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Cradle of Saturn #2
The Anguished Dawn
After Earth is devastated by a near miss from a protoplanet that destroys civilization, leaving survivors on the edge of barbarism, technology, culture, and knowledge are preserved only in the Kronian colony near Saturn that sends Landen Keene to help rebuild Earth's civilization, but others will do anything to regain their former privileges and power, in the sequel to Cradle of Sature. Reprint.
512 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published June 3, 2003
About the author
James P. Hogan
109 books286 followersJames Patrick Hogan was a British science fiction author.
Hogan was was raised in the Portobello Road area on the west side of London. After leaving school at the age of sixteen, he worked various odd jobs until, after receiving a scholarship, he began a five-year program at the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough covering the practical and theoretical sides of electrical, electronic, and mechanical engineering. He first married at the age of twenty, and he has had three other subsequent marriages and fathered six children.
Hogan worked as a design engineer for several companies and eventually moved into sales in the 1960s, travelling around Europe as a sales engineer for Honeywell. In the 1970s he joined the Digital Equipment Corporation's Laboratory Data Processing Group and in 1977 moved to Boston, Massachusetts to run its sales training program. He published his first novel, Inherit the Stars, in the same year to win an office bet. He quit DEC in 1979 and began writing full time, moving to Orlando, Florida, for a year where he met his third wife Jackie. They then moved to Sonora, California.
Hogan's style of science fiction is usually hard science fiction. In his earlier works he conveyed a sense of what science and scientists were about. His philosophical view on how science should be done comes through in many of his novels; theories should be formulated based on empirical research, not the other way around. If a theory does not match the facts, it is theory that should be discarded, not the facts. This is very evident in the Giants series, which begins with the discovery of a 50,000 year-old human body on the Moon. This discovery leads to a series of investigations, and as facts are discovered, theories on how the astronaut's body arrived on the Moon 50,000 years ago are elaborated, discarded, and replaced.
Hogan's fiction also reflects anti-authoritarian social views. Many of his novels have strong anarchist or libertarian themes, often promoting the idea that new technological advances render certain social conventions obsolete. For example, the effectively limitless availability of energy that would result from the development of controlled nuclear fusion would make it unnecessary to limit access to energy resources. In essence, energy would become free. This melding of scientific and social speculation is clearly present in the novel Voyage from Yesteryear (strongly influenced by Eric Frank Russell's famous story "And Then There Were None"), which describes the contact between a high-tech anarchist society on a planet in the Alpha Centauri system, with a starship sent from Earth by a dictatorial government. The story uses many elements of civil disobedience.
James Hogan died unexpectedly from a heart attack at his home in Ireland.
Hogan was was raised in the Portobello Road area on the west side of London. After leaving school at the age of sixteen, he worked various odd jobs until, after receiving a scholarship, he began a five-year program at the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough covering the practical and theoretical sides of electrical, electronic, and mechanical engineering. He first married at the age of twenty, and he has had three other subsequent marriages and fathered six children.
Hogan worked as a design engineer for several companies and eventually moved into sales in the 1960s, travelling around Europe as a sales engineer for Honeywell. In the 1970s he joined the Digital Equipment Corporation's Laboratory Data Processing Group and in 1977 moved to Boston, Massachusetts to run its sales training program. He published his first novel, Inherit the Stars, in the same year to win an office bet. He quit DEC in 1979 and began writing full time, moving to Orlando, Florida, for a year where he met his third wife Jackie. They then moved to Sonora, California.
Hogan's style of science fiction is usually hard science fiction. In his earlier works he conveyed a sense of what science and scientists were about. His philosophical view on how science should be done comes through in many of his novels; theories should be formulated based on empirical research, not the other way around. If a theory does not match the facts, it is theory that should be discarded, not the facts. This is very evident in the Giants series, which begins with the discovery of a 50,000 year-old human body on the Moon. This discovery leads to a series of investigations, and as facts are discovered, theories on how the astronaut's body arrived on the Moon 50,000 years ago are elaborated, discarded, and replaced.
Hogan's fiction also reflects anti-authoritarian social views. Many of his novels have strong anarchist or libertarian themes, often promoting the idea that new technological advances render certain social conventions obsolete. For example, the effectively limitless availability of energy that would result from the development of controlled nuclear fusion would make it unnecessary to limit access to energy resources. In essence, energy would become free. This melding of scientific and social speculation is clearly present in the novel Voyage from Yesteryear (strongly influenced by Eric Frank Russell's famous story "And Then There Were None"), which describes the contact between a high-tech anarchist society on a planet in the Alpha Centauri system, with a starship sent from Earth by a dictatorial government. The story uses many elements of civil disobedience.
James Hogan died unexpectedly from a heart attack at his home in Ireland.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
November 25, 2012
The story was ok, but the crap science behind it all absolutely ruined it. I get that the book is fiction, but this book was off the deep end. Got about 70% of the way in and couldn't stand it anymore.
February 28, 2021
A little clunky, but worth reading
Read
January 29, 2023not one of his best, contrived plot points
August 3, 2014
Hurl.
Hurl the book into the fire.
Hurled up my dinner trying to read it.
Bad in so many different ways.
This is my second Hogan book and both have been awful. Based on his reputation they shouldn't be this bad.
Sure, the scientific theories are pretty crackpot. I can get past that. But Hogan's theory of a society on a moon of Saturn that is based only on merit and only corrupted by the evil humans migrating from earth after a catastrophe, interesting, but implausible. The theory that everyone shares because they are enlightened scientists....BS.
To write anymore feels like it would somehow validate this book.
Hurl the book into the fire.
Hurled up my dinner trying to read it.
Bad in so many different ways.
This is my second Hogan book and both have been awful. Based on his reputation they shouldn't be this bad.
Sure, the scientific theories are pretty crackpot. I can get past that. But Hogan's theory of a society on a moon of Saturn that is based only on merit and only corrupted by the evil humans migrating from earth after a catastrophe, interesting, but implausible. The theory that everyone shares because they are enlightened scientists....BS.
To write anymore feels like it would somehow validate this book.
February 18, 2010
This book made me think about power struggles in society. The Terran society is based on exploitation and power. The Kronians is based on ability and contribution. The Terrans try to use force to gain control over the Kronian society. The Kronian way reminded me of "pure Communism" that is classesless and oppression-free.
December 23, 2014
I really liked The Cradle of Saturn (the predecessor to this novel) but this one was really hard to get through. The utopia of the Kronians seemed too implausible to carry the story through.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews