From archive (archive) Xref: sssab.se rec.arts.sf-lovers:10180 rec.arts.books:3067 Path: sssab.se!isy!liuida!sunic!mcsun!uunet!clyde.concordia.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!cbnewsj!ecl From: ecl@cbnewsj.ATT.COM (Evelyn C. Leeper) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf-lovers,rec.arts.books Subject: HYPERION/FALL OF HYPERION by Dan Simmons Message-ID: <4925@cbnewsj.ATT.COM> Date: 3 May 90 23:38:08 GMT Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories Lines: 142 HYPERION by Dan Simmons Bantam Spectra, 1990 (1989c), ISBN 0-553-28368-5, $4.95. THE FALL OF HYPERION by Dan Simmons Doubleday Foundation, 1990, ISBN 0-385-24950-0, $19.95. A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper Copyright 1990 Evelyn C. Leeper What we have here is a glorious failure. You may notice that I have labeled this "a book review," not "two book reviews" as you might have expected. That is because, physical reality notwithstanding, this is a single book. I cannot imagine any reason, other than greed, for not publishing it as a single volume. Yes, I know publishers claim that they can't publish a book of a thousand pages because 1) no one will buy it, and 2) it is physically difficult to produce. Yet New American Library has published the 1000-page DON QUIXOTE and the 1400- page LES MISERABLES, people do purchase them, and they haven't fallen apart, even after repeated readings. The final death blow to this argument, of course, is that Doubleday is producing a book club edition with both "novels" in a single volume! Rumor has it that book stores don't like thick books because they can't display as many in the same volume. Life's tough. Issuing this novel as two volumes is doubly annoying because the second half is so long and drawn-out that I found myself saying, "Why didn't Simmons just add another hundred or so pages onto the first half and wrap the story up there?" (I am not the only person to make this observation.) Because it came out as a separate volume it had to be about the same length as the first half and this means padding, padding, and more padding. The first half (to begin at the beginning, as they say) has been compared to Chaucer's CANTERBURY TALES in that it is a group of pilgrims telling stories. But there is a basic difference. In THE CANTERBURY TALES, the stories are about other people; in HYPERION they are about the story- tellers themselves. And in this area, Simmons does very well, managing to have each story *sound* as if the teller were telling it: the story told by the priest sounds the way a priest would talk, the story told by the soldier sounds the way a soldier would talk, etc. In addition, each story is interesting in itself. Each story is also almost novel-length in itself; any one of them, with an ending added on, could have been published as a stand-alone novel. (Why do I even suggest this?! Next we'll have HYPERION: THE SPECIAL EDITION, redivided and sold as six novels!) The basic story begins with seven pilgrims traveling to the "Time Tombs," odd structures on the planet Hyperion which are traveling backwards in time and somehow connected with the Shrike. The Shrike is a monster that appears to be a humanoid made up of a large collection of knives and razor blades, leading a friend of mine to describe HYPERION (the first half) as "Freddy Krueger on Mars." It turns out (in the second half) that there is a very good reason for the Shrike and its presence, and that this is more than just a desire to put in a slasher monster, but many people may be so turned off by the concept in the first half that they will not buy the second half and find out (never mind reading a thousand pages). In order to figure out what the Shrike is and the secret of the Time Tombs, the pilgrims tell their stories of how they are connected with Hyperion. Of these stories, I found the most interesting to be Sol Weintraub's (the philosopher's) story, full of questions about God and the nature of sacrifice. Sol's daughter Rachel has been caught in a "backwash" at the Time Tombs and is now living backwards. This is difficult to make consistent (Philip Dick didn't quite succeed in COUNTER-CLOCK WORLD either), and Simmons makes a few slips. To solve the problems of day-to-day living, Rachel's memory regresses only during sleep, so at least conversations can flow forward. But when towards the end Sol notices that Rachel's hair is getting shorter and thinning out, I found myself wondering, "But what about all those other years she was regressing? Wasn't her hair (and for that