Dan Simmons (1948–2026)

'Hyperion' is one of the SF Masterworks series that I somehow didn't get round to during my teenage years. Multiple friends have recommended it to me over the years, and I've enjoyed several of Simmons' other novels. However, both my experience of [b:Ilium|3973|Ilium (Ilium, #1)|Dan Simmons|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1390894862l/3973._SY75_.jpg|3185401] & [b:Olympos|3972|Olympos (Ilium, #2)|Dan show more Simmons|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388216654l/3972._SY75_.jpg|1537178] and my friends' advice agree: Simmons has fantastic ideas but struggles to stick the landing. I was therefore pre-warned that the sequels to 'Hyperion' are not of equally high quality. That's especially disappointing because the novel sets up such a complicated, fascinating world full of mysteries and dangers, then ends on an absolute cliff-hanger. As I continued reading and noted how many pages remained, it became clear this would be the case. It frustrated me, as on its own merits 'Hyperion' would be a five star sci-fi novel with a brilliant structure.

It borrows from The Canterbury Tales (which I was forced to read at school and disliked) by setting a small cast of strangers on a pilgrimage and having them all tell a story from their life. Each story is a brilliant flight of imagination and together they cover so many overlapping and intersecting themes, including colonialism, nostalgia, artistic inspiration, war, religion, and the nature of time. While explaining how the character telling it ended up on a pilgrimage to Hyperion, successive tales paint a picture of instability and conflict between different groups of humans and artificial intelligences a few hundred years in the future. They also dart between genres, sometimes within one story. Noir mystery, cyberpunk, family tragedy, body horror, decadent drama, and political machinations are all juggled adeptly. There are some fantastic action scenes and genuinely frightening moments. Thinking back, it's astonishing that the narrative retains coherence, yet everything manages to revolve around the planet Hyperion and the deadly monster living there: the Shrike. It was perhaps a masterstroke to recount multiple terrifying encounters with the Shrike without explaining it at all.

Yet the final scene, in which the pilgrims approach the Time Tombs after watching a space battle that seemingly strands them on Hyperion, left me on tenterhooks to an annoying extent. I have so many questions and it's a shame that the answers aren't likely to be satisfactory. I'll read the sequels at some point, perhaps once libraries return again. 'Hyperion' is excellent, but the reader cannot really enjoy it as a standalone novel. show less

Like Frederik Forsyth's The Day of the Jackal, this is a thriller whose plot is bounded by the historical record. In the Forsyth novel, we know the Jackal's plot is not going to succeed. Charles de Gaulle is not going to be assassinated. And here we know that our hero, Paha Sapa ("Black Hills" in Lakota) is not going to destroy Mount Rushmore.

This is not an alternate history. It is not a secret history in the style of Tim Powers with secret groups and motives of historical characters not show more those on record.

It is the sort of historical novel in which our hero careens through some iconic and important historic events or hears about them secondhand: the Battles of the Little Bighorn and Wounded Knee, the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, and the building of the Brooklyn Bridge.

In the first sentence, the ghost of Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer enters Paha Sapa's mind. That historical figure, who gets several chapters of his own which range from erotic remembrances of his wife Libbie to a poignant observation that her life was wasted in dedication to his memory, infests Paha Sapa's head for decades. Paha Sapa has a peculiar psychic talent that allows him, upon touching someone, to know their personal history and future.

This runs him afoul of another historical figure, Crazy Horse, portrayed here unsympathetically, indeed likened to the Nazis in one passage. The ten year old Paha Sapa flees to his name sake to receive a sacred vision. There, on the Six Grandfathers, what we know as Mount Rushmore, he receives a vision that compels him, eventually, to plot the destruction of Gutzon Borglum's work.

The character of Borglum is one of the highlights here. Brilliant, manipulative and with secrets of his own, he works with Paha Sapa on the Rusmore project.

The story careens back and forth in time in Paha Sapa's life, the tension escalating in the final third. At novel's end, the story that begins with blood shed ends in sort of a reconciliation between white and Indian.

Simmons' novel does not subscribe to any of the false pieties regarding American Indians: peaceful, egalitarian, and wise stewards of the environment. Indeed, some of those notions are challenged.

