The Night's Dawn Trilogy
By Peter F. Hamilton
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Background Information
The Night’s Dawn series takes place around the year 2600 C.E. Humans have broken into two primary cultural groups: Adamist and Edenist.
The Edenist movement began
with the development of the affinity gene and bitek construction. It was
discovered that genes could be constructed that would allow humans to create
organic, sentient habitats that could be tailored specifically to the needs
of its inhabitants. The affinity gene went hand in hand with life in these
bitek habitats, allowing the inhabitants to live very openly and peacefully
by communicating telepathically and empathically with each other and their
habitats. 
The creator of this technology, Wing-Tsit Chong, transferred his memories
(theoretically a duplicate of his personality) into the neural strata of
Eden, the first habitat, in the year 2090 and quickly set a norm for all
Edenists. The Unified Church viewed
this as an unnatural deviation from God’s plan for human souls and
excommunicated all those with affinity genes. Earth abandoned bitek
research while Edenists continued to pursue it, creating a large rift
between the two societies. The Edenists believe their way of life is
utopian because they hide nothing from one another and do not fear death
because their personalities can be transferred into the neural strata of
habitats and other bitek constructs.
Adamist societies stem from the population of Earth that rejected bitek, and so developed very differently than Edenists. They primarily live on planets that were colonized due to the overpopulation and pollution of Earth and rely on computer and nano technology.
Antimatter was created in 2205 and was used as a very efficient fuel; but it soon became obvious that the dangers of antimatter being used as a weapon outweighed its benefits. It was outlawed, and the Confederation was created and joined by most Adamist planets in order to ensure that it would not be produced and used illegally. The Confederation later expanded to include Edenists and took on peacekeeping responsibilities beyond the task of policing antimatter use.
The Saldana family, though not Edenist, germinated a habitat called Tranquility near the Ruin Ring (once the planet of the extinct Laymil) in hopes of discovering what caused their planet to be destroyed. Ione Saldana takes her place as Tranquility's leader as the trilogy opens.
Earth's atmosphere has been made volatile and incapable of supporting all but the most basic plant life. Giant domes have been constructed around several large cities to provide breathable air for their occupants and to protect them from the massive storms that ravage the planet. The galaxy is being colonized by immigrants seeking to escape the damaged and overpopulated planet. The planet is under the authority of one government, Govcentral, which is actually a puppet of an oligarchy whose members have survived for centuries by transferring their memories via the affinity genes into new cloned bodies when they approach death.
Lalonde is a jungle planet that has been open for colonization for only a couple decades, so the families that abandon Earth in hopes of making new lives for themselves there are faced with hard lives of physical labor as they attempt to create an infrastructure on the planet.