Characters / Commonwealth Universe

aka: Void Trilogy

Individual characters from Peter F. Hamilton's Commonwealth Universe: the Commonwealth Saga, the Void Trilogy, and the Chronicle of the Fallers.

For a breakdown of the various factions and their motivations, see Commonwealth Universe Factions.

Introduced in the Commonwealth Saga

Dudley Bose

An astronomer monitoring the Dyson Pair stars. He makes a discovery regarding them which kicks off the series.

• Evil Twin: After Dudley's loss at the Dyson Pair and subsequent re-life, there are two versions of him - the re-life clone, who's immature and unlikeable (albeit in a rather tragic way), and the Bose motile, which may well be Dudley's continuing original consciousness housed in a Prime motile, which is a very alien neurochemistry for a human mind, giving it a rather different outlook.
• Fire-Forged Friends With Benefits: How Dudley and Mellanie's relationship can be summed up, as they both survived the Prime invasion (though Mellanie also has an ulterior motive for working with Dudley).
• Morality Pet: Dudley, usually unintentionally, brings out Mellanie's better qualities.
• Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: Though she is his lover, not his wife, many perceive Dudley and Mellanie's relationship as this.

Gore Burnelli

In the mid-21st century, Gore was a corporate executive. By the late 24th of the Commonwealth Saga, he's the patriarch of an Earth Grand Family, one step below an Intersolar Dynasty. In the Void Trilogy's late 36th century, Gore is the leader of ANA's Conservative Faction and one of the founding fathers of ANA itself.

• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Does this using the Anomine elevation mechanism. It's outright stated that being post-physical is so different that post-physicals don't talk with humans. Gore is not seen again after his elevation.
• Killed Off for Real: Arguably. Gore in his original body goes post-physical using the Anomine elevation mechanism. The sequence is written in the terms one might use to describe death ("after a while, he was gone") and Justine certainly reacts as if he were dead, mourning for him. However, Gore's ANA personality remains active. Whether Gore has died is a heavily metaphysical question.

Justine Burnelli

Adam Elvin

A pessimistic, cynical arms dealer and quartermaster of the Guardians of Selfhood.

LionWalker Eyre

• Sequel Hook: LionWalker has been weaving in and out of the Commonwealth Universe narrative since the start of Pandora's Star, but he's apparently never affected anything big and his overall importance remains uncertain.

Hoshe Finn

The High Angel

A sentient alien starship. It was built by the Raiel as a lifeboat in case the galaxy were to be consumed by the Void.

• Characterization Marches On: The High Angel has a controlling AI in the Commonwealth Saga, but it interacts with much less personality in the Void Trilogy. Instead, it serves mainly as a routing and information system similar to human software, deferring real decisions and communication to Captain Qatux.
• Living Ship: It's either this or a very advanced alien AI.

Ozzie Fernandez Isaacs

With Nigel Sheldon, co-inventor of wormhole technology.

• Audience Surrogate: Ozzie and Nigel were both born in the early 21st century, and while they don't make much overt reference to it, their attitudes are relatively close to the 21st-century mainstream in certain ways. For instance Ozzie, as well as Wilson Kime, considers re-life philosophically unsound, and sees bodyloss as actual, permanent death - most Commonwealthers believe someone is only dead if they die without a usable backup.
• Black and Nerdy: Half-black actually, and also the supreme nerd - the Steve Wozniak of wormhole technology to Nigel's Steve Jobs. The comparison is all but made at one point.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: In addition to his carefree attitude, when not working, Ozzie tends to explore the Commonwealth and get into adventures both helpful and destructive.
• Functional Addict: Given his indulgent nature and the fact that he maintains his job Ozzie definitely qualifies.
• The Hedonist: In addition to his love life, Ozzie is also an alcoholic and has experimentally tired every drug to the point of helping make new narcotics to experience a new high.
• Maligned Mixed Marriage: Nigel states Ozzie is born as the result of one; he is half-black and half-latino and from San Francisco, where at the time the two ethnicities apparently don't openly mix.
• Really Gets Around: According to Nigel, Ozzie has bedded an insane number of women. Considering that the Commonwealth is a Free-Love Future and Nigel himself has a harem numbering in the hundreds that he regularly replaces as the women age, this is saying something big.