matter, her fingernails) getting shorter then?" And somehow the whole rationale Simmons had built up seemed to collapse. While the first half is the pilgrims' stories, the second half is a single story (though told from many points of view), full of space battles, politics, philosophy, poetry, and anything else Simmons had handy--as I said, it's heavily padded. Without giving too much away, I have to say that the religion expounded in the second half seems too trinitarian to me, given its origins. (You'll probably have to read the book to understand what I mean.) The padding becomes particularly evident in Sol and Rachel's story. Sol is convinced that the Time Tombs hold the answer to Rachel's problem, and therefore they must reach them before Rachel regresses to her "birth." So we hear him think, "Now Rachel is one day old." A few chapters later, he thinks, "Now Rachel is eight hours old." Then a few chapters more, "Now Rachel is two hours old." Then, "Now Rachel is one hour old." Then, "Now Rachel is thirty minutes old." And so on and so on. Like Zeno's arrow, we seem to be forever approaching the moment of Rachel's birth without actually having any chance of getting there. Simmons does have the ability to write in many different styles. (His PHASES OF GRAVITY, a much better work in my opinion than this, is written very differently than any of the pilgrims' stories here.) And he has a sly sense of humor. The interstellar society that exists in HYPERION is the result of the Hegira--humanity's outpouring from Earth when it was destroyed. Throughout the novel, Simmons speaks of "pre-Hegira" and "post- Hegira" events, and so it is only a few lines later that you realize his reference to "pre-Hegira Muslims" on page 199 is a sort of historical pun. Simmons also seems to have a real understanding of how electronic bulletin boards work in his description of the All Thing, a communications network joining all of the Hegemony (also page 199 of HYPERION): Days and nights would pass with me monitoring the Senate on farcaster cable or tapped into the All Thing. Someone once estimated that the All Thing deals with about a hundred active pieces of Hegemony legislation per day, and during my months spent screwed into the sensorium I missed none of them. My voice and name became well known on the debate channels. No bill was too small, no issue too simple or too complex for my input. The simple act of voting every few minutes gave me a false sense of having *accomplished* something. I finally gave up the political obsession only after I realized that accessing the All Thing regularly meant either staying home or turning into a walking zombie. A person constantly busy accessing on his implants makes a pitiful sight in public and it didn't take Helenda's decision to make me realize that if I stayed home I would turn into an All Thing sponge like so many millions of other slugs around the Web. If Simmons himself has made an awkward structure for his novel, the publisher has gilded the lily by managing to leave page 305 out entirely from both the hardcover and trade paperback editions of THE FALL OF HYPERION, and instead to provide *two* copies of page 306! Naturally, a major plot element is revealed on the missing page (or would be revealed, were it there), so after reading eight hundred pages over a period of a year, the reader is *still* left in the dark. And don't try blaming this on computers: back when a publisher set a book for publishing in the traditional way, s/he double-checked the films before sending them to the printer. S/he should still do this, computers notwithstanding. I think it's evident that this was not done in this case. This book is an example of a work in which the whole is less than the sum of the parts. This leads to an odd paradox: the first half has been nominated for a Hugo and may well win, though had the whole book been nominated, it might not have. It is only in the second half that the story becomes tedious. As far as its competition, one of the other nominees is volume three of a six (or seven) volume series of which the first two were both nominated for Hugos but didn't win, and another is volume two of a three-volume (at least) series of which the first one was nominated for a Hugo but didn't win. (Do you detect a pattern here? Norman Spinrad, in his column in the June 1990 ISAAC ASIMOV'S, has a lot to say about "seriesism," and much of it applies here.) In this sort of field, it wouldn't surprise me at all to see the first half of a book win a Hugo. Evelyn C. Leeper | +1 201-957-2070 | att!mtgzy!ecl or ecl@mtgzy.att.com From rec.arts.sf-reviews Fri Jun 7 09:33:14 1991 Path: herkules.sssab.se!isy!liuida!sunic!mcsun!