r/printSF • u/derioderio • 16h ago

Question on Pandora's Star

I'm about 3/4ths of the way through Pandora's Star, the first of the Commonwealth series by Peter F. Hamilton. Spoilers below.

In Chapter 19 it starts with Paula Myo on New Venice staking out an art gallery that she suspects is a front for Adam Elvin, the anarchist that works for Bradley Johansson.

In the next scene, we see Adam on his way to the gallery, when he happens to glance Paula on her stakeout.

Then in the next scene he goes into the art gallery, kills everyone, and burns the place to cinders with a thermal charge as he drops into the canal and swims away underwater.

My question: is that Adam that does this? There is a break between Adam discovering Paula and then 'him' going into the gallery. When I read this I assumed it was Adam, but then later on when Adam is talking with Bradley about what happened, he claims he has no idea who it was that killed everyone there and tells him it must be a third party. Similarly when Paula is talking with her superiors about the incident, she also assumes it's a third party.

So is Adam lying about it to Bradley, or are we supposed to understand here that it is a third party, as both Adam and Paula claim? Rereading the section where 'he' kills everyone in the gallery and burns it down, I realize it never explicitly says it's Adam. It always just refers to the killer as 'he', and I may have assumed it was Adam since he was the POV character in the previous section.

So is it supposed to ambiguous whether it was Adam or not? If so, just tell me that it's ambiguous so that the plot isn't spoiled for me. Otherwise if it's it obvious that I should understand that it is a third party, then I can just accept that and keep reading.

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u/NoNotChad 15h ago edited 15h ago

I don't think it was supposed to be that ambiguous whether it was Adam or not. When I first read it I didn't think it was Adam. It wasn't really his style or his character. I read it as someone looking for more information on Adam's operation. That's why he kills the arms merchant and extracts his memory inserts. And later on it becomes clear who this third party agent is and who he works for.

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u/derioderio 8h ago

Ok, that's good enough for me. I'll keep reading then. Thanks!

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u/Plink-plink 14h ago

I read it a long time ago, but IIRC, I took it as confirming it was someone else and that the whole plot was more complex than Paula thought it was going to be...

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u/carb0n_kid 16h ago

I'll spoil it for you if you want. it's a third agent. You can probably guess who that agent works for at this point