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Peter F. Hamilton Besides writing marvelous sci-fi which I would recommend everyone to read, many of his books center around a world where humans rejuvenate. B

Peter F. Hamilton Besides writing marvelous sci-fi which I would recommend everyone to read, many of his books center around a world where humans rejuvenate. Basically you go to a clinic where your body's age is turned back to whatever age you desire (or maybe a new body is grown, can't remember). When you are there your "brain" (memories, thinking patterns etc) is backed up meaning if you are killed the clinic will simply clone a new body for you and download your consciousness to the new body. It's been I while since I last read his books so I can't off-hand remember what moral/social aspects of immortality he focused on. If you want to read his books I would recommend you start with Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained. Those have to be some of the best books I've ever read. Speaking of which, I'm off to re-read them a third time.

deleted 9y ago
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Jaepa 9y ago
I was actually coming in to say this. The Common Wealth and Void Sagas are great and sound to be what you are looking for. Aging can be reversed, bodies can be clone and have a back you installed, genes can be modification. Death exist, but is almost always temporary.
bpizzi 9y ago
And there is in Hamilton's books, IIRC, that idea that one unique sentient entity could share it's consciousness across multiple human bodies, in real-time, so you could add new young bodies and let the older one dies and still, as a sentient entity, never really die. That works across long distances, and even when different bodies travelling at different percentage of speed of light, thus experiencing different 'speed of time' (but that's marked as 'a rather unsettling experience' iirc).
- eesmith 9y ago
  Vinge as well. The Tines in "Fire Upon the Deep" were similar pack creatures. Different configurations could lead to different types of people. Though they never went near light-speed, switching to radio instead of the normal ultrasonics also affected them, as did walking in narrow canyons (due to echos) or firing a canon. Also, the group personality is affected by the individual tines. The traeki in Brin's Uplift universe are a related example.
snovv_crash 9y ago
I'm so glad to see this as the top comment. In particular, his "Fallen Dragon" really resonated with me. If I may, I'd also like to suggest Richard K. Morgan for his Takeshi Kovacs trilogy, which is currently being turned into a TV series named after the first book, "Altered Carbon". It is premised on backing up human consciousness to a "cortical stack" that can be recovered when a person is killed or dies, and downloading them into a new body, or "sleeve". It covers the rich overclass that effectively lives forever with a clone bank, criminal punishment being "put on ice" while someone else uses your body, and crack soldiers being deployed across planets digitally by being downloaded into new bodies. The whole series is a must read if you are contemplating the ethics and implications of immortality via digital backup.
KentGeek 9y ago
Seconded.
sprucely 9y ago
His Night's Dawn Trilogy also explores souls coming back to possess the living.
eesmith 9y ago
In reading his stories, I couldn't help but think that either immortality/rejuvenation leads to a very static society, or he has difficulties in trying to think of what a future society might look like. His stories felt very much like the present, or the near past, projected into the future, with very little change. This could be deliberate. The some of oldest people are also the richest (including having their own family planet), and least likely to want cultural change. The entire civilization could be bent to their desire to prevent change. But I don't think so. I think he just writes the present into the future. Of course all authors find it hard to really think about a future culture different than their own. Take Heinlein, whose future worlds are often American pioneer or mid-20th century. But Heinlein added a few things to remind you that it is the future. Kilts are a trend in Methuselah's Children, white gloves for men in Double Star, nail polish for men in Beyond this Horizon, and at the end of Time For The Stars we realize that women throughout the story were always wearing hats, while back on Earth that fad had passed and women had naked heads "like an animal." While in Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained, the future was now, with a few extra gadgets, and a view of sexism which already feels dated. (I agree with the comment about sexism at https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/149949969?book_show_action=true https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/149949969?book_show_ac... . And yes, Heinlein's stories were also sexist. I like the description that he write about a future with woman's lib, with women characters as doctors and engineers, but the reality of women's lib was quite different.) On a technical side-note, the power sources really bug me. There are super-duper capacitors that can be charged over a century in order to change the weather, and incredible power sources that can be surgically embedded in humans so that a fight between two such augmented human ends up knocking down walls, but there are still diesel engines?
- WorkLobster 9y ago
  I think you may have picked up on something there, talking about a "static society". I remember reading a comment from Hamilton at one point (possibly in the fore/afterword?) that the goal of the Night's Dawn trilogy was to write about a society so stable and stagnant that change has to be forced upon it from without. And while the Commonwealth saga may not have shared the same explicit premise, there were definite parallels.
synicalx 9y ago
Favourite author by a long shot, but I wish he'd give the endless sex scenes a rest. We can do a space opera without his weird fantasies about zero-G boning with a space princess. Also Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained are fantastic, towards the second half of JU I could not put it down - literally took a day off work to finish it.

