Hyperion won a Hugo award. Nearly every review I’ve read of this book rates it a classic. Nearly everyone I’ve talked to like it. My reaction to the book was mostly what does everyone see in it?
I don’t really get it. I didn’t think it was awful, but I didn’t really ever get into it. Is it the fact that Simmons copied elements of storytelling from past masters? It seems to me that he ought to do it better to get credit.
In the far future, the Hegemony is the galactic human government. They have been in a cold war with the Ousters, humans living in interstellar space, for centuries. The Hegemony controls most planets, with a number of planets having protectorate or colony status. The main set of worlds are linked together via farcasting
portals. The outlying planets, such as Hyperion, require interstellar space ships to get to them. So it takes years, even with the use of faster than light Hawking drives
. The Hegemony depends on the Technocore to run its technological systems. The Technocore consists of computers that have achieved sentient status and seceded from the Hegemony, but maintains an intimate relationship with it through the use of fatline
communication technology.
This is a frame tale
. In other words, there are multiple stories that tie together to form an interlocked whole. War is imminent and likely will occur in the space around Hyperion. Seven travelers journey to the planet on the last allowed pilgrimage to the Time Tombs, where a mythical creature called the Shrike lives. The Time Tombs are surrounded by some sort of field that allows time to travel backward within it. The Shrike sometimes emerges to kill. The Shrike church pilgrimages have a number of pilgrims travel to the area. If they meet the Shrike, one of them will have his wish fulfilled. The others will die. Each of the seven tells the others their story including what they intend to ask of the Shrike when they arrive, since they are strangers to each other. They also hope to figure out why they were selected for the pilgrimage.
The seven pilgrims are:
- Lenar Hoyt, a Catholic priest whose mentor hoped to reverse the long decline of influence of the Catholic Church, but was killed on Hyperion.
- Fedmahn Kassad, a military man who found himself on Hyperion and saved by the Shrike during a military confrontation.
- Martin Silenus, a poet who thinks he created the Shrike with his poems.
- Sol Weintraub, a Jewish university professor whose daughter had an unfortunate accident while studying the Time Tombs.
- Het Masteen, a starship captain. Simmons does not reveal his connection to Hyperion and the Shrike.
- Brawne Lamia is a private investigator. Her client is a confused renegade artificial intelligence create with John Keats’ personality as its core. The Technocore wants to keep him away from Hyperion, so he wants to go.
- The Consul is the former governor of Hyperion, but in the past he was the Hegemony
ambassador
to the Ousters.
Each of the stories is told in a different style. Lamia’s is S.F. noir, for instance. Kassad’s is military S.F. (i.e., soldiers in space). Supposedly this is the strong suit of the book, but I didn’t like the differing styles. Each of the individual stories was just too long too. Most of them clearly were going to a certain conclusion, particularly Weintraub’s and Lamia’s stories. I wished Simmons would have just gotten to the conclusions quicker, since I wasn’t getting any new insight through much of the details of the stories.
Again, not really that bad, but I had high expectations due to the accolades I’d found for the book.
Title: Hyperion
Author: Dan Simmons
Cover artist: Garry Ruddell
Series: Hyperion Cantos ; 1
Imprint / publisher: Spectra / Bantam / Random House
Format: Mass market paperback
Length: 482 p.
Publication date: December 1995 (originally June 1989)
ISBN-10: 0-553-28368-5
LC classification: PS3569.I47292 H97 1989
