A stunning tour de force filled with transcendent awe and wonder, Hyperion is a masterwork of science fiction that resonates with excitement and invention, the first volume in a remarkable epic by the multiple-award-winning author of The Hollow Man. On the world called Hyperion, beyond the reach of galactic law, waits a creature called the Shrike. There are those who worship it. There are those … who worship it. There are those who fear it. And there are those who have vowed to destroy it. In the Valley of the Time Tombs, where huge, brooding structures move backward through time, the Shrike waits for them all.
On the eve of Armageddon, with the entire galaxy at war, seven pilgrims set forth on a final voyage to Hyperion seeking the answers to the unsolved riddles of their lives. Each carries a desperate hope—and a terrible secret. And one may hold the fate of humanity in his hands.
Praise for Dan Simmons and Hyperion
“Dan Simmons has brilliantly conceptualized a future 700 years distant. In sheer scope and complexity it matches, and perhaps even surpasses, those of Isaac Asimov and James Blish.”—The Washington Post Book World
“An unfailingly inventive narrative . . . generously conceived and stylistically sure-handed.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Simmons’s own genius transforms space opera into a new kind of poetry.”—The Denver Post
“An essential part of any science fiction collection.”—Booklist
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The first two-thirds of the book were well done, but then it became tedious. As each character told their story, it became too convoluted and by the time the individual stories were done, the author left this reader confused and failed to resolve the thrust of the book. While that was likely intended to cause the reader to read the entire trilogy, for me, it was so frustrating that I will likely never read another book by this author.
Dan Simmons has created a marvelous future Galaxy with great characters. This is one book I read pretty much non stop. Then I eagerly searched for an enjoyed the sequels as well.
One of my favorite books. Incredible story!
I will probably go back to it, but I found it hard to get into.
This is one of those weird SF books that haunts you years after you’ve read it. It’s a very powerful book, and horrible things happen to the people in it. I wouldn’t want to read it again, but it was well worth my time, and I read and enjoyed the sequels.
Wonderful stuff.
I’ve read the entire series several times. Hyperion is a kind of Canterbury Tales with a futuristic twist…and sharp, pointy things.
One of the best sci-fi series of recent years, I now own all 4-books in the series and am reading the third. A good challenge to read that helped build my vocabulary. A completely realized universe with full-bodied characters and plot. I read a lot in the sci-fi realms and have read many fine series. This is one of the top ones.
Martin Silenus is a dirty old man. I did not like his hedonism or description of his sexual tendencies. Once, long ago in college, I met my literature professor before class. “How did you like the story?” he asked. I replied, “I didn’t.” His reply, “Good, that is what the author was trying to evoke from you.” So, while Silenus makes me feel dirty I wonder if Don Simmons was shooting for that. I am almost 60% through the book and its plot, manner of conveying it along with, “I did not see that comings” has made in an interesting read. I don’t know if I will read the follow on books. We will see.
The opening book of a series of 4. Complex in both characters and time shifts, it’s sf and fantasy, challenging and mysterious. …when I finished the series, I wanted to read it all over again.
I love all of Dan Simmons books, but this is still my favorite. I could not put it down.
Hyperion should be on everyone’s must read SF list. in the form of a futuristic Canterbury Tales, the suspense builds until the stories twist together in the wonderful (and oddly inevitable) conclusion.
Very easy to read and hard to put down!
very creative scifi – so successful the author was forced to continue theme into 3 more books
One of the best SF books (series) I have ever read!!!
On my top ten imaginative fiction novels. Superb!
There is a reason why this won so many awards. It’s a sci-fi version of Canterbury Tales, and you can’t stop without reading the others in the series. Great original ideas, great pulling together of many disparate sources, and one of the best novels I’ve ever read, and one of the series I reread every few years. Highly recommended.
The hyperion series is a fabulous work of fiction. Dan Simmons is a very good writer with a great imagination and the willingness to borrow from other great writers, including one of the characters of the book, John Keats.
In a way, the story is Chauserian. Seven damaged people make a pilgrimage to the planet Hyperion to find their destiny in a confrontation from a monster that travels back in time and is a perfect killing machine. As this happens, a failing civilization called the Hegemony is fighting a war with the Ousters, descendants of human beings who chose sub-light travel away from a dying Earth and live in constructions
that carry them between the stars. The third player in the conflict are Artificial Intelligence machines that make up the Technocore, which pretends to side with the Hegemony while it pursues its own interests.
While there are a number of references to Milton and Yeats, in addition to Chauser, the main poet that takes up much of the narrative is John Keats. After all, it is the real world John Keats who wrote the unfinished poems ”Hyperion” and ”The Fall of Hyperion” and gave us a plot in which the Olympian gods push aside the Titans that came before them. Six of the seven pilgrims – a Catholic priest, a Jewish scholar, a soldier, an ancient poet, a detective, and a traitorous diplomat – tell tragic stories about why they are rejecting their society and making a dangerous journey that will almost certainly lead to their deaths.
One line stuck with me because I have often tried to say something similar about the function of conscientious rational analysis. “Poets are the mad midwives to reality. They see not what is, nor what can be, but what must become.” This is a wonderful book that I liked much better than Dune or Asimov’s Foundation series. I recommend it highly.