deleted 9y ago

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Jaepa 9y ago

I was actually coming in to say this. The Common Wealth and Void Sagas are great and sound to be what you are looking for. Aging can be reversed, bodies can be clone and have a back you installed, genes can be modification. Death exist, but is almost always temporary.

bpizzi 9y ago

And there is in Hamilton's books, IIRC, that idea that one unique sentient entity could share it's consciousness across multiple human bodies, in real-time, so you could add new young bodies and let the older one dies and still, as a sentient entity, never really die. That works across long distances, and even when different bodies travelling at different percentage of speed of light, thus experiencing different 'speed of time' (but that's marked as 'a rather unsettling experience' iirc).

eesmith 9y ago
Vinge as well. The Tines in "Fire Upon the Deep" were similar pack creatures. Different configurations could lead to different types of people. Though they never went near light-speed, switching to radio instead of the normal ultrasonics also affected them, as did walking in narrow canyons (due to echos) or firing a canon. Also, the group personality is affected by the individual tines. The traeki in Brin's Uplift universe are a related example.

snovv_crash 9y ago

I'm so glad to see this as the top comment. In particular, his "Fallen Dragon" really resonated with me. If I may, I'd also like to suggest Richard K. Morgan for his Takeshi Kovacs trilogy, which is currently being turned into a TV series named after the first book, "Altered Carbon". It is premised on backing up human consciousness to a "cortical stack" that can be recovered when a person is killed or dies, and downloading them into a new body, or "sleeve". It covers the rich overclass that effectively lives forever with a clone bank, criminal punishment being "put on ice" while someone else uses your body, and crack soldiers being deployed across planets digitally by being downloaded into new bodies. The whole series is a must read if you are contemplating the ethics and implications of immortality via digital backup.

KentGeek 9y ago

Seconded.

sprucely 9y ago

His Night's Dawn Trilogy also explores souls coming back to possess the living.

eesmith 9y ago

In reading his stories, I couldn't help but think that either immortality/rejuvenation leads to a very static society, or he has difficulties in trying to think of what a future society might look like. His stories felt very much like the present, or the near past, projected into the future, with very little change. This could be deliberate. The some of oldest people are also the richest (including having their own family planet), and least likely to want cultural change. The entire civilization could be bent to their desire to prevent change. But I don't think so. I think he just writes the present into the future. Of course all authors find it hard to really think about a future culture different than their own. Take Heinlein, whose future worlds are often American pioneer or mid-20th century. But Heinlein added a few things to remind you that it is the future. Kilts are a trend in Methuselah's Children, white gloves for men in Double Star, nail polish for men in Beyond this Horizon, and at the end of Time For The Stars we realize that women throughout the story were always wearing hats, while back on Earth that fad had passed and women had naked heads "like an animal." While in Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained, the future was now, with a few extra gadgets, and a view of sexism which already feels dated. (I agree with the comment about sexism at https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/149949969?book_show_action=true https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/149949969?book_show_ac... . And yes, Heinlein's stories were also sexist. I like the description that he write about a future with woman's lib, with women characters as doctors and engineers, but the reality of women's lib was quite different.) On a technical side-note, the power sources really bug me. There are super-duper capacitors that can be charged over a century in order to change the weather, and incredible power sources that can be surgically embedded in humans so that a fight between two such augmented human ends up knocking down walls, but there are still diesel engines?

WorkLobster 9y ago
I think you may have picked up on something there, talking about a "static society". I remember reading a comment from Hamilton at one point (possibly in the fore/afterword?) that the goal of the Night's Dawn trilogy was to write about a society so stable and stagnant that change has to be forced upon it from without. And while the Commonwealth saga may not have shared the same explicit premise, there were definite parallels.

synicalx 9y ago

Favourite author by a long shot, but I wish he'd give the endless sex scenes a rest. We can do a space opera without his weird fantasies about zero-G boning with a space princess. Also Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained are fantastic, towards the second half of JU I could not put it down - literally took a day off work to finish it.