction exists between Adamists and Edenists, because Edenism's universal use of the "affinity gene" has led them to cheat death (sort of) by storing their memories and personalities indefinitely in bitek space habitats, and they are socialists who breed synthetic lifeforms instead of building machines. These practices were condemned by the unified Pope and other religious leaders long ago. In addition, due to the versatility of bitek, Edenists maintain a near-complete monopoly on Helium-3, the fusion fuel used everywhere in human space. Adamists, on the other hand, are far closer to the typical human civilization of space opera, making use of mild genetic engineering to cure diseases and relying on nanotechnology implants to link themselves to their technology and each other. Many conversations in the book take place using this form of technological telepathy ("datavising") or the Edenists' form of actual telepathy.
The dense and multi-threaded plot follows too many characters to note here, but runs the gamut from simple, pre-industrial settlers to the obligatory starship captains, through onto kings of interstellar empires and even the sentient bitek minds of orbital habitats. The story concerns humanity's trials and tribulations when... get this: ''the souls of the dead'' begin forcefully possessing the bodies of the living. The premise, while fantastic, is actually treated as a natural (albeit poorly understood) phenomenon, and oddly does not shift this series' place on [[Mohs Scale of Sci Fi Hardness]]. As for the novels' SF hardness, space is treated like space while retaining some elements of [[Space Is an Ocean]] (like navies and pirates and so forth), and most futuristic technologies are described in believable detail.
This series is so long and far-reaching that it can't help but run flush up against a million and one SF tropes, in most cases smashing through them, or on the other hand, playing them so straight (and ''cool'') that you'll wonder why they never worked as well before.
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{{franchisetropes}}
* [[Afterlife Antechamber]]: {{spoiler|The Naked God reveals that The Beyond is actually the "place" where souls go when they can't accept their death and desire to continue living as they did. The souls have the power to [[Reality Warper|turn wish into reality]], but since they are dead they can't interact with the universe, and are stuck in a sort of semi-perceptive limbo, along with uncountable others, and because they still crave the sensations of life, they can only leech on each other's memories for the faint traces of life they contain. The ''real'' afterlife is the [[wikipedia:Omega point|Omega Point]], the final end of the Universe where all souls go to merge with each other and create a new Universe, but going there can only happen if one accepts death and leaves their old existence behind. Everyone else is stuck in the Beyond, taking [[The Slow Path]] to the end of the Universe and [[And I Must Scream|shrieking in agony all the while]]}}.
* [[A God Am I]]: Quinn Dexter, [[With Great Power Comes Great Insanity|total]] [[Complete Monster|goddamn psychopath]]. Anette Ekelund also has a stab at it.
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** In the short story "Escape Route", the derelict alien ship that Marcus Calvert finds has artificial gravity, and someone remarks on how it would cause a technological revolution and make them filthy rich if they brought it back to Earth. {{spoiler|They are forced to blow it up, in the end}}.
* [[Automated Automobiles]]: Almost everyone uses them on the "civilized" planets. Described as "bullets on wheels" in regards to how fast they are.
* [[Ascend to
* {{spoiler|[[Body Surf]]}}: Edenists achieve "immortality" by downloading their minds into bitek habitats via affinity on death; they spend a few centuries as disembodied minds before gradually merging with the habitat personality. {{spoiler|The B7 people do a body-to-body version, incinerating the old body when they download to a new one}}. Or, at least, so they thought. {{spoiler|The Kiint reveal that a memory [[Your Princess Is in Another Castle|construct is]] [[Our Souls Are Different|different from a soul]], and so both all the Edenists that died and the B7 folks (in several versions) are actually busy [[Mind Rape|mind-raping]] each-other in the Beyond with everyone else}}.
* [[Bond Creatures]]: This is how bitek and Edenism started.
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* [[Brown Note]]: The {{spoiler|Anti-Memory device is basically a computer virus that deletes all memory.}} The "computer" here being ''the human brain''. {{spoiler|It is used as a soul-killer weapon against the possessed, killing both the possessing soul and the original host.}}
** Originally, the technology was used to imprint memories, knowledge and experience into people as a form of fast education, that eventually replaced schools and universities.