Bradley Johansson

Leader of the Guardians of Selfhood rebel group on Far Away.

• Manipulative Bastard: Bradley smoothly talks his way in and out of many situations.

Wilson Kime

Pilot of NASA's first manned mission to Mars, he was one-upped by Nigel Sheldon. In the modern age, he is a corporate executive and becomes a starship captain.

• Always Someone Better: He did not take it well when Nigel and Ozzie one-upped the first manned mission to Mars with their wormhole technology.
• Disappeared Dad: He reflects upon his deceased father just before setting foot on Mars.

Kazimir Mc Foster

A young member of the Guardians of Selfhood.

• Plot-Triggering Death: His death sets off the events at the beginning of Judas Unchained.
• Sacrificial Lion: After a few viewpoint chapters, Kazimir is unceremoniously shot dead at the end of Pandora's Star.

Oscar Monroe

A starship captain.

MorningLightMountain

The controlling consciousness of the Prime species. Once it was one among many; by the time the story wraps around, it has conquered and absorbed all others.

• Absolute Xenophobe: Like all Primes, it instinctively believes that all animal life other than itself is a threat to its survival and expansion.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: While never made sympathetic, its viewpoint chapters make clear that many of its motives are based on a warped worldview that it honestly believes in.
• Omnicidal Maniac: It is hardwired to view other organisms as competition and threats. Therefore, it aims to expand endlessly, killing every living thing that could conceivably compete with it, until it is the only life form in the universe.
• Starfish Aliens: Primes are based around radial symmetry and are divided into two main physical types: Motiles and Immotiles. Motiles are mobile workers with pear shaped bodies, four arms, four legs, four mouths and four sensor stalks with eyes, hearing and smell organs and a tissue allowing them to link their nervous systems. They are smart enough to use tools and understand complex tasks but are not sapient. Four Motiles can fuse into an Immotile, a stationary sapient creature which a large brain, reproductive organs and sensor stalks to instruct Motiles. Multiple Immotile units can link themselves together (either directly or electronically) and work in tandem, becoming one mind.

Morton

Convicted murderer of his wife, Tara Jennifer Shaheef.

• Ambition Is Evil: Willing to murder his wife and her lover and go to extreme lengths to cover it up.
• Boxed Crook: Is released from suspension, where he was imprisoned for the double murder, to help in the fight against the Starflyer.
• May–December Romance: With Mellanie, who is decades younger than him.

Paula Myo

A Chief Investigator at the Intersolar Commonwealth's Serious Crimes Directorate.

• Because I'm Good At It: Paula is genetically optimised as a police officer.
• Benevolent Boss: Paula is widely thought of as cold and professional to a fault, but she has a good working relationship within her team and inspires loyalty in those she works with closely.
• Characterization Marches On: In the Commonwealth Saga, Paula's character is essentially defined by her inbuilt genetic presets. By the time of the Void Trilogy, she's had them toned down to give her more freedom to act.
• Commanding Coolness: During her time with Commonwealth Navy Intelligence, Paula has the rank of Commander.
• Determinator: Genetically engineered to be one.
• Frontline General: Almost always on the ground with her officers during her operations.
• Experienced Protagonist: Paula is both a main POV character and one of the most feared detectives alive. She's been in law enforcement for almost a century and a half - the story starts in 2380, and Paula was a junior officer investigating the Great Wormhole Heist of 2243.
• Iron Lady
• The Last DJ: Paula earns the enmity of her superiors and becomes this.
• Workaholic

Qatux

A Raiel, who is a helpless addict of human memories.

As of the Void Trilogy, a much more together Qatux captains High Angel.

• Basement-Dweller: His fellow Raiel consider him somewhere between this and a drug addict.
• The Captain
• Seeing Through Another's Eyes: In Judas Unchained, Qatux, who (as a Raiel) is huge and of limited mobility by human standards, shares the senses of Tiger Pansy. He can interact with her remotely (for example by prodding her in specific directions) but it's never clear whether he could achieve full body control if he tried.

