In 2004 I randomly picked up a big chunky sci fi book from a second hand shop with the intention of getting stuck into something hefty on the long journey to work. Little did I know that I would get sucked in to a world of space battle, political machinations, heroism, war, sacrifice and countless other wondrous plot developments. The book was 'The Reality Dysfunction', and it formed the first part of the 'Night's Dawn' trilogy. The three books come in at well over 3ooo pages, described thusly by wiki:
British author Peter F. Hamilton's The Night's Dawn Trilogy consists of three epic science fiction novels: The Reality Dysfunction (1996), The Neutronium Alchemist (1997), and The Naked God (1999). A collection of short stories, A Second Chance at Eden, shares the same universe, and The Confederation Handbook documents that universe in non-fiction style.
The sprawling narrative deals with a far future where humanity struggles and wages war against past souls flooding back into the land of the living via possession (Al Capone and Fletcher Christian are among the returnees). Hamilton's future is expansive and primarily optimistic, with huge sentient space-cities that can closely resemble a natural Eden. He extrapolates on current trends concerning the blurring of technology with biology, and environmental devastation. But Hamilton pulls no punches on humanity's darker side. Poverty, sexual exploitation and cruelty still dog our civilizations in Night's Dawn, and the coalition opposing the Possessed are faced with a particularly cruel moral conundrum; they cannot destroy them without also killing their host bodies.
There is so much depth to the story, so much background information on cultures, political systems and technology, and so much character development, it leaves you a little gobsmacked when you stop and think about it. Anyway, I could go on for ever about how great the books are, but the upshot of it is that I was inspired to write music.
The tracks you hear on this page are from the forthcoming album (simply entitled 'Night's Dawn') which will be available before the end of the year. These are of course mp3 versions, and I will post all tracs when they are complete. The finished package will contain full quality audio with liner notes for each track describing the inspiration and relevance to particular sections of the narrative, and will be available on personal request, with a small donation - more on that on completion.
For those interested, Peter F. Hamilton has written an excellent piece on his motivation for writing such a mammoth work which can be found here.
Thanks for your comment! Exactly the "feeling" I was going for :)))
That's the short version though, as my 'player' wouldn't take the longer one - so I cut-off the end 'perc', and about a minute of synthy-drama stuff. Oh well.
I'm not too bad, apart from a horrible reoccurring stomach bug that has remained undiagnosed as of yet, such pain I didn't know was imaginable.
But apart from that, the photography is going well, and if all is rich after summer I'll be getting my budget studio lighting! Model photography here I come!
Going back to uni to do Anthropology too so I'll be a busy beaver then :)
And how are you doing sir? I should come to myspace more but all my mates have migrated to bebo :/
I love cats, but ones named Gaia are up there with the best of them. My one at home is called Moogle, although mum, dad and the sister reject this for the much more bland Rascal :/
The following is an actual question given on a University of Liverpool chemistry final exam.
The answer by one student was so “profound” that the professor shared it with colleagues via the Internet, which is why we now have the pleasure of enjoying it as well.
Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?
Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle’s Law that gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed or some variant.
One student, however, wrote the following:
First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, let’s look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Most of these religions state that, if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell.
Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell. Because Boyle’s Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay constant, the volume of Hell must expand proportionately as souls are added.
This gives two possibilities:
1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.
2. If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.
