The Reality Dysfunction, Part 1: Emergence

I like short books. I have nothing against long books, but I admire short books by authors who can say what they have to say in 300 or so pages.

I realized that preference was shutting me out of an entire range of more recent science fiction. There must be a bunch of people out there who like long books -- really long books. Books in the 800 to 1000 page range. I have been curious about how such books must be structured, just how much can develop in 1000 pages that could not get done in about half the space.

So I decided to read not only a 1000 page book, I decided to read one that was the first volume of a trilogy of 1000+ page books. And not a trilogy in the sense that each book simply took place in the same world or involved some of the same characters. No, Peter F. Hamilton's The Reality Dysfunction is Volume One of a trilogy where each book picks up from the cliffhanger ending of the book preceding it.

I made it to page 546 when I realized that I could care less what happened to these people. It was around page 500 that interesting plot developments began to kick in, but that's as it should be. In any narrative you expect the major plot crisis to define itself about midway through the novel -- unless the writer is so committed to screenplay conventions he or she is working on a three act structure. For a couple of hundred pages it seemed that every chapter introduced new characters on new planets. Hamilton does build convincing worlds and peoples them with believable characters, but as I saw the direction the story was heading I realized there was no way I needed 2500 more pages of this.

Hamilton is among those who have "reinvented the space opera." It's true that there is no confusing this with a 1940's magazine serial, but I found it easy to jump ship.

(I had a one volume British edition of this book which American publishers divided into two books.)