It is a surprisingly suspenseful novel and will probably not only appeal to historical fiction fans (which I am not) as well as fans of historical fantasy. show less

This is a favorite I have to say. I read this all the way back in the 90's and was completely bowled over. How could I not be, I love classic lit. The writing top notch, and even though it's fairly long I breezed though it. I love the shift in style with each story, and he really does shift his style for each story. There are likeable and unlikeable characters. They are nuanced and change and feel alive. The various sights are unique and feel lived in. Most of the stories are referential and show more they feel like a love letter to the genre that they refer to. Highly recommended! show less

4/5

The story of the seven last pilgrims sent to the Time Tombs on the mysterious and far-away world of Hyperion, where the metal instrument of death known as the Shrike prowls. As every other review of Hyperion has already said, it's told in the style of The Canterbury Tales, something that I've never read myself. Each of the pilgrims, in turn, tell the story about why they were personally selected for the journey, and the events surrounding their connection with the planet or with the show more Shrike. In my opinion, this style of storytelling is one of the strongest elements of the novel. It's just an engaging way to read a story. However, not all of the stories are created equal.

The first story, the priests tale, is one of the best novellas that I've ever read, one of the best SF stories I've read. It's the major reason that Hyperion is getting a high score from me. It's something that could totally be read independently from the rest of the text, so at least there's that. The writing is stellar. Simmons shows that he can craft prose that is not only beautiful, but also engages the reader and tells them about the world at the same time. There's a palpable sense of dread, and horror as the story plays itself out, and a high strung tension that made me completely incapable of putting it down. Simmons is especially fond of and good at describing lighting, including sunsets, light shafts in building, and the diffused quality of twilight. It's also incredibly memorable. The main character, the tesla trees, the cruciform, the Shrike himself. I only wish that the quality of this first tale continued into the rest of the book.

Some of the other tales are good to passable in quality, and while they aren't nearly as good as the first, they are at least good enough to deserve a place in the novel. The scholar(a father/daughter story), the consul(an environmental and colonization themed love story) , and the solider(a historical fiction action love story) all fit into this category to me. Sometimes they were a little bit on the nose, overly saccharine, sometimes even cringy, but they were fine for the most part. If nothing else, they were good ways to see glimpses into the larger world of the hegemony. I appreciate that the world of the hegemony feels expansive. I'm also glad that Simmons made an attempt to create historical events that took place between our known history, and the time of the book, something that I think is sorely missing from a lot of SF epics.

Unfortunately, both the scholars tale and the detectives tale were sore thumbs compared to the rest. The story of the scholars tale was interesting, and I think could have been passable, but the scholar himself is so annoying that he ruined the story. Some of this annoyance even bleeds out into the interstitial material in between the tales. Why make him so annoying to read? It seems to serve no purpose to the story or the character. If you don't find his character so annoying, I'm sure that his tale would be more palatable. The detectives tale was by far the worst. At times I was astounded that it was written by the same person who wrote the priests tale. Not only is the quality far lower than the rest, but the tone clashes with the rest as well. Maybe I just don't like detective stories, but Jesus, I think it's objectively bad.

Finally, I'd like to talk about the ending. It sucked. It's a total non-ending. I've talked about my opinion on books that are written with a sequel in mind, and they aren't favorable. I think the reader deserves some sort of closure after reading such a lengthy novel. As it is, Hyperion ends not just without an ending, but without a climax entirely. It's the literary form of spiteful edging. 500 pages of build up to an event that doesn't even happen. Now, I'll also note that I like a story that ends with some form of ambiguity, something that keeps you curious and thinking about it afterwards. If you've given enough pieces of puzzle to the reader, you can let them forms those last pieces themselves, entertaining multiples ways in which things fit together. This is not the case with Hyperion. Simmons gives you all of the edge pieces of the puzzle, with the middle completely missing, flips you off, and says "Guess you'll have to read the next one, dickhead".

This is probably the most negative review I've ever had for a book that I've rated so highly, and that speaks to how good the priests tale is. God, if only Simmons could've kept that same quality throughout. Or at least finished the book with some sort of conclusion. As it stands, Hyperion has some of the largest wasted potential I've ever seen. It could've been one of the gold standards of the genre, which I guess it still is for lots of folks. I still find myself struggling to reconcile these diametrically opposed feelings I have towards it. Ultimately though, I think that's a point in it's favor. At least it elicits strong opinions, in both directions. Hyperion is easy to talk about passionately. There's a lot of things you can say about it, but hey, at least it doesn't fall into the doldrums of mediocrity. show less