* [[Christianity Is Catholic]]: Eh, sorta, back in the 21st century Christianity formally unified, however most of the Church structure retained a very Catholic feel to it. By the 27th century a person who wished could easily say that Christianity is indeed Catholic in the dictionary sense of the word, Catholic does after all mean "universal".
* [[Cool Starship]] - The Lady [[Macbeth]], and the Oenone.
* [[Colony Drop]] - The series starts off with Dr. [[Chekhov's Gunman|Alkad Mzu's]] world, Garissa, being hit by planet cracking antimatter bombs deployed by the Omutan government.
** Also, Quinn Dexter does this on the human colony of Nyvan, as an "experiment" in preparation for doing the [[The End of the World
* [[Corrupt Corporate Executive]] {{spoiler|The rulers of Earth, the 'B7 Security council'}}
* [[Cosmic Horror Story]]: an interesting variation, but it has all the common elements.
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* [[Cyborg Helmsman]]: Captains and pilots have large amounts of neural implants for controlling the ship.
* [[Death From Above]]:
{{quote|
'''Soldier 2:''' Those aren't meteors... ''they're [[Colony Drop|fucking kinetic harpoons]]!'' }}
* [[Demonic Possession]] [[Recycled in Space|IN SPACE]]!: Except they're not demons, they're the souls of dead humans... which, you know, makes it [[Humans Are
* [[Depraved Bisexual]]: Quinn Dexter, and his Satanist cronies. Most Light Bringer adherents are like this, really.
* [[Deus Est Machina]] / [[Deus Ex Machina]]: {{spoiler|The Sleeping God}}
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* [[Doorstopper]] - About 3200 pages total, plus the 400 page "A Second Chance At Eden" short story collection.
* [[Eldritch Abomination]]- The {{spoiler|Orgathe are creatures of the Dark Continuum, a realm of near-absolute entropy, where every soul becomes a ghost and everything eventually falls into a central mass of ectoplasm called the Melange, unable to gather enough energy to break loose. The Orgathe can only break free for a short time by forming out of multiple souls; they wander the empty realm, devouring any soul and shred of heat they might encounter until eventually falling back into the Melange}}. And [[Dark Messiah|Dexter]] tried to bring them ''all'' to Earth.
* [[Energy Beings]]: The Ly-cilph start life as small fish-like beings on a moon orbiting a humongous gas giant. In three years' time they grow to adult form, a cross between a snail and a deep-sea anemone. They venture on to the ground, and eat the memory fruit left behind by the previous generation of Ly-ciplh; the nodes contain the memories of previous generations, elevating them to sentience. They spend the next 6 years learning and observing the world around them until the 9-year mark, when a periodic flux tube discharge from the gas giant dumps enough energy on the planet for them to [[Ascend to
** {{spoiler|Also, the "Tinkerbell species" encountered when the settlement on Ombey is taken to another dimension. They grew bored with the physical Universe and left it seeking something more exciting}}.
* [[Fantastic Religious Weirdness]]: Of all sorts, given the extreme religious diversity of the Confederation.
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** The ''actual'' [[First Contact]] was with the Kiint. A human exploratory vessel jumped into their {{spoiler|outpost}} star system and noticed the "Triad" of moons orbiting one of the planets in perfect symmetry and balance. It was obviously artificial, so they sent a greeting and offer of friendship to the surface. The answer came less than a minute later, in English: "YES!". Turns out that {{spoiler|a) that is not the Kiint home planet, but an outpost they had in our galaxy, b) the Triad was an "old experiment" (their home system has a large number of habitable planets all sharing the same orbit), and c) they've been watching humanity since around the first century AD through immortal [[Artificial Human]] agents}}.
* [[Fridge Brilliance]]: Michael Saldana secretly gave the Tranquility habitat the {{spoiler|ability to perform a ''huge'' wormhole jump in case of impending danger}}, fearing that whatever had destroyed the Laymil might return. Two hundred years later, guess ''[[Demonic Possession|who]]'' tried to blow up the place?