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!think.com!cass.ma02.bull.com!know!dirac.phys.washington.edu From: ingram@dirac.phys.washington.edu (Doug Ingram) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf-reviews Subject: Review of _Phases_of_Gravity_ by Dan Simmons Message-ID: <119@monster.pws.ma30.bull.com> Date: 1 Jun 91 17:24:44 GMT Sender: wex@pws.ma30.bull.com Reply-To: ingram@dirac.phys.washington.edu Followup-To: rec.arts.sf-reviews Lines: 62 Approved: wex@pws.bull.com PHASES OF GRAVITY by Dan Simmons Review Copyright (c) 1991 Doug Ingram [Bibliographic info at end of review. --AW] I've found that my experience with Dan Simmons is very similar to that of most of the readers I know with similar tastes. We all appreciate Brust, argue over Donaldson, respect Tolkien, revere Le Guin, enjoy Kurtz, marvel at Eco, and secretly read Eddings. I first noticed Dan Simmons while browsing through the local bookstore. _Hyperion_'s magnificent cover caught my eye, I started reading, and I was hooked on Simmons. I don't think I could do proper justice to the _Hyperion_ pair of books in a review, but after reading them, I was curious about Simmons other works. This led me naturally to the discovery of _Phases_of_Gravity_. Sound familiar? _Phases_ is the story of a retired astronaut, Richard Baedecker, who is trying to find meaning in his life. Baedecker's pilgrimage begins in India, where he attempts to contact his estranged son, who has joined a religious cult. While there, he meets his son's ex-lover, Maggie Brown, who becomes very interested in Baedecker and embarks with him on a search for "places of power." This search goes on for the rest of the novel as Baedecker, with Brown's help, seeks out such places both in the external world and within himself. Simmons, as usual, writes on many levels. On the exterior, this novel is a story about Baedecker's exploration of his past as he travels about and sees the people and places which have made up his life. On a deeper level, though, it's a story about uncertainty and doubt and how Baedecker tries to find his way through them. Those who enjoyed Simmons' philosophical passages in his other books should grab this one. This novel is filled with powerful and emotional scenes, but if you're looking for another _Hyperion_, this isn't it. In fact, in his afterword, Simmons emphasizes that this novel is essentially about the human heart, not about science fiction in any way. Now that I think about it, I feel it was a mistake on the part of the book store to shelve this book next to Simmons' other SF and Horror works, but I still feel that a discussion of the novel is appropriate for r.a.sf-r for reasons I gave in the beginning. Anyway, if you've read Dan Simmons and want more, I highly recommend this book, but don't get into it with the preconception that it will be another SF marvel. This is a philosophical book, one that should be savored. In case you're wondering, _Song_of_Kali_ is much the same, though it falls a little more closely into the horror genre which _Phases_ never approaches. %A Simmons, Dan %T Phases of Gravity %I Bantam Spectra %C New York %D May 1989 %G ISBN 0-553-27764-2 %P 278 pp. %O paperback, special signature series, US$4.95 %O order from Bantam Books, SF47, 414 East Golf Road, Des Plaines IL 60016 USA Doug Ingram // ingram@dirac.phys.washington.edu // ingram@u.washington.edu "Carpe Datum" From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Jun 22 15:09:05 1992 Path: herkules.sssab.se!isy!liuida!sunic2!mcsun!uunet!gatech!destroyer!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!spool.mu.edu!olivea!apple!ig!mtgzy.att.com From: ecl@mtgzy.att.com (Evelyn C Leeper +1 908 957 2070) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: PRAYERS TO BROKEN STONES by Dan Simmons Message-ID: <9206182025.AA23007@presto.ig.com> Date: 19 Jun 92 20:03:00 GMT Article-I.D.: presto.9206182025.AA23007 Sender: mcb@presto.ig.com Lines: 138 Approved: mcb@presto.ig.com (rec.arts.sf.reviews moderator) PRAYERS TO BROKEN STONES by Dan Simmons A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper Copyright 1992 Evelyn C. Leeper In the last ten years, Dan Simmons has written eight novels (or seven, if you count HYPERION and THE FALL OF HYPERION as the two halves of a single novel). These include fantasy (he won the World Fantasy Award for SONG OF KALI), horror (he won the Bram Stoker Award for CARRION