Review: A Second Chance at Eden

 I'm always wary of Peter F Hamilton's novels. They're long, bulky, and while they're frequently full of hard science fiction concepts, they always feel like the publisher cheaped out on the editor or just couldn't be bothered to rein him in when his books went into digressions that didn't have payoffs.

A Second Chance at Eden is a collection of Peter F. Hamilton's short stories that are set in the Confederation universe where Hamilton's novels are set in. The fact that they are short stories automatically rein in Hamilton's worst excesses. By contrast to his novels, these stories are tightly plotted, don't have irritating digressions, and you don't need to have the entire back story of the Confederation to understand them.

The titular story, in fact, is about the origin of the Edenists faction, and is a tightly plotted murder mystery that rivals the best of Alastair Reynolds. It shows that when Hamilton is given a short word count (or page count), he can actually write. The plotting is great, the characters are well fleshed out and have reasonable motivations, and the conclusion is more than satisfactory.

The other stories in this collection are perhaps not as memorable (sometimes the endings are abrupt), but they are all similarly well done, with the science part of the science fiction maybe occasionally hand wavy, but never devolving into outright fantasy.

If the length of Peter Hamilton's novels put you off (and well they should), this collection ought to convince you that he can write. He just always needed a much better editor than his publishers gave him.