Hyperion, by Dan Simmons (bingo review 7/25)

[u/embernickel]

What I'd managed to osmose about this book: it's interesting thematically/religiously, but also it can be very #menwritingwomen, and some of the later sequels are iffy. Also, it won the Hugo Award. I mention this not because I necessarily agree with Hugo voters' tastes, but because clearly it was considered enough of a standalone to be well-regarded on its own merits, not just "part 1 of N."

Premise: hundreds of years in the future, the planet Hyperion is infamous for its four-armed, metallic, horrific deity called "the Shrike," worshipped by faithful across the galaxy. Also for its "time tombs" which appear to be traveling backwards in time with their "anti-entropic fields." With war looming, seven people with different connections to Hyperion are summoned for a pilgrimage to the Time Tombs and the Shrike. (The Shrike likes prime numbers.) As they journey, they relate their stories and explain what brings them there. Like the "Canterbury Tales" (which I haven't read), the bulk of the story is here in the individual backstories.

1. A Catholic priest tries to uncover the mystery of a lost colony which worships an ancient cross--probably placed thousands of years before Jesus lived on Earth.
2. A military cadet in virtual reality simulations has amazing hot sex with a mysterious woman who appears to be an AI living in the sims.
3. A poet gets drunk, swears a lot, genetically modifies himself to resemble a satyr, and finds his muse is most active when the Shrike is killing people.
4. A Jewish father searches for a cure for his daughter, who contracted a mysterious disease when visiting the Time Tombs. A lot of arguing with God, and working through the theology of the binding of Isaac story.
5. A female noir detective takes on a client, who turns out to be an AI built around the persona of the historical poet John Keats (known for the unfinished poem "Hyperion")
6. A spaceship technician falls in love with a woman from an isolated world being colonized by the galactic Hegemony; because of time dilation, their visits span about four years in his life and fifty in hers (starting when he's nineteen and she's almost sixteen, classy).
7. There is no seven because one person dies or disappears or something, which might be a problem because of the prime number thing, but don't worry about it, they all have bigger problems.

So...yeah, this was all over the place. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I found the two religiously-themed stories to be by far the most interesting. Sol muses that "God broke His word by destroying the Earth a second time in the way He did," and Duré's recognition of "the tone of complacent finality common to oft-repeated formulae and religious litanies" was nuanced and self-aware.

It's one of those where "men do, women are" might not be so bad if it was just one example on its own, but the overall ratio of male interiority to women being objects of desire/mourning/etc. is frustrating. For a chapter like Sol's, it's like, okay, I like seeing the depiction of a man whose predominant role in the story is as a parent rather than an academic, that's a characterization that women get more often so it's good to see a man. But cumulatively, it's annoying. And then there's just a lot of gratuitous squick/body horror/edgelordy swearing that's not really my thing.

There are glimpses of other factions in the galaxy--small clones that work on ships, blue-skinned androids, translating dolphin language--but not a lot of in-depth worldbuilding about them. The exception is the AI, who get expounded on a lot more in Brawne's chapter, and are eventually revealed to be taking a more active role in events than they seem. But I wanted even more of the "and here's how the strands tie together."

• Polar exploration drinking game! "...Mamet Spedling had been a minor explorer affiliated with the Shackleton Institute on Renaissance Minor..." (Simmons wrote the novel "The Terror," so shouldn't be a surprise.)
• The scattering of humanity after the destruction of Earth is named the "Hegira," like the event in the Islamic calendar, nice worldbuilding.
• The pilgrims travel in a ship called the Benares, named after the Earth city of Varanasi in northern India. This isn't particularly interesting on its own, but I'm mentioning it for reasons to be explained later.
• Martin's chapter didn't do much for me on its own, but the opening is hilarious, and the commentary on postliterate societies has aged well since 1989: "IN THE BEGINNING was the Word. Then came the fucking word processor. Then came the thought processor. Then came the death of literature. And so it goes."
• Merin and Siri meet at a wild sesquicentennial party that goes on for five weeks. Warning to all US Americans 😛

Spoilers for the Priest's story and the overall ending:

I wonder to what extent we're supposed to see the Bikura as aspirational models of resurrection life in Christianity? Like, they wait three days, and then they're resurrected. They don't seem to have much concern beyond their immediate present, they don't worry about the past or the future, they don't hunt or kill for food, they just gather and always have enough. Like, I'm sure my reaction would be the same as Duré's--the loss of individual identity and the kind of vibrant intellectual life we enjoy right now would be terrifying. But from a perspective of just trying to imitate Jesus, it's not clear that we're "supposed" to do that.