COMFORT), science fiction (he won the Hugo award for HYPERION), and even mainstream (PHASES OF GRAVITY). This is his first collection, and shows that same range. Unfortunately, Bantam has chosen to start this collection with an introduction by Harlan Ellison, in which he congratulates himself for having discovered Dan Simmons. But after describing this feat, he says Simmons can remember and tell it better. And sure enough, in the introduction to "The River Styx Runs Upstream," Simmons does. Interestingly, he remembers if differently. In Ellison's version, Ellison makes Simmons identify himself at a writers' workshop only when he wants to praise him; in Simmons's version, he is singled out and verbally abused before his story is even read. The two tellings provide, I suppose, further evidence that RASHOMON shows us an accurate view of human memory. (By the way, be sure to read all of Simmons's introductions--they're as good as the stories.) In any case, "The River Styx Runs Upstream" was Simmons's first published story and is a blend of the science fiction and horror genres. What if through scientific means we could bring the dead back to life? The horror is not the George Romero sort of horror, but a quieter horror that comes from knowing that something very important is missing from someone close to you. If "The River Styx Runs Upstream" is about something missing, "Eyes I Dare Not Meet in Dreams" is a perfect counterpoint: a story in which there is more to some of the characters than one would think. The basic premise may seem familiar, but Simmons handles it with a skill that carries the reader along, and characters that the reader cares about. The third story is a definite change of pace. "Vanni Fucci Is Alive and Well and Living in Hell" has that resident of the Seventh Bolgia of the Eighth Circle of Hell come on to Brother Freddy's Hallelujah Breakfast Club as a guest and explain how it *really* is. A knowledge of Dante is useful but certainly not necessary for the enjoyment of this tale of the true status of televangelists. And in case the reader had any lingering doubts about Simmons's opinion of televangelists, "Vexed to Nightmare by a Rocking Cradle" will set them to rest. (I'm not sure this seeming juxtaposing of stories is a good idea-- they end up as halves of a pair rather than as individual entities. Given that the stories had no connection in their original appearances, connecting them here is probably an ill-conceived idea.) "Vexed to Nightmare by a Rocking Cradle" is a post-holocaust (one is tempted to say post-apocalyptic, but that would be misleading) look at the direction one particular brand of Christianity might take. Written as a Christmas story for a comics catalog, this story was *not* designed to brighten the reader's Christmas morning-- though depending on the reader, it just might. "Remembering Siri," set in the Hegemony universe of HYPERION and THE FALL OF HYPERION, is perhaps the best piece in the book. But some of that may be that the universe is familiar; when the story was published in 1983, the reader had no well-developed background to place it against. Still, the characters and their situation are close enough that reading HYPERION or THE FALL OF HYPERION is not a prerequisite for appreciating this story of a space traveler, the woman he loved, and the world he came to change but was instead changed by. (I realize my comments make it sound as though I am saying that the best stories are those in series; this is not my intention. It is more that Simmons can accomplish in a short story what might have required a longer length to do as effectively if there was no other information to draw upon.) The next two stories are another pair, but here at least there is good reason for the pairing: "The Offering" is Simmons's screenplay of his story "Metastasis." I didn't see the show when it aired (on the syndicated television series "Monsters" in 1990), but the transition of an almost mystical story to a television play is instructive to see. Simmons's introduction to the script describes some of the changes--apparently they even wanted to change the basic premise of the "cancer vampires," but he drew the line at this. These days it seems as though every writer is doing a Vietnam story, and so we have "E-Ticket to 'Namland," which extrapolates our preference for hyperreality over reality (which Umberto Eco elucidates in his TRAVELS IN HYPERREALITY). In this case, of course, one might claim that 'Namland is preferable to 'Nam, but then the boundaries starts to blur, much as camouflage