Mellanie Rescorai

Starting out as one of Morton's disposable floozies, Mellanie becomes an intrepid reporter and agent of SI.

• Dumb Blonde: Played straight in Pandora's Star. In Judas Unchained onward, Mellanie's around average intelligence and solves all of her problems with various combinations of money, her sex appeal or information from more knowledgeable people such as Morton, Dudley and later SI.
• Everyone Loves Blondes: She has blonde hair and her sex appeal and charm make her popular despite her personality.
• Full-Frontal Assault: At the end of Pandora's Star, after having her body given gold electroplating by SI taking control of her digital implants, the Primes attack her, but only succeed in destroying her clothes. The electroplating is not only skin tight, it's anatomically correct.
• Gold Digger: Mellanie didn't enter into a relationship with Morton for his personality. Also, see Sex for Services below.
• Jerkass: Downplayed. While she isn't deliberately cruel and she can be charming, Mellanie is stuck-up, often selfish, slutty and a schemer.
• Ms. Fanservice: Mellanie is a tall, slim yet curvy woman who uses Sex for Services. In addition to her reporting career and work for Morton, has also starred in several racy shows where her roles include five-sense virtual reality sex scenes.
• Sex for Services: Every time Mellanie needs something from a man, she always at least considers using sex or her sex appeal to get it. She still does it when she's not working for Morton and she's in a relationship with Dudley.
• Touched by Vorlons: At the end of Pandora's Star, SI forms a direct uplink between itself and Mellanie's digital implants and cybernetic enhancements. This includes the ability to shoot energy bolts and a tough golden second skin.

Nigel Sheldon

With Ozzie Fernandez Isaacs, co-inventor of wormhole technology, Nigel is the driving force behind Compression Space Transport (CST), the corporation which owns the majority of wormhole facilities in the Commonwealth. Between this and the fact that Ozzie rarely involves himself with the business or political sides, he is arguably the most powerful man alive.

• Honest Corporate Executive: Nigel is never implied, in his POV or out, to have done anything notably shady.
• Work Hard, Play Hard: CEO of humanity's largest and by far most profitable corporation, CST. Host of a large harem numbering in the hundreds and often hosts parties in a mansion the size of a large town.
• Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense: Sometimes sees Ozzie as this, which speaks volumes given his own hedonism.

The SI

The Sentient Intelligence, a super-AI which evolved out of Nigel and Ozzie's wormhole control software. Having retreated to its private world of Vinmar, the SI maintains cordial if distant relations with humanity. It is a major supporting player in the Commonwealth Saga; by the time of the Void Trilogy, however, it is happy to seem irrelevant.

• Mission Control: In the Commonwealth Saga, the SI plays this role to Mellanie Rescorai.
• Sibling Rivalry: The relationship between ANA and the SI has this vibe. Structurally they are really quite similar - part-AI, part-human hiveminds which act as a single unit - but ANA strongly dislikes the SI, does not consider it genuinely alive, and is paranoid about its interference.

Catherine Stewart (The Cat)

• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: While it's made clear that the Cat is a bad person from the get-go, during the Commonwealth Saga she's treated as a Sociopathic Hero. By the time of the Void Trilogy, she's worse - and it's implied that nothing has changed.

Mark Vernon

A somewhat hapless starship engineer.

The Starflyer

The nebulous alien force which the Guardians of Selfhood are pledged to defend against.

In reality, the Starflyer is [[spoiler:a Prime immotile, MorningLightMountain17,735, sent on an interstellar recon mission. When the Dyson Pair barriers came up, it found itself cut off and on its own. In the hundreds of years it was out of contact, its views changed. As villainous as its originator, the Starflyer is more devious, and now counts MorningLightMountain on its kill list; to that end, it successfully manipulates humanity and the Primes into what it hopes will be a war of mutual annihilation.

