If you’ve never read him, the works of Peter F. Hamilton can be a little daunting. Since the 1980s, he has made a name for himself as a writer of dense, expansive science fiction novels that explore their worlds to the fullest extent, however many pages it takes (in fact, the page counts are closer to what you’d generally find in epic fantasy rather than space opera).

Even in a single volume, his books are vast in scope and timeline, bursting with odd scientific innovations and a downbeat (if realistic) view of humanity’s struggles even with near-utopian tech and the entire universe at hand.

Hamilton is definitely an author worth exploring, but with a huge bibliography and few books under 400 pages, it can be difficult to know where to start. With the first volume of his new Salvation trilogy just released, we’ve assembled this handy guide to his major works, arranged by difficulty level.

Best Points of Entry

The Commonwealth Saga

There are two distinct eras of Peter F. Hamilton’s career: the period during which he wrote noir-flavored science fiction detective stories, and the one that followed, in which he blew the doors off and assembled one multi-volume, multi-thousand-page epic after another, exploring the future history of the human race. Pandora’s Star and Judas Unchained form the first book (it’s two volumes, but do not assume that means they’re separate works) of The Commonwealth, a sprawling series spanning centuries of human development, beginning with the invention of an instantaneous-transit portal network. From there, the books explore the potential utopia created by this and other revolutionary technologies, a potential utopia forever changed when an astronomer notices a binary pair of stars on the edge of known space blink out of existence, to be replaced with Dyson spheres. There’s intelligent life out there… and no telling what it wants. The book offers a good intro to Hamilton’s distinct style—unusual technology, highly advanced alien species, a Dickensian number of viewpoint characters, and a few weird fiction touches—but holds back on the all-pervasive oddness found in some of his other novels.

The Mandel Files (Mindstar Rising/A Quantum Murder/The Nano Flower)

Hamilton’s Greg Mandel trilogy is a bit of an outlier in Hamilton’s bibliography—the three taken together clock in at maybe 1,400 pages (positively slender by Hamilton’s standards), the plots tends to focus on a smaller number of characters, and they owe more to detective fiction tropes than the vast utopias and dystopias that populate his more expansive works. But while that may all be true, these books still exhibit the author’s rapt attention to the details of his future, his intense focus on characters, his twisting plots, and a few odd flourishes. A member of the Mindstar Corps—a decommissioned tactical psychic unit—Mandel makes his living as a private detective. Hired by the heads of the Event Horizon Corporation to work on various cases, he finds himself embroiled in intrigue and mystery, all while aided by the corporation’s young head, Julia Evans. While it might not be indicative of the later works, this series’ smaller scope makes it another good place to get on

Next Steps

Great North Road

Of all the books Hamilton has written, this is one of only two standalone volumes. Like most of his books, it clocks in at astonishing length, and was nicknamed “Great Huge Book” by some fans. While it is one of his longer works, it can be read without picking up any other books, and its plot packs in the requisite amount of weirdness (a murder mystery among clones, rumors of an extraterrestrial monster) while confining his sprawling, multithreaded style to a single book. It’s also enthralling, with a significant amount of worldbuilding and character development, with a plot that flashes backward and forward to fill in the gaps between the murder of a clone in the present and a supposed alien attack that occurred on the biofuel-generating planet of St. Libra. While a standalone book that has Hamilton’s signature flourishes (instantaneous transit, close to a technological utopia) sounds like an easy recommend, however, its labyrinthine depths may puzzle new readers.

Salvation

Normally, the start of a new trilogy in a new universe would be the perfect on-boarding spot for any author, but as Hamilton doesn’t exactly do small books, a new series means you might have to wait years for the next installment. And you will definitely want that next installment, since Salvation quickly turns from an investigation by the universe’s best troubleshooters into a piece of alien tech found on a distant world into a grand, operatic saga about the possible extermination of the human race. But the tight character focus (we spent a lot of time getting to know the team), the quick-building conspiracy thriller plot, and the gradually growing tension up the stakes and keep the pages turning until there’s a war in the offing between the semi-uplifted humans and aliens for the fate of the universe. What begins as the story of five people knocking around together in a confined space alongside their pasts expands to the furthest reaches of the universe and sets the stage for humanity’s past, present, and future.

