Fallen Dragon
 | |
| Author | Peter F. Hamilton |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Science fiction novel |
| Publisher | Macmillan |
Publication date | 2001 |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| ISBN | 0-330-48006-5 |
| OCLC | 49394642 |
Fallen Dragon is a science fiction novel by Peter F. Hamilton. It was first published in 2001 by Macmillan.
The story is mainly about the life of Lawrence Newton from the planet Amethi, who pursues his dream of becoming a starship captain. Another storyline, which merges with the first, is that of the resistance movement on the planet Thallspring, which uses advanced alien technology against Terran exploitation.
The future societies in the book are varied, and the book contrasts them. There are elaborate descriptions of various future technologies such as powered armor Skins and interstellar flight.
The book also touches upon various philosophical themes, such as political systems and power distribution in a society, the impact of technology on human life, and how one should live one's life.
The world of Fallen Dragon
The world of the book exists in the 24th century.
Human technology has progressed greatly. Biological advances have all but eliminated disease, and genes can be rewritten to fix defects or make enhancements. Efficient processing of base chemicals into artificial food has eliminated the need to farm or keep livestock, allowing most of the surface area of Earth to be returned to its natural form. Petroleum resources have been used up, which also contributes to Earth's ecological recovery, though the drawback is that travel is more limited for the general populace; only the wealthy can afford the large amounts of synthetic "hihydrogen" fuel needed for intercontinental flights. The development of fairly powerful computers (artificial sentience or AS) dominates logistical jobs and any form of management. Combat is dominated by organic powered exoskeletons called Skins, which give their wearers not only enhanced strength and protection but also a number of powerful weapon systems, most designed to incapacitate rather than kill their targets.
A means of FTL space travel has been discovered, allowing a speed of one-half of a light year per day. By the time of the novel, a sphere about 70 light-years in diameter has been explored and many habitable worlds have been colonized by corporations. But supporting the growing colonies has proven economically unviable for Earth, so apart from those of Zantiu-Braun new colonization efforts have ceased. Trade is also unsustainable, as transporting raw materials over interstellar distances costs more than they're worth and no trade in finished goods can be maintained; it is cheaper to reverse engineer new products and produce them locally than to import them.
As the biotas of alien worlds are incompatible with Earth's the parts used for human settlements are first gamma-soaked to sterilize them. There are two exceptions to this, the first is Amethi, which is ice-locked when found by humans, making it easier to colonize, all that is required is to start a self-reinforcing greenhouse cycle by bombarding the planet with meteors. The second is Santa Chico, where the original founders modified themselves at a genetic level to coexist with the planet's biota. No intelligent alien life has been found in the universe.
As the established colony worlds are owned by their founding corporations, they represent unused assets for the company seats on Earth. Therefore the corporations mount "asset realization" campaigns, seizing a colony's industrial output and shipping it back to Earth, the lack of payment making it a profitable operation. As the colonies have developed independently (and of course gain no benefit from the seizure) they are unwilling to give up their produce freely and force is needed to assure their co-operation - de facto piracy.
The economy of Earth is dominated by a small number of huge international corporations, the largest of which is Zantiu-Braun. Due to their economic power, they have become more powerful than governments. The corporations are controlled by their stakeholders, making Earth a plutocracy. Some of the corporations mentioned in Fallen Dragon have motives beyond growing bigger and creating profit for their stakeholders. For example the corporation which owns Amethi is controlled by stakeholders living on Amethi, and all its Earth industries have been turned over to supporting Amethi. Zantiu-Braun, controlled by clones of Simon Roderick, has the motive of uplifting the entire human race to his ideal.
The colony world Thallspring is fairly idyllic, and has a properly functioning democracy.
Synopsis
The book has four separate story threads. The threads are told in parallel in the book, merging at the end.
- Young Lawrence Newton's life on Amethi and becoming a Zantiu-Braun squaddie sergeant.
- Adult Lawrence Newton's life as a Zantiu-Braun squaddie sergeant preparing for the asset realization expedition to Thallspring.
- Denise Ebourn from Arnoon village and her resistance group's preparation for and battle against the Thallspring asset realization expedition.
- The alien prince Mozark's journey in the galaxy-wide Ring Empire.