makes the wearer blend into the background. Now we move into horror stories od a more standard type. "Iverson's Pit" and "Shave and a Haircut, Two Bites" are straightforward horror stories--well-written, as all the stories are, but nothing ground-breaking. Then comes "The Death of the Centaur" about the power of story-telling, which failed to work for me for a couple of reasons. First, I never got involved with the story within the story--maybe I just have difficulty with a multi-layered story. Secondly, no matter how well done, a story written about the power of story-telling must appear somewhat self-serving. But it's not unreasonable to say that no story can ever be written about story- telling, so you may just want to write this off as one of my quirks. "Two Minutes Forty-Five Seconds" is what Simmons (or perhaps Ellen Datlow should get the credit) calls "high-tech horror." It served its purpose as a short filler in OMNI, but doesn't really stand up. PRAYERS TO BROKEN STONES finishes with the short story "Carrion Comfort" upon which the novel was based. The short story seems to be quite sufficient unto itself--one wonders why it needed to be expanded into a novel (and a half-million-word novel at that). This means, of course, that the reader is left, not desiring to run out and read Simmons's full-length novels, but asking why, if Simmons can tell a story in less than 20,000 words, he then expanded it to half a million. (Okay, I haven't read the novel, and it's possible that if I read it I would understand. But my FIRST reaction is to ask "why bother?" rather than to read it immediately.) Not every story in PRAYERS TO BROKEN STONES is a gem. Not every story is to everyone's taste. But the stories show Simmons's range and technique, so even if there are a couple not to your liking, I think on the whole you will find PRAYERS TO BROKEN STONES a rewarding experience. %B Prayers to Broken Stones %A Dan Simmons %C New York %D 1990 %I Bantam Spectra %O paperback, US$5.99 [1992] %G ISBN 0-553-29665-5 %P 403pp %T "The River Styx Runs Upstream" %T "Eyes I Dare Not Meet in Dreams" %T "Vanni Fucci Is Alive and Well and Living in Hell" %T "Vexed to Nightmare by a Rocking Cradle" %T "Remembering Siri" %T "Metastasis" %T "The Offering" %T "E-Ticket to 'Namland" %T "Iverson's Pit" %T "Shave and a Haircut, Two Bites" %T "The Death of the Centaur" %T "Two Minutes Forty-Five Seconds" %T "Carrion Comfort" Evelyn C. Leeper | +1 908 957 2070 | att!mtgzy!ecl or ecl@mtgzy.att.com From rec.arts.sf.reviews Sun Nov 15 13:31:34 1992 Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Path: lysator.liu.se!fizban.solace.hsh.se!kitten.umdc.umu.se!sunic!mcsun!uunet!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!news.media.mit.edu!news.media.mit.edu.!wex From: ecl@mtgzy.att.com (Evelyn C Leeper +1 908 957 2070) Subject: THE HOLLOW MAN by Dan Simmons Message-ID: <9211131418.AA16775@presto.ig.com> Sender: news@news.media.mit.edu (USENET News System) Organization: Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1992 15:27:26 GMT Approved: wex@media.mit.edu (Alan Wexelblat) Lines: 36 THE HOLLOW MAN by Dan Simmons A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper Copyright 1992 Evelyn C. Leeper Sometimes the short story is better. For THE HOLLOW MAN, Simmons took his short story "Eyes I Dare Not Meet in Dreams" (which I liked very much in his collection PRAYERS TO BROKEN STONES), threw in the Vanni Fucci character from "Vanni Fucci Is Alive and Well and Living in Hell" (also in PRAYERS TO BROKEN STONES), added a little background for the main character and a lot of gratuitous horror in a whole new section stuffed in the middle (shades of Richard Kiel's character from the James Bond films), and produced a novel significantly worse than any of its sources (except maybe the Bond films). As an example of how so much is misdirected in the novel, I will merely say that when a member of the Mafia dumps a body in a deserted swamp and looks up to see a witness, he does NOT take that witness to Disneyland. Read the short story instead. %T The Hollow Man %A Dan Simmons %C New York %D October 1992 %I Bantam %O Hardback, $20 %G ISBN 0-553-08252-3 %P 293pp Evelyn C. Leeper | +1 908 957 2070 | ecl@mtgzy.att.com -- --Alan Wexelblat, Reality Hacker and Cyberspace Bard Media Lab - Advanced Human Interface Group wex@media.mit.edu Voice: 617-258-9168, Pager: 617-945-1842 wexelblat.chi@xerox.com "Where are my vice grips?" From rec.arts.sf.written Mon May 2 14:31:58 1994 Path: