story identification - Book ID: Astronauts and Lab Students can create portals through space

Desperate to locate and re-read exceptional book/series, but cannot remember the title.

The high concept: The U.S. has just sent the first successful expedition to Mars, and it has just landed. As the astronauts make their initial exploration outside their ship, a tear in the fabric of space opens up right in front of them, and they look through to the insides of a laboratory (at a California university?) and two students who just figured out how to create arbitrary portals between two points in the Universe.

The rest of the novel/series is a consequence of this breakthrough. But I can't remember the author and title(s). Surely someone reading this forum will remember it well! TIA.

(Reposted from the SFSite F&SF forums.)

Answer

That's the beginning of the Commonwealth Saga by Peter F Hamilton, which comes up so often in story identification requests that it should perhaps be a FAQ.

Comments

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