• Brains and Brawn: To an extent. While the Starflyer and MorningLightMountain are both Prime factions, the Starflyer embraces technological enhancements that MorningLightMountain would consider heretical, such as genetic engineering and cybernetic enhancement. Where MorningLightMountain simply uses overwhelming numbers and brute force, the Starflyer uses infiltration and subversion to turn humans into "human motiles".

Introduced in the Void Trilogy

Aaron

A brainwashed operative of a faction unknown even to him.

He's actually Lennox Mc Foster, son of Bruce from the Commonwealth Saga, although considering what's happened to him it's anybody's guess whether he can really be called Lennox anymore. The unknown faction running him is the Conservative Faction of ANA - or more specifically, Conservative Faction leader Gore Burnelli directly.

Araminta

A civilian who ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time.

• Apocalypse Maiden: When she takes over Living Dream, Oscar and the Guardians are forced to assume she's become this. In reality, she's attempting to sabotage the movement from the inside.
• Gender Bender: Borrows one of Mr Bovey's bodies.
  • First Law of Gender Bending: Invoked.

Kazimir Burnelli

Commanding admiral of the Commonwealth Navy.

The Delivery Man

An agent of ANA's Conservative Faction.

• No Name Given: It's implied he has one, but we never hear it.
• Only Sane Man: Of all the ANA agents and personalities, he is probably the least overtly maladjusted - which turns him into something of a Butt-Monkey later in the trilogy when he's forced to work more closely with his gleefully insane bosses and enemies.

Edeard

Edeard lives on Querencia, within the Void. Edeard's life is related to Inigo through a series of dreams, which Inigo shares with the Commonwealth; these revelations form the basis of the Living Dream movement.

Ilanthe

The leader of ANA's Accelerator Faction.

• Dimension Lord: Aspires to do this by using hypertech to apply the Void's laws across all of spacetime and then use its rewinding function as she pleases.

Inigo

Inigo's dreams of Edeard's adventures within the Void form the basis of the Living Dream movement.

Marius

An agent of ANA's Accelerator Faction.

• Faux Affably Evil: While Ilanthe and Gore seem, at least initially, to have a working professional relationship, and Neskia is coolly professionally, it is made clear that Marius is actively unlikeable.

Troblum

A remarkably socially inept physicist, with a near-obsessive interest in the Starflyer War.

• Collector of the Strange: Troblum's special interest is the Starflyer War (that is, the Commonwealth Saga's war), and he collects items from it with fanatical intensity - up to and including Commonwealth capital ship weapons and Isabella Halgarth's apartment on Arevalo.
• Fat Bastard: "Bastard" is a little unfair - Troblum is not a bad person - but he's one of the less pleasant characters and he's also the only one noted to be overweight.
  • Fat Idiot: He is consistently portrayed as naive, unworldly, and completely lacking in social graces. Averted in the strict sense, though - he is a competent and useful physicist and dedicated historian.
• Hikikomori: A 36th-century neckbeard.

Mr Bovey

A businessman who becomes Araminta's lover. A multiple - a single human mind spread out over many bodies.

• Last-Name Basis: Or possibly Only One Name. Even in Araminta-POV chapters, he's only ever referred to as Mr Bovey; general contextual evidence implies it's the only name he has.

Introduced in the Chronicle of the Fallers

Laura Brandt

A physicist working aboard the Brandt Dynasty colony ship Vermillion, which arrives at and colonises the Void world of Bienvenido.

Slvasta

Slvasta is born on Bienvenido three thousand years (Void time) after its colonisation. As a young soldier, an encounter with a Faller leaves him traumatised and obsessed. He is the Chronicle of the Fallers' equivalent to Edeard, but much darker.

Bethaneve

Slvasta's lover, a clerk in the Tax Office of Varlan, capital of Bienvenido.

Philious

The latest in the long, now-hereditary line of Captains ruling Bienvenido, descended from Cornelius, the Vermillion's original captain.

Kysandra

A sixteen-year-old girl on Bienvenido, Kysandra's life is forever changed when she crosses paths with Nigel Sheldon.