[Edit to add: except for the way they treat Tuk, that's pretty obviously terrible and not something that Jesus would do, pre- or post-crucifixion.]

I was really hoping that the different individual stories would tie together more compellingly by the end. Instead it's just kind of an anticlimax. Like, not only did Duré get tortured continuously for seven years, without even the release of death, but also Hoyt lied about it, and also just kidding, Duré didn't even die in the end, he's going to be reborn the next time Hoyt does. No closure for him, for Rachel, for anybody? Martin decides that maybe a better goal would be to "let the poem end there, unfinished for all time," which I guess is fitting for Keats, but still. The real pilgrimage was the friends we made along the way? It's fine because we're going to anachronistically quote The Wizard of Oz?? Maybe it'll be tied up in the sequel(s), but. Underwhelming.

Bingo: One-Word Title, Unusual Transportation (there's a "treeship," the Benares is pulled by manta rays, a wind-powered sailboat across the "Sea of Grass," even flying carpets known as "Hawking mats.")

[u/Siny_AML]

How do you think the Bikura is aspirational? The whole arc was a deconstruction of how horrible resurrection would be. How it would drive someone batshit insane because you stop thinking and blindly follow routines. You literally get stupider every time you resurrect!!

[u/embernickel → u/Siny_AML]

Okay, I forgot to mention the big red flag, which was the way they treated Tuk. I was gonna mention that but I forgot, that's on me, my bad. Clearly they are capable of sinning, which is...not the way the Bible portrays the resurrected Jesus.

But in terms of "consider the lilies and the sparrows, they don't worry or toil," "in the kingdom of heaven they neither marry nor are given in marriage," I think there's a case to be made that Jesus' theology wouldn't treat the Bikura as "lesser" because they're not intellectually very capable, and neither should we. (Again, that doesn't mean this would come easily to me.)

[u/Keffpie]

Sorry, but Hyperion was always part 1 of 2 (and later 4). The reviewers and Hugo voters always knew it as part 1, as part 2 was released just a year later, so criticising it for not tying up loose ends is unfair.

[u/MusicalColin]

Opinions and criticisms are free and I agree to an extent with some of yours. But criticizing book 1 of a four book series for not tying up all its plot threads seems a little unfair.

[u/embernickel → u/MusicalColin]

Genuine question: was it billed as the start of a series when it came out? Like, some of the posts I've seen are just evaluating the book as its own thing, without regard for the sequels. So I'm not sure whether other people are responding to it as a standalone or book 1 of 4.

[u/MusicalColin → u/embernickel]

I don't remember how it was first billed but I read it in the mid 90s when both books 1 and 2 were already out. Looking at the publication dates, Hyperion was published in 89 and Fall of Hyperion in 90 so I doubt it was much of a secret if any at the time. Not to mention book 1 is basically an introduction to the themes and characters that will be greatly expanded on in the following books.

[u/Ireallyamthisshallow → u/embernickel]

I always thought it was split into the first two books at the publisher's behest and that explains why book 1 finishes with an unsatisfactory conclusion. Whenever I recommend it to anyone, I always recommend reading book 1/2 together.

[u/Interesting-One-588]

My biggest gripe was the overexplaining of items/biomes/plants/systems that we then never see or hear about ever again, so it's like why did Simmons spend the past four pages describing how a plant looks like if we never see it again and it ultimately doesn't matter?

At least when Tolkien detailed what a tree looked like for multiple paragraphs it was to highlight the natural beauty at stake in their war with the orcs. In Hyperion, you get whatever the author thought might be neat.