* [[Friend to All Living Things]] / [[Perfect Pacifist People]]: The Laymil had elevated themselves to a communal-society level that was universally benevolent and cherished every living thing. The notion of "weapons" didn't exist in their culture. {{spoiler|During their possession crisis, after their planet got stolen by insane returning Laymil, their space-habitat constellation committed ''simultaneous mass suicide'' rather than submit}}.
* [[Good People Have Good Sex]]: In [[Power Perversion Potential|Free fall cages]]. Bad people have devil worshipping rape-sex.
* [[Good Republic, Evil Empire]]: not as much as you'd expect. The Kulu Kingdom (actually a benign interstellar empire) is the second most powerful Adamist faction (after Earth) and behaves with [[Genre Savvy|remarkable competence]] in handling possession outbreaks on their planets. It {{spoiler|doesn't really help them; see the bit about a peninsula vanishing into another dimension}}.
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* [[Horde of Alien Locusts]] - The possessed.
* [[Humans Through Alien Eyes]]: The first time a child Kiint (a super-advanced caterpillar-like species) named Haile sees a human being, its/her thoughts are along the lines of:
{{quote|
"'''It communicates! Alive think'''" }}
** Also, the Kiint have [[Shapeshifting|polymorphic]] hands, that can take many shapes. When invited to shake hands with a human, she can't quite replicate the human hand, and asks said human to tell her how. She's mortified at the thought that human hands can't change shape.
** The {{spoiler|encounter with the Mosdva}} reverses the roles. Humans are much more advanced than they are, and one of them suffers a [[Bizarre Alien Biology|painful contraction of the marsupium]] when told that human ships can [[Faster-Than-Light Travel|jump]] [[Our Wormholes Are Different|instantaneously]] between star systems.
* [[Insufficiently Advanced Alien
** Also, the Jiciro and the {{spoiler|Mosdva}}.
** It is revealed by the {{spoiler|Mosdva that both them and the Tyrathca evolved on the same planet. The Mosdva used to be slaves of a previous warlike species that exterminated itself, and they had a way with machinery and technology, but were physically weak. The Tyrathca were strong herd animals that had only recently achieved sentience, and they enslaved the Mosdva themselves, forcing them to build the Arkships and leaving them to die on the planet when they were done. Bad move for the Tyrathca, because they couldn't repair their own vessels, and the Mosdva build [[Space Station|massive diskcities]] around their dying star and survived}}.
* [[Jerk
* [[Kill It
* [[Kill Sat]]: Most planets have them for defensive purposes.
* [[Latex Space Suit]] : SII smart silicon space suits, which is a black ball of silicon which when activated, surround the user with the silicon and form as a spacesuit.
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* [[Lost Superweapon]] : {{spoiler|The Sleeping God, a naked singularity and sentient AI.}}
** To a lesser degree, the Alchemist- see [[There Is No Kill Like Overkill]] below.
* [[Mega Corp]] - Earth is controlled by these, secretly. Oh, and {{spoiler|the [[Corrupt Corporate Executive
* [[Mind Rape]]: This, in conjunction with extreme physical torture and sometimes ''actual'' rape, is the prelude to possession, which is itself another flavor of [[Mind Rape]].
* [[More Than Mind Control]]: what Kiera does to those Deadnight kids, to lure them to her.
* [[Myself, My Avatar]]: The [[Super Soldiers]].
* [[Naming Your Colony World]] : There are a lot of "New ''[Insert-Area-Name-Here]''" planets, somewhat justified by most of the settlers all coming from said region. Many colonies have original names, as well.
** The Tyrathca have strange (for us) names like "Hesperi-LN" and "Goertht-WN".
* [[Nigh Invulnerability]] : Cosmoniks, which are described as having "diamond armor", and many redundant organs. {{spoiler|Also, the possessed are almost immune to advanced weaponry, because of their electronics-scrambling energy, and still take quite a beating from regular bullets.}}
** The possessed themselves are very hard to kill initially, since they have [[Reality Warper]] abilities and can repair wounds almost instantly. Then their vulnerability to [[Achilles' Heel|electricity]] is discovered...