Plot
 | This article's plot summary may be too long or excessively detailed. (September 2008) |
Young Lawrence Newton lives on the planet Amethi and is the oldest son of one of the most powerful members of the board of the corporation which controls Amethi. Lawrence dreams about being a starship pilot despite being told by his father that starship exploration is finished. Lawrence loses interest in school work and withdraws socially. His father takes him to a holiday resort where a gorgeous girl named Roselyn breaks through Lawrence's isolation, and the two develop a passionate relationship.
This turns Lawrence around: he becomes top of his class, physically active and on his way to university to learn the skills needed to be a board member until he learns that the Earth corporation Zantiu-Braun is still making exploratory spaceflights. He resolves to tell his father that he will drop management studies to become a spaceplane pilot until he overhears him boasting that he paid Roselyn to become Lawrence's girlfriend, and that he would like to have sex with her afterwards. Lawrence confronts his father, then Roselyn. Although she tells him her love is real, he cannot believe her.
The distraught Lawrence is determined to become a spaceplane pilot and uses a powerful quasi-sentient program called Prime to avoid detection by his powerful father as he leaves for Earth. On Earth he enters the Zantiu-Braun corporation with the ultimate goal of becoming a pilot, but he must first earn a large enough stake to qualify. So he becomes a Zantiu-Braun soldier, fighting on a number of worlds in asset realization expeditions. To qualify as a pilot he signs up for recruitment testing. He does well, but his stake in the company isn't large enough and he is bitterly resigned to remaining a soldier. Still idealistic, he saves a girl (Denise Ebourn's sister Jacintha) from being gang raped by his fellow squaddies in the Arnoon village on Thallspring. Lawrence eventually becomes sergeant of his platoon when his old sergeant sacrifices himself to save the squad in the disastrous Santa Chico campaign.
Denise Ebourn comes from the small Arnoon village in the hinterlands of the planet Thallspring. She lives in Memu Bay, and has a job as a playschool (kindergarten) teacher. But she is also organizing a very competent resistance cell in preparation for the Zantiu-Braun asset realization mission, together with two other Arnoon villagers. The resistance cell is extremely dangerous because of their alien technology, including a quasi-sentient software program called Prime, which is able to penetrate and manipulate almost any data network at will. Their bodies have also been enhanced, giving them superhuman strength and endurance. Using these advantages stealthily, they turn the population against the invaders and carry out guerilla operations against Lawrence's men. They also prepare for their ultimate goal: stealing a spaceship. But one of Denise's companions is caught, and is tricked into revealing enough clues to track them to Arnoon village. When he finds out that he has betrayed the cell he kills himself by making his alien enhanced body explode, destroying the Zantiu-Braun compound and almost killing one of the Simon Roderick clones who lead Zantiu-Braun.
The story of adult Lawrence Newton begins just before the Thallspring asset realization expedition. Thinking about his previous mission to Thallspring, where he visited the Arnoon village, Lawrence has concluded that the village must have an enormous amount of wealth. For they had, hidden in plain sight, alien plants living on unsterilized soil bearing edible fruits. This would be impossible for Thallspring technology to create, so it was probably the work of Santa Chico geneticists. Lawrence plans to "realize" their unknown wealth for himself, using it to buy his way back to Amethi. So he arranges to be stationed near the village, and for help to discreetly get his treasure back to Earth.
Once on Thallspring the soldiers are met by the highly competent resistance movement, and Lawrence's platoon loses several soldiers. At last he sees his chance to go to Arnoon village, taking his platoon with him to back him up.
Throughout the book as Denise is working as a playschool teacher she occasionally tells the children stories about an alien 'Ring Empire' spanning the entire galaxy. The Ring Empire is described by the story of the prince Mozark, who travels through the empire to find inspiration for leading his people when he becomes king. In his journey he finds many wonders and compelling philosophies, but he ends up rejecting them all as not worthy of the future of his kingdom. Instead he concludes that one should live life fully for its own sake.
Also mentioned is the Mordiff, who live in the middle of an unusually dense nebula. They are therefore not aware of anything but themselves and, being so limited, can never expand beyond their planet. As more and more Mordiff populated the planet, they destroyed themselves in horrible wars. A Modriff king, in an attempt to save his people, developed a time portal that he used to hide his people and advance the planet millions of years after the nuclear wars had killed off other life. Thus began the cycle of destruction, the Mordiff constantly destroying their civilization and using the time portal to accelerate millions of years to allow their nuclear-ravaged planet to heal. However, they tragically advanced time so rapidly, that they reached the end of the lifespan of their star, and faded out of existence, leaving only their time portal behind.
