Thoughts after reading Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons.

Hyperion is a far future science fiction novel by Dan Simmons released in 1989. The book was well received and won the Hugo Award. The story follows seven pilgrims on their journey to the labyrinthine world of Hyperion.

cover art for the first novel

On this backwater world The Shrike, a mysterious creature worshipped by some as a god, watches over the Time Tombs. These tombs were send back through time from a possible future to save or annihilate human kind. Each pilgrim has his/her own reason to wish for an audience with the Shrike and the first book tells the tales of each pilgrim while they are on their journey to meet their fate.

There's Lennart Hoyd, a catholic priest on search for his missing mentor, there's Martin Silenus, the poet who's the only one who know Old Earth before its destruction in the Big Mistake. There's the soldier, Fedmahn Kassad, a Palestinian from Mars and the Jewish scholar, Sol Weintraub, who hopes to save his daughter from the backwards aging disease Merlin's sickness. The Consul, who's not introduced by another name in the entire two books, has reasons that go far beyond mere diplomacy. The detective, Brawne Lamia, seeks truth for the murder of her lover. They are lead by the Templar Hed Masteen, prophet of a futuristic religion and captain of a so called Tree Ship. Besides the pilgrims there is a wider cast of supporting characters that detail the different galactic factions of humanity, the autonomous artificial intelligence 'TechnoCore' which governs all tech intergalactic human civilization relies on and the Ousters, pariahs once human, now mutant barbarians that were driven out of The Web of human colonized planets.

This is how fans imagine the Templar Tree Ship Yggdrasil.

The backstories are all worth reading and bring understanding of the wider universe Simmons created. This is a world in which so called 'far caster' technology allows for instant transportation spanning light years of travel. Good old faster than light-travel (called Hawking's Drive after contemporary professor Stephen Hawking) plays a secondary role here. 'Fatline' technology is something like a universe (here called The Web) wide internet. Simmons does not introduce these terms, he takes them for granted so it takes a while for the reader to understand all the hard sci-fi terms.

Hyperion was split in two books for reasons I do not know. The story continues in The Fall of Hyperion released a year later in 1990. While the first book covers the pilgrim's motives and the journey the second plays in the Valley of the Time Tombs, where the pilgrims fight for their survival, the second book introduces a new character, narrated in the first person, who in his dreams sees what is going on with the pilgrims on Hyperion but also participates the interstellar diplomacy section of the story. This sounds complicated and results in use of tempo which is at times a little confusing. Overall, however, it is working.

Simmons' Hyperion Cantos pays tribute to John Keats, a 19th century poet from England, in very interesting ways. Not unlike Stephen King, who created his magnum opus The Dark Tower after a poem by Robert Browning , Simmons achieves to take inspiration from the past to create something completely new in a science fiction world.

The four armed time travelling menace called The Shrike.

My verdict after reading the first two books is a good one. The book introduces a fantastic world with believable characters and reminds even a little of the 'A Song of Ice and Fire' series by George R.R. Martin in terms of realpolitik and war. Ideas like the huge planet wide labyrinth keep the experience fresh and mind expanding. The Shrike, also referenced to as The Lord of Pain, is more than a simple killing machine like the Terminator and its motives, if it has these, are never clear. I was very well entertained and started reading the third novel in this four part series, Endymion, the same day. So Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion get a clear recommendation for sci-fi fans from me.

On a side note: At this point I don't want to draw a comparison with Frank Herbert's Dune series, which involves similar elements, just yet. Will include these thoughts after finishing the series. There's also a TV show coming.