* [[No Transhumanism Allowed]]: [[Playing
* [[Oh Crap]]: Multiple moments throughout the series, however the biggest one was when Calvert and crew realized that {{spoiler|the Tyrathca, who were known to have exterminated ''at least'' one species and enslaved another to accomplish their own ends, had spread throughout the entire ''galaxy'' with their slower-than-light Arkships, and their diaspora now outnumbered the Confederation ten-planets-to-one.}} Good thing they don't have [[Faster-Than-Light Travel|ZTT drives]].
** Oh, wait... The ones on Hesperi-LN, their colony in the Confederation, have them, [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|from humans]]. [[Oh Crap]], indeed.
* [[Omnicidal Maniac]]: You've read this far; take a ''wild guess''!
* [[Organic Technology]]- The Edenists base most of their technology on living creatures; they have sentient [[Living Ship
** Laymil technology was about 80% biological: habitat interiors were closer to what we'd call a jungle, and spaceship interiors were like humid, cramped beehives. It was {{spoiler|probably the reason for their quick downfall}}.
* [[Our Wormholes Are Different]]: They're short-lived (0.005 seconds at most) and have a pitch-black event horizon. They come in spherical (for Adamist, technological ships) and portal-like (for Bitek starships) varieties, and God help you and your ship if you [[Stuff Blowing Up|touch the edges]].
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** Combat-boosted mercs and soldiers have big, hulking armors with enough weapons to level a city.
* [[Power Perversion Potential]]: Give 26th-century sexually frustrated nerds the powers to [[Reality Warper|bend reality to their every whim]] and you have the very ''definition'' of this trope.
* [[Put
* [[Religion of Evil]]: the version of Satanism practiced by Quinn Dexter and his sect.
* [[Sealed Evil in
* [[Shown Their Work]]: The author put a lot of work into this series. As it happens, its also one of the most widely-acclaimed modern Space Operas.
* [[Smug Snake]]: too many to name.
* [[Solar CPR]]: the Alchemist's "Violent" setting is used to {{spoiler|turn a gas-giant planet into a nascent star}}.
* [[Spheroid Dropship]]: The series features a lot of spherical spacecraft (e. g. ''The Lady Macbeth''). They are mostly used by the Adamists.
* [[Sufficiently Advanced Aliens]]: The Kiint are the resident super-civilization, with {{spoiler|outposts in multiple galaxies, secret immortal spies in almost every known civilization}}, [[Casual Interstellar Travel|casual intergalactic teleportation]], and a home star system that has {{spoiler|a ''collar'' of inhabited planets sharing the same orbit}}. They can also {{spoiler|casually [[
** The {{spoiler|Tinkerbell aliens and the creators of the Sleeping God}} are even ''more'' advanced than the Kiint. Both have learned how to create {{spoiler|Naked Singularity Gods}} and have used them to leave the universe in search of something more ''interesting''.
** The {{spoiler|Sleeping God}} states that it had nothing to offer the Kiint that which they could not get for themselves, and that, {{spoiler|in time, they would learn how to create its kind as well}}.
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*** Aside from giving Quinn Dexter a ride off Lalonde. Fair enough he didn't know it at the time, but even weeks or months later he doesn't seem to twig to the fact that all those system glitches the ship experienced on that one trip add up to him having delivered the Possessed to Norfolk.
*** There was also the small matter of being involved in transporting antimatter containment equipment at one point. (Strictly illegal EXCEPT in the system where he picked them up. When he left, the ship was stopped and searched, but the antimatter containers weren't there any more. He'd done a complex series of maneuvers to switch the antimatter containers with fusion reactors of very similar design on another ship that the police ships never detected.)
* [[Zombie Apocalypse]] [[Recycled in Space|IN SPACE!]]. Except that the "zombies" are intelligent [[Reality Warper
{{reflist}}
[[Category:The Nineties]]
[[Category:Science Fiction Literature]]
[[Category:Literature]]
{{DEFAULTSORT:Night's Dawn Trilogy, The}}
[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]
[[Category:Works by Peter F. Hamilton]]
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