As Denise learns that Lawrence is headed for Arnoon village she races to intersect him. A violent confrontation takes place between Lawrence's platoon and a group of Arnoon villagers, ending with a wounded Lawrence staggering alone towards Arnoon village. When he gets there his Skin suit is spent, and he is near death. The villagers, one of which is the girl he saved from being raped, revives him, revealing that their wealth comes from a damaged alien dragon with greatly advanced technological knowledge such as the nanotechnology used to enhance the resistance movement. The dragon is a spaceliving creature, and as such is nothing but immobile electronics on the planet surface. To repay the dragon for its help the villagers plan to use steal one of Zantiu-Braun's starships to travel to a red sun, where the dragon says its species lives, so the dragon can be restored to its former glory.
Lawrence decides to join them, and helps them to hijack a spaceship. But they are followed by the damaged Simon Roderick clone, who is determined to use all means to capture the technology for himself, not even trusting his clone brothers. Another Simon Roderick clone follows, to get the technology and to stop his clone brother. When Denise and Lawrence arrive at the red star they quickly find the dragons, millions of kilometer-sized creatures. They learn that the dragons are a disengaged race, once part of the now destroyed Ring Empire, who do nothing but amass knowledge, sharing it freely with others. The Arnoon dragon was simply a seed, one out of billions, and no more important to them than a sperm cell to us. By using their early arrival, Denise and Lawrence convince the red star dragon to disable the damaged Simon Roderick. The dragon civilization gives their patternform construction knowledge to Lawrence, Denise and to the last Simon Roderick, in an agreement arranged by Denise and Lawrence that the knowledge be shared freely on Earth, and not monopolized by Zantiu-Braun.
Lawrence uses the technology to construct a beautiful spaceship just as he has wanted since he was a teenager. He flies back in time through the time portal of the Mordiff, and travels to Amethi. There he transforms into Vinnie, one of young Lawrence's closest friends. After giving young Lawrence the Prime program so he can travel to Earth, "Vinnie" changes into young Lawrence, and goes to make up with Roselyn.
Denise uses the technology to repair and enhance the Arnoon dragon. She has also brought a genetic package, which she takes with her to the other side of the galaxy to start a new safe haven for humans.
The key background elements of the Thallspring Arnoon village people's advanced technology is only explained late in the book, though there are many examples of their technological abilities, which are not explicitly commented upon in the narrative. Likewise, asset realization is referred to many times, but only hints are given about what it is before it is explained to young Lawrence Newton on his first asset realization expedition.
Philosophical themes of Fallen Dragon
An important question is the effect of technology on a civilization, specifically in the discussion of what to do with the dragon patternform technology. A problem is also that human development will be sidetracked by technology that humans have not developed for themselves, meaning they may not be mentally ready to use it.
In the Fallen Dragon universe, Earth and at least some colonies are controlled by huge companies. Ordinary people can gain influence by buying a stake in the companies, which will enable them to gain voting influence in accordance with the size of their stake. Lawrence Newton agrees with the concept of stake ownership, his exact words being; "You can't have the poor voting themselves more welfare money. That's economic suicide." The book does not make any final moral judgements about this issue, though the ending does deny Zanthiu-Braun ultimate control of Earth via a monopoly on the patternform technology.
A theme of the book is how you live your life.[original research?] Mozark's journey gives many examples of what you can try to achieve, from builders giving all their energies to building and maintaining huge cities, to colonizers embarking on intergalactic travels to settle in other galaxies. The telling of Lawrence Newton's experiences as a soldier also gives two examples of foreign cultures, the planet where the leaders focus on living forever and the planet Santa Chico where the settlers have merged with the native biota, and now live short and intense lives in harmony with their surroundings.
Humanity in Fallen Dragon has switched to artificially produced food, so very few people eat anything that was once living. Lawrence Newton is especially disgusted by those who eat animals, or even plants, calling them "regressors." The fact that there are still ecological protestors (Even when all the demands of contemporary groups such as Greenpeace and PETA have been met beyond their wildest dreams) can be taken as a snide observation of the human urge to rebellion being greater than the cause it fights for.