Just finished Coalescent by Stephen Baxter. I’ve had this sitting on my bookshelf for a while *. After recently rereading the brilliant Hellstrom’s Hive by Frank Herbert, I was thinking about a sequel to the Herbert book. I’d love to read more about the human colony in HH. What did the Government do about the hive and Project 40? What happened when the first swarm left the hive? How did the Outsiders react to the swarm? What happened to the normal humans as the number of hives increased? Did the hives take over all the Earth? Were there conflicts between hives in the future? Did any hives raid others and make slaves of the drones (like insects do)? Did colonies spread out into space in the far future? And so on. There is a lot of scope to tell more stories in the Hellstrom Universe I think.
So I did a search to see if Frank Herbert had ever talked about a sequel. And turned up a Wikipedia page on Stephen Baxter’s Coalescent. The Wikipedia entry references HH in the See Also section of the page. By no means is Coalescent a sequel to HH. But it does have at its core a similar idea. Both focus on a colony of humans who have built habitats underground over time and as a result of selective breeding have adapted and evolved in a different way. HH is a harder edged sci-fi story than Coalescent. The latter has two stories that come together at the end. One of set in modern times and outlines a mans search for a twin-sister he only recently discovered existed. The other tells the story of a child, then women, who grew up in post-Roman Britain and of her fight to preserve her family. A fight that ends up in Rome itself and the founding of the underground colony when Rome is sacked. The 2 story lines do come together at the end. I really enjoyed it. Recommended. I’ve got the 3 follow-up books on order (in fact they tried to deliver them when i was out, so I’ll have to go collect them from the post office).
I also found an interview with Kevin Anderson, who is working on the Dune prequels and sequels with Brian Herbert, that he would like to explore the HH universe at some point. Can’t find it at present to link to it.
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* Actually I’ve got just over 60 (yes sixty!) books at present that I’ve bought over the last year that I want to read. There are 22 popular science books, 36 fiction and about 10 in business, atheism and stuff. That’s going to be my recreation over the summer. So expect a few posts in the Books section here!!