Reality Dysfunction

the reality dysfunction by peter f. hamilton

i finally completed my first reading of the book over a 5 week period (20 min readings before bed everyday). being sucker for sci-fi and alternate realities, parallel universes and all ... the blurb really enticed me into buying the book. apart from the fact that the title is a wonderful summary and description of my life, the ideas in the book, not to mention the masterful story-telling and beautiful writing style made the book worth every single penny i paid.

what really surprised me about this story was how hamilton manages to create a sci-fi story that's actually supportive of the existence of God. well it sounds cheesy but the reality dysfunction, the first in a three part series details how the human race is faced with an invasion it can scarcely even begin to comprehend: the possession of large swathes of planetary populations by lost souls returned from the dead. hamilton details hell less as a spiritual dimension but more as an alternate quantum dimension where the sinners of sinners (e.g. hitler, murderers etc) are placed to suffer for all eternity in sensory-deprevation. for millenia after their death, these souls spend their existence without hope, without sensory perceptions but tormented and driven by the hate they have for the living. these lost souls rape and pillage the scraps of thoughts and emotions from the newly-dead but are left forever in a state of psychological-hunger that can never be satiated. its hard to think of a fate that is worse, even the conventional biblical notion of hell. anyhow, an energy flux created by an alien entity opens the doorway for the return of these souls through possession of living bodies. their ultimate aim is to escape God's judgment by escaping into an alternate reality.

along the way hamilton raies moral and religious issues such as cloning, the existence of the soul, correlation of thought and the soul. the last one's particularly intriguing. if people are able to transfer their thoughts after death into a collective conciousness or perhaps some other human body or machine ... will the new 'container' of their existence by imbued with their 'soul' or will it merely by an empty shell filled with a shadow of the former self? its quite a relevant issue. science is becoming so advanced that in a century or two i see neuro-surgeons being able to complete accurate map-outs of our neural nets and brain-waves - essentially our thoughts and 'sense of self'. indeed will people be able to cheat death? what does this mean for religion and christianity in particular?

gonna drop down to forbidden planet tmr (or today actually) to purchase the next installment in the series. for those of you who like sci-fi or enjoy thinking about some of the issues i've raised go read the book but be warned its a massively thick, 1500 page novel!