Let's talk about Peter F. Hamilton

As an avid space-opera-enjoyer and Audible value-maximizer, I stumbled upon the sci-fi author Peter F. Hamilton some years ago. He has written a bunch of epic space opera series such as the Commonwealth saga and the Salvation series, and his books are consitently ranked pretty high on Goodreads. His books, especially those in the Commonwealth universe, have been dubbed to have a 'utopian outlook' and have been contrasted with my favorite sci-fi author Alastair Reynolds, the latter of which some people found to be more on the dystopian side of things. This got me thinking quite a bit, because I found Reynolds to be neither utopian nor dystopian but rather one of the most realistic notions of how humanity might evolve into a space-faring civilization. But instead of writing an essay on the difference between Hamilton and Reynolds (which I guess some people might enjoy?) I want to talk about a certain uneasy feeling that I got while reading (or listening to) the Commonwealth books by Hamilton, namely: Is this really Utopia that is described here?

The plot of the Commonwealth books

First, a bit of info-dump for those who didn't read his books. There might be some slight spoilers in here, so beware. In this post, I will focus mostly on the later Commonwealth books (the Void Trilogy as well as the Chronicle of the Fallers), though some of my thoughts also apply to his other series Salvation. I also have to admit that I did not read the actual Commonwealth Saga books, I started in reverse and after 5 books in the same universe I just about had enough. So yeah, maybe I should have read the first two Commonwealth books all along because they are the real deal and everything else is shit, but somehow I doubt it...

Anyway, Commonwealth! This is a fictional future where humanity has become a space-faring civilization and built a multi-planetary empire called the Commonwealth¹. This was made possible by various amazing pieces of technology, initially wormhole tech and later faster-than-light drives. In the later books, humanity has become substantially augmented, with people routinely living for hundreds of years, having access to all sorts of neural enhancements and even personal shield generators that can even withstand the blast from a nuclear explosion. Humanity is governed by a supercomputer/AI called ANA (Advanced Neural Activity), which also offers humans the option of downloading their personality into the digital world to live a life of accelerated consciousness in their own digital universe. There are also aliens within the Commonwealth books, most of which are either less advanced than humanity or have achieved 'post-physical' status by somehow ascending beyond the physical realm in an unspecified way. There is one super advanced alien race called the Raiel, which are millions of years old, have the most advanced tech, are hyper-intelligent and act as the galaxy's shepherds of life. The main antagonist of the later books is a spatial anomaly called simply 'The Void': A pocket-universe within what was thought to be the supermassive black hole in the center of the galaxy. This pocket universe is sustained by the Void through consuming mass, which causes the Void to expand and destroy whole solar systems, which makes it an existential threat to the whole galaxy. Within the Void, there are two planets inhabited by humans (how they got there is part of the story, so I won't spoil it here). These humans live a simpler life without much technology, as the 'quantum structure' of the Void prohibits any advanced technology. Instead, humans have telepathic and telekinetic abilities. Certain individuals outside of the Void get a glimpse of the lives of these humans within the Void, which causes many people in the Commonwealth to yearn for this simpler life, leading to the founding of a religion called 'Living Dream', whose goal it is to make a pilgrimage into the Void. Which might cause the Void to expand a lot and consume half the Galaxy. So conflict ensues. That's about it.

So what's the problem then?

On the surface level, the books have everything a good space opera needs: Crazy tech, aliens, a mysterious existential threat, political intrigues as different factions of humanity fight for or against the Void, and an epic conclusion in which the nature of the Void is revealed at last. So from a pure sci-fi point of view, the books are a good read. One might criticize their length, with Hamilton spending a vast amount of the books with setup that at times can be hard to follow, but personally I wasn't overly bothered by that, especially when listening to the audiobook versions. There were however some aspects that make it very hard for me to straight-up recommend these books: First, his portrayal of women, which is abysmal, and second his outlook on humanity as a whole and his idea of what Utopia might look like.

Hamilton's portrayal of women...

First, let's talk about the women in his series. Most of the main characters are male, with some major female characters which are mostly unremarkable. From all the characters, I can recall exactly three women whose main purpose is not to be a sex trophy for one of the male leads, which is already quite sad on its own. A closer look at these three characters doesn't yield any more interesting stories unfortunately. There is Paula Myo, the 'Investigator', who does exactly that: Investigate things. As far as I understood, she was raised on a world where people were genetically programmed to fill a specific role (fittingly named 'Huxleys Haven') and investigating things seems to be her only character trait. She is a great problem solver, which becomes relevant especially in the Faller books, but I don't recall a lot more than that. Then there is Justine Bernelli, part of one of the major families in the Commonwealth, and whose major traits are being beautiful and determined, and I swear this is everything I can recall regarding her. Perhaps the most memorable female character is Catherine Steward, known by her alias 'The Cat', whose whole thing is that she is a psychopath criminal who loves torturing people in the most brutal ways. There are some pretty fucked up scenes where she uses the advanced tech available to the Commonwealth society to inflict the largest amount of pain possible to her victims. Fine, I guess, put in a little torture-porn, it worked for George Martin, so why not here as well?