Fallen Dragon

Fallen Dragon in another standout in Hamilton’s bibliography. It’s is other single-volume works, and it plays with his usual structure of flashbacks and flash-forwards by introducing more literary elements like nested stories and interacting timelines. The main character, who works as a hired gun for the Zantiu-Braun megacorporation staging corporate asset-stripping raids., gives it a more cynical edge than Hamilton’s more utopian works, as while FTL travel has ushered in an age of space exploration, the only people who can foot the costs are Zantiu-Braun; the corporation uses it to freely pillage colonies across the galaxy. It’s a much more downbeat work, and while there are definitely optimistic moments, the universe of Fallen Dragon isn’t a bright place. The dark tone, frequent violent conflicts, and more experimental structure might challenge newcomers, but those more seasoned readers will find it a worthy addition.

The Void Trilogy (The Dreaming Void/The Temporal Void/The Evolutionary Void)

Fifteen hundred years after the events of Pandora’s Star, the Commonwealth is now a universe of functional immortals of various factions, including The Accelerators, led by a group wishing to take control of the Commonwealth from a virtual universe created by uploaded consciousnesses. These squabbles are overshadowed by what at first appears to be a supermassive black hole growing at the center of the solar system; in fact, it is an artificial universe with its own physics and laws of science. Since the Commonwealth is one long future history epic, starting with The Void is a little like starting in the middle: It can be done, but as the Void builds wonderfully on the Commonwealth’s complex history, it’s good to go in with the background on who these people are and where they came from.

And once you have a good handle on Hamilton…

Misspent Youth

Misspent Youth seems like an obvious place to start, as it takes place at the beginning of the towering Commonwealth saga, it’s relatively short, and it focuses on a smaller number of characters and events. But this story of a family trying to find themselves after their patriarch is selected to be de-aged from 78 to 20 isn’t the most well-regarded of Hamilton’s works. Even the author himself claims it was “an unpleasant story about unpleasant people.” In spite of his own feelings however, Hamilton has always been good with characters, and in his hands, even unpleasant people are at least intriguing. Still, while this one is worth the effort—and technically the chronological beggining of a major science fiction series— it’s definitely not a volume to start with.

The Night’s Dawn Trilogy (The Reality Dysfunction/The Neutronium Alchemist/The Naked God)

This one lands here due more to personal preference than issues of accessibility. The Night’s Dawn series cranks up the weird elements to a significant degree as it charts the various struggles of the Confederation, an interstellar empire split between the “Adamists” and “Edenists,” with various sub-factions and governments spreading across planets. It’s dizzying how much thought has gone into the individual worlds and cultures, and his awesome starships, and a universe slowly being repopulated by dead souls possessing living bodies. There are government conspiracies, artificial gods, creatures from beyond the boundaries of the universe attempting to break in, and a sadistic Antichrist figure cutting a genocidal swath through the galaxy on a quest for revenge taking him straight toward Earth. Between the weird elements, science-fantasy, the multithreaded plot, the countless characters, and the sheer density of it all, it’s probably best to first read something a little lighter.

The Chronicles of the Fallers (The Abyss Beyond Dreams/Night Without Stars)

Taking place within the “Void” during the previous Void trilogy, the Fallers duology follows the first contact between the posthuman Commonwealth and the steam-era civilization of Bienvenido, a planet kept in stasis within the Void. However, contact is further complicated by the “Fallers,” a race of highly advanced aliens waging war on Bienvenido. As gambits and various plots begin to pile up, with the Commonwealth attempting loopholes around the Void’s technological stasis and those on Bienvenido trying to deal with the Fallers and unify the universe again, the continuities of this and the Void Trilogy begin to merge, bringing everything to a grand conclusion and a face-off with the Fallers. Because it’s essentially taking place during another series, and also kinda the last books in a rather intricate and dense future-history, it’s definitely not the best work to start with.

Where did (or will) you start reading Peter F. Hamilton?