The Nano Flower

In just a day’s time Peter Hamilton will be arriving for Sci-Fi’s annual convention, Picocon. Before that we finish off our look at the Greg Mandel series with a look at the final novel in that series; The Nano Flower. Set fifteen year’s after A Quantum Murder there’s plenty that’s changed in that time. The Nano Flower concludes the progression of the world around Greg out of recession. Technology is blossoming and the world has started to move forwards in leaps and bounds.

This is the first big difference with The Nano Flower. Although the change in background maintains continuity with the previous books, it does set a new dynamic and is certainly the first time that Hamilton pushes towardsa harder sci-fi setting. Asteroids are hauled into orbit in order to mine new resources, clean energy sources have put an end to the climate change problems of the recent past and in some ways it’s an extremely optimistic outlook on the future. However, perhaps more interesting is seeing the world move forwards while Greg stays still.

When returning character Julia receives a strange package and rumours of new technology that threaten to throw off the balance of power across the globe and bring her company, Event Horizon, to its knees, it’s Greg that she turns to for help; pulling him out of retirement. It’s interesting to watch Greg face a world where the advantages he held in previous missions are mitigated by technology that’s increased without him. While he now gets to jet across the globe in a hypersonic plane, Mandel also has to cope with the fact that the world has become a smaller place and the schemes of criminal organisations can easily encompass an entire globe.

Not to mention potentially the most contentious issue of the book; aliens. The ‘package’ that Julia receives is in fact the eponymous Nanoflower and it is certainly a mystery. Containing DNA that is far in advance of any of our own and with genes completely foreign to Earth, the Nanoflower presents a dangerous and intriguing mystery. However, for me it was very much a confusing addition to the Mandel setting. I wasn’t initially convinced that the world needed the addition of any extra-terrestrial influences. To me the series had been all the more interesting due to its plausibly near future outlook so I was going to take some serious winning over to be convinced that this was a necessary addition.

I must admit, I’m still a little on the fence, but Hamilton’s writing remains engaging and enthralling and he certainly goes a long way to winning my opinion back round to the inclusion of this new theme. I still don’t necessarily understand the decision, perhaps I will get the chance to find out tomorrow in his talk, but I have a sneaking suspicion, or at least an inkling, that it might be to do with the following. Hamilton has openly said that part of what he enjoys about writing is creating worlds and the backdrops upon which the plots play out. As such I think it may have been a decision to – almost aside from Greg, Julia and Event Horizon – show mankind’s slow ascendancy into a much larger universe. That’s a very optimistic view from where the world is in Mindstar Rising; in less than a couple of decades humanity moves from a narrowly averted apocalypse to begin their forays into the starts.

Despite several things that, with hindsight, look a little less than realistic, the Greg Mandel series is still compelling and an excellent read and, as it hits its twentieth birthday, it’s still doing extremely well. The covers you may have seen opposite these articles are the 2011 incarnation of the series, where Greg got a bit of a facelift and, in an homage to the trilogies of 70s sci-fi, put together, they form one extended image of Hamilton’s world progressing from ruins through to a skyscraper clad metropolis reaching to the sky. A fitting visual for a world that grew up as I once did while reading it.

Peter F. Hamilton will be at Imperial College on Saturday. February 16 as one of the Guests of Honour at Picocon 30. For more information, and to register your attendance, visit icsf.org.uk/picocon