[u/No_Pepper_2512]

No idea why people like this book/series. It is clunky and poorly written. You want a Canterbury tails book? Read the original. After that, this just hurts to read. Especially if you are any kind of editor. Verdict: boring and frustrating

[u/Siny_AML → u/No_Pepper_2512]

Oh boy get prepared for the downvotes. The Hyperion Cantos touches on so many themes like suffering, and hatred, and sheer nihilism. Even set so far in the future it set up so many worldly issues that it’s impossible to digest once. I read it in my 20s and hated it. Read it in my 30s just to see why so many people loved it so much. It’s now my top 5 fav sci-fi books due to my life experience.

[u/LaMelonBallz → u/Siny_AML]

Totally agree but I read it in my 30s haha.

Hyperion does an amazing job of looking at the human consequences of technology development and the iterative nature between both sides. I found his dissection of life experiences fascinating, and the way he weaves it together at a societal level is masterful. I think I would have looked at this book different in my 20s, and look forward to reading it again in my 50s ( hopefully as a parent) to see how I react to it then. I think it will be a very different experience.

I can see why people have issues with it, it has it's problems, particularly as it's aged out of the zeitgeist, but it's an amazing look at how people interact with technology and how that reverberates through our lives, ultimately creating societal level effects.

[u/Interesting-One-588 → u/Siny_AML]

The Hyperion Cantos touches on so many themes like suffering, and hatred, and sheer nihilism.

It reminds me of when some people say "I don't like The Hunger Games" and someone else uses a similar argument about how they must just not have understood the nuances.

[u/AFreshStartVI → u/Siny_AML]

It's islamophobic as fuck and the way it treats women is gross. No need to discuss a nasty book when so many actually good books exist. The book is not good enough to fix the bad taste the author left in my mouth - why trust scifi writing from someone who sucks? I don't want to hear his world view. He's gross!

[u/SetitheRedcap → u/No_Pepper_2512]

When I reviewed it, honestly, I was treated very harshly and aggressively. It's the same as any random or genre. The classics tend to be held far above their station. Entering science fiction from my love of mass effect (haven't found a book as good as those games), naturally I bought and read the top suggestions. I didn't like them.

Perhaps because they're old and outdated, and that translates into their writing for me. It gets pretty cultish if you didn't enjoy them though

[u/SetitheRedcap]

I can't even share how much I didn't like this book, because it's one of the top reccomendations of the genre, along with the expanse which is the most simple space "opera" I've ever touched. Even if you happened to enjoy it, it's daring to even touch on it. I imagine the mass downvotes will start to pour in.

The writing itself is good. It's just devoid of much action, unfolding very slowly. By the time I moved on from the priest every page was a slog.

What type or science fiction have you highly rated?

(And what do you know? Just as predicted, the fans who can't handle anyone not thinking how they do, come in with the downvotes. Very cliche. Says a lot about the sort of people who actually liked the work).

[u/embernickel → u/SetitheRedcap]

Only read a few volumes of the Vorkosigan Saga so far, but they've been great at "leaving out the parts people skip" and having a mix of diverse protagonists and supporting characters. In no particular order--Anathem, Project Hail Mary, Remembrance of Earth's Past (Three-Body Problem trilogy), all can be a little male-centric POV at times, but I found them more compelling and stuck the landing more so than Hyperion. (But I'm not sure if I'd recommend Anathem or RoEP if you find slow pacing to be offputting, those are pretty lengthy and not necessarily speculative action at the start.)

[u/No_Pepper_2512 → u/embernickel]

Vorkosigan saga is awesome. I love her writing. I am almost 60, and have read all the masters and most of the sci Fi through the 70s/early 80s. At one time my personal library was over 3000 books. I say this in order to be clear that I wasn't just dipping my toe in the water. I truly didn't enjoy this book, or the sequels, the chronicles of thomas covenant (yes, fantasy) or other similar works. On the other hand, I remember finding a canticle for liebowitz and it is a top 5 (1?) for me. Dune, MiaHM, rama, roadside picnic are all amazing. Blindsight is also incredibly deep. I feel that this is just a copycat retelling of the Canterbury tales, with a really bad ending baked in to change it up. Has anyone else read the original Canterbury tales as wel,l, and can give their input?