And all the other women? Here is the thing: There is a lot of sex in these books, and most of it is framed in a way that to me feels very male-gazey, with women being constantly horny and available to have sex with the men in the story. One of the main characters of the Void trilogy, a woman called Araminta, is the worst possible example for this. Of course she is in her twenties and is freshly divorced after marrying a man 200 years older than she who of course was an asshole, and now she gets to explore herself by dating a guy whose whole thing is that he is a "multiple", meaning he inhabits multiple bodies at the same time. What happens then? You guessed it, she has sex with increasingly larger numbers of his bodies at the same time, which is completely necessary because after these orgies she becomes the chosen one and gets visions from the Void! Is this what some guys think their cock does to women, make them see god or something? It's beyond ridiculous! Haven't we moved past this sort of cheap sexism in our storytelling? Inserting completely unnecessary and generic sex scenes into otherwise decent stories is annoying enough as it is, but Hamilton seems to go out of his way to make his books appeal to a male audience in the same way that streaming platforms for porn do: By spoon-feeding a hyper-distilled, unrealistic form of sexuality to the male audience. Which annoys me all the more because it is inserted into a genre that, at least to me, is all about exploring the possibilities of space, the future, humanity's role in it and it's insignificance compared to the vastness of the universe. And here we are, amidst faster-than-light traveling, longevity treatments, and warships embedded into the fabric of spacetime, and we instead read about men needing a constant supply of willing female bodies to enjoy themselves with. Really? Is this the way Hamilton views sexuality, or is it perhaps his editor, driven by capitalism to add stuff to the story that 'sells'? I would really like to know!

...and his portrayal of humanity

Which leads me to the other main point of this post: The way humanity is portrayed. Yes, people have a lot of sex, in principle this is fine, good sex is an important part of the human experience for many people, but in Hamilton's books, it is commodified in a way that matches the worst of what modern capitalism does to us: Everything has to be available all the time, and everything has to be reduce to exactly one, supposedly 'most optimal', ideal. Hand-wave a little bit about 'game theory' here, if you like. Take a look at how Hamilton imagines the people living in the Commonwealth. Repeatedly, it is stated that basically everyone uses the available genetic modifications to keep their body consistently at a biological age of around 25, because this is just what is most attractive, right? There are only a few people in the whole series (disregarding those living within the Void, who don't have access to the Commonwealth tech) who don't match this bodily ideal, and they are portrayed in less-than-favorable ways. Part of the story follows Troblum, a physicist who tries to reverse-engineer some advanced tech, and his whole thing is that he is a fat, awkward guy living with his three trophy wives (all of which are in their early twenties) on his yacht-like spaceship. That's basically what every nerd in 90s movies was like, minus the availability of sex slaves, and even Hollywood learned that this is a bad thing.

The sad thing is that, from a technological standpoint, Hamilton's idea of Utopia is pretty neat (albeit unoriginal): Illness and poverty are basically non-existent and people are free to live their lives however they see fit. Not bad, considering what people have been struggling with for basically all of humanity's history. Ultimately it is this libertarian ideal that spoils his take on Utopia, at least for me. The Commonwealth is reminiscent of what the internet and social media promised to us: Connect with each other, express yourself, finally true freedom for thoughts and ideas. Sure, we got some of that, but more prominently, we have a convergence of thoughts, the death of nuance, echo chambers, radicalization, pick your poison. In the same way, the Commonwealth feels shallow, not because of what it could be, but due to the way it is portrayed, with the vast majority of people being either scheming masterminds or hedonistic idiots, with a very clear gender bias as to who is who. Sadly enough, Hamilton is on the right track, at least in the Void trilogy, with the whole idea of the Living Dream religion and people being unfulfilled by their life within the Commonwealth society. But instead of using this dynamic to critically examine the downsides of the hyper-libertarian society he built, the followers of the Living Dream religion romanticize the powers that the Void imparts on its inhabitants. Their messiah is a man who has exceptionally strong telekinetic powers, and the inspiring stories about his life all revolve around him discovering new depths of his powers and using essentially overwhelming force to solve his problems. It is not unrealistic that people might be drawn to such stories, that's basically the whole superhero genre, but it feels very ironic to me: "We are unhappy with the life we have that gives us infinite freedom but no real human connection. If only we had more power, then everything would be better!" What wasted potential this story has to critically examine the problems with such a supposedly utopian society.

Some things I liked

To conclude this long post, I want to end on a more positive note. First, by pointing out some of the things that I really like about Hamilton's books, and second by pointing out other authors that in my opinion wrote better takes on Utopian societies.

Here is a list of things that I liked in the Commonwealth books and some other works of Hamilton:

• The Gaiafield, a piece of tech that let's humans directly share their emotional state with each other. While a bit under-explored, it is a neat idea that has a lot of potential to solve what I think is one of the main problems that humanity has: How do we better understand each other?
• The Raiel species and the way they act as shepherds of life in the galaxy. One of the better portrayals for a truly advanced alien species that I read, without falling into one of the two extremes "We are completely unfathomable to lesser beings" versus "We want to conquer everything".
• The tech is generally fun, even if it sometimes feels a little bit over the top, with everything being "quantum". There are some truly awe-inspiring moments where he whips out the big tech to make crazy things happen, I really liked that.

So who did it better? Regarding his portrayal of women, the bar is pretty low and I'm probably not even the right person to point out what is a really good portrayal of women in sci-fi, but The Expanse would be one story that felt a lot more balanced to me in that regard. As for the portrayal of gender, Hamilton's books are very binary, even in the Salvation series, where there are humans that move between multiple male and female phases in their life. While I don't know any really good stories that include non-binary genders, I found the gender-swapping idea to be better executed in Hologrammatica (and its sequel Qube) by Tom Hillenbrand. Lastly, for a more hopeful and diverse outlook at humanity in a sci-fi setting, Becky Chambers is my absolute favorite author. Her Wayfarer series feels a lot like Utopia to me, even though people are still suffering and dying and there are wars, because it shows a potential future where virtually everyone tries their best to be hopeful, open-minded and believes in the power of understanding each other's viewpoints. To me, this feels more promising than stating "All we need is more tech and more freedom and then everything will be great". So go read some Becky Chambers if you want to feel hopeful for the future!

If you read this post (thanks!) and read Hamilton's books, what do you think? Do you agree or did I get it all wrong? Feel free to reach out on Mastodon or via old-fashioned mail.