Pandora's Star

Pandora's Star is a science fiction novel by the British writer Peter F. Hamilton, published in 2004. It is the first book of his Commonwealth Saga.

The year is 2380. The Intersolar Commonwealth occupies a sphere of stars some four hundred light-years in diameter and contains more than six hundred worlds, interconnected by a web of transport tunnels known as wormholes.

At the farthest edge of the Commonwealth, the astronomer Dudley Bose observes something that should not be possible: a star more than a thousand light-years away vanishes. It does not go supernova and it does not collapse into a black hole. It simply disappears.

Because the location is too distant to be reached through a wormhole, a faster-than-light starship called the Second Chance is sent to find out what has happened and whether it is a threat to the Commonwealth. The ship is commanded by Wilson Kime, a former NASA pilot who has been rejuvenated five times and whose best years are centuries behind him. The mission is opposed by the Guardians of Selfhood, a cult with its own view of what humanity should be doing.