Harvey Parfitt is the new Chief of Eden’s police force: he arrives at the habitat with his estranged wife and two teenaged children, and is immediately confronted with the murder of one of the habitat’s founding scientists, a very unbelievable murder, since it was committed by one of the chimp servitors – something no one had though possible until that moment. Affinity allows a form of telepathic communication between humans and the habitat’s personality, and the control of servitors – specially bred monkeys devoted to al menial tasks.Īt the start of the story, Earth is a place devastated by climate upheavals, where life is possible only in arcologies – city enclaves shielded from the fiery elements, where however crime is rife and the quality of everyday existence is poor.
Hamilton’s short works was even more intriguing than the first, and since it introduces many of the elements of his massive novels – in particular the Night’s Dawn trilogy – it encouraged me even more to take the jump or, as some of my fellow bloggers defined it, to overcome author intimidation.Ī Second Chance at Eden is a collection of short stories, but the one that truly fascinated me is the one from which the book draws its title: once more I encountered a murder mystery, as was the case with Watching Trees Grow, but it was completely different, starting with the background in which the investigation takes place.Įden is a peculiar habitat created from bitek – genetically engineered living matter with the ability to adapt to specific uses and to grow like any living creature, to the point it can develop sentience and can communicate with its human population through affinity, a bond that is created through the insertion of specialized material in any given subject, or genetically programmed in a fetus.
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