The spoiler-free Peter F. Hamilton reading order
British author Peter F. Hamilton is hard to classify. Some of his work is “Space Opera”, but other parts of it are “detective novels that just happen to be set in the near future.” His writing in those two genres is firmly aimed at adults. But there’s also a fantasy trilogy for children.
He’s responsible for several different series of stories, set in different “universes” to the extent that working out a sensible reading order, particularly if you want to avoid spoilers, is a fairly complex problem. The problem is compounded by the fact that some of the “stories” are published in self-contained books, some in serial novels, and some as parts of collections of short stories.
But it’s reasonable to break them down into five different universes which are shared across multiple books. I’m not going to include much information about each — just stuff you could find on the back-cover blurb of the first book in each universe, so hopefully this can stay spoiler-free.
The five universes
The Greg Mandel universe
In the mid 21st Century, Greg Mandel is a former British military officer with psychic abilities. The series is part cyberpunk, and part detective novel, and all in all a great starting point for the reader new to Hamilton.