liuida!sunic!EU.net!howland.reston.ans.net!math.ohio-state.edu!cyber2.cyberstore.ca!nntp.cs.ubc.ca!alberta!cab016.cs.ualberta.ca!aaron From: aaron@amisk.cs.ualberta.ca (Aaron V. Humphrey) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written Subject: Prograde Reviews--Dan Simmons:The Children of The Night Date: 1 May 1994 05:02:45 GMT Organization: The Anna Amabiaca Fan Club Lines: 50 Message-ID: <2pvd5l$6vv@scapa.cs.ualberta.ca> Reply-To: aaron@amisk.cs.ualberta.ca NNTP-Posting-Host: cab016.cs.ualberta.ca Originator: aaron@cab016.cs.ualberta.ca Dan Simmons:The Children of The Night A Prograde Review by Aaron V. Humphrey This is my first Dan Simmons novel, but I've heard a lot of "hype" about him up till now. Well, this certainly wasn't disappointing. Marketed as fiction, clearly marked as involving vampires, I'd call this a clear case of SF. Simmons came up with a perfectly plausible scientific explanation of vampirism, which is that it's a combination of several immune-system deficiencies with a retrovirus that can cannibalize others' blood to build up the host's immune system. Maybe a professional immunologist could poke holes in his explanation, but it seems fine to me. Simmons also conveys the atmosphere of post-Ceaucescu Romania(which is, indeed, where vampires hang out, or at least congregate on special occasions)quite well. Vlad Dracula, the ancient patriarch, is dying. As he dies, he periodically relives memories of his past life(apparently painstaking researched to tell the _real_ story)...meanwhile, a child is being prepared for the Investiture, a ceremony which will pass on Dracula's heritage in some way not specified in the book. Then Kate Neuman, an immunologist working for the relief effort in Romania, adopts the child Joshua and takes him home to the States, where she quickly discovers that, normally sickly, he thrives on blood transfusions...she and several other researchers quickly try to find out how he does it, isolating the retrovirus with high hopes for an AIDS cure. The vampires(or strigoi, as the Romanians call them)retrieve the child; Kate pursues, aided by two men whose motives she doesn't fully know...and the finale is truly spectacular, almost cinematic. By turns harsh and cruel, hopeful, and tense, this is a whirlwind of a book that you'll probably like even if you're not a vampire book fiend. %A Simmons, Dan %T Children of The Night %I Warner Books %C New York %D Copyright 1992 %G ISBN 0-446-36475-4 %P 451 pp. %O Paperback, US$5.99, Can$6.99 -- --Alfvaen(Editor of Communique) Current Album--PIL:Album Current Read--William Gibson:Virtual Light "...her very gut fauna exert themselves strenuously on her behalf." --nj Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.kth.se!sunic!sunic.sunet.se!doc.news.pipex.net!pipex!howland.reston.ans.net!news.sprintlink.net!psgrain!news.teleport.com!news.teleport.com!not-for-mail From: bruceab@teleport.com (Bruce Baugh) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written Subject: REVIEW: "Fires of Eden", Dan Simmons Date: 22 Mar 1995 18:03:18 -0800 Organization: State of Jefferson Diplomatic Corps Lines: 33 Message-ID: <9r$Rl4Baq4P6078yn@teleport.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: linda.teleport.com This is an interesting and enjoyable read; it reminds me more of Simmons' short fiction than any of his other novels - it has neither the epic scope of his sf nor the deep-down moral outrage of his horror. But it is very finely crafted entertainment. Most of FIRES OF EDEN takes place within a few days at a resort on the Kona coast of Hawaii. As always with Simmons, the characters are well-drawn and engaging, with surprises that follow naturally from what's been presented before. Pele is at war with some of her traditional opponents, largely as a result of old-fashioned hubris, and the characters are caught in the middle of this. The technical detail is excellent, the writing is smooth. A substantial portion of the novel is the diary of an ancestor of one of the characters, who came to Hawaii in 1866 in the company of, among others, an up-and-coming journalist named Samuel Clemens. Simmons really shines here, evoking a culture at once much like and very different from our own. The resolution is most satisfying. I didn't see it coming, but it fits really well. Suffice it to say that it's not another CARRION COMFORT :-); the ending itself is more like SONG OF KALI than anything else I've read by Simmons. Highly recommended. Solid B work. bruceab@teleport.com_____________________Bruce Baugh, a guy in Portland, Oregon Associate Professor, List Manager, Christlib Dept of Quantum Orbital Mechanics for Christian and libertarian concerns and Nondeterministic Astronomy, http://www.teleport.com/~bruceab/xlib.html University of Ediacara or e-mail me for info finger me for PGP 2.6.2 public key________Proclaim liberty throughout the land. Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!arclight.uoregon.edu!gatech!18.181.0.27.MISMATCH!sipb-server-1.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!usenet From: "Aaron M. Renn" Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Reviews: Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion, Dan Simmons Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 20 May 1999 12:11:37 -0400 Organization: GNU's Not Unix! Lines: 107 Sender: wex@tinbergen.media.mit.edu Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: tinbergen.media.mit.edu To: wex@media.mit.edu X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.3/Emacs 19.34 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:2313 "Hyperion" and "Fall of Hyperion" by Dan Simmons Review Copyright 1999 Aaron Renn Everyone has at least a few award-winning and prominent books they haven't read. Until recently one of mine was Dan Simmons' 1990 Hugo winner Hyperion. This is the story of seven pilgrims who voyage to that eponymous planet in search of the mysterious Shrike, a supernatural creature that inhabits a region near the Time Tombs, which are artifacts of non-human origin surrounded by anti-entropic fields that preserve them and push them back through time. If this sounds like fantasy to you, you're not wrong. While set against a high-technology intersellar backdrop about 700 years in the future, this books has lots of fantasy elements, particularly healthy doses of spirituality, mysticism, and miracles. If that is a turn off for you, then give Hyperion a pass. The first thing to know about Hyperion is that it isn't a standalone book. It is part one of a novel spanning two volumes. The second part is Fall of Hyperion. I mention this only because nowhere on the cover does Hyperion mention that it is the first of a two volume novel. You have been warned. This review covers both parts. The two volumes are actually quite different. In the first, the background is set up. The anti-entropic fields surrounding the Time Tombs are becoming unstable. Additionally, the barbarian Ousters are launching a massive attack against the planet. The Hegemony - the government ruling most human occupied worlds - dispatches a space fleet to intercept the Ousters and arranges for its favored people to earn spots on the next Shrike pilgrimage. For various reasons the planet Hyperion is not a full fledged member of the Hegemony and thus is not included in the farcaster web, a collection of instant intersteller transfer portals. A three year space voyage in deep freeze is the only way in or out. Access to the Time Tombs and Shrike is controlled by the Shrike cult, which allows only pilgrimages of seven people to visit. Thus the Hegemony is forced to work through this setup in order to get its people into Shrike territory. 90% of the first volume is taken up with the journey of the pilgrims to Hyperion. Legend has it that out of seven pilgrims, one gets his wish granted by the Shrike and the others die horribly. Everyone agrees that it would be a good idea for each of them to tell the story behind why he wants to see the Shrike. Six of them in turn tell their tales. Each is basically a self-contained novelette set in the same universe. One could conceivable read only Hyperion, treating it as an anthology, though of course much of "main" plot would remain unresolved. The book is filled with poetry references - particularly Keats of course - and the similarty of Hyperion to the Canterbury Tales is undoubtedly intentional. Unlike in the Canterbury Tales however, there are no comedies in Hyperion, only tradegies. Each of the pilgrims has had their life changed in some fundamental and unpleasant way by the mysterious Shrike. In addition to telling us how, the stories also flesh out the universe in which the story takes place. Fall of Hyperion is quite a different book in its structure. While the first volume was almost exclusively the stories of six of the pilgrims, the second is more of a standard SF plot. You have the pilgrims of course, seeking the Shrike. You learn more about that strange creature, its creator, and the Time Tombs. But you also learn about the Hegemony CEO and her battle to deal with the Ouster onslaught. You find out more about the Ousters, and the fatal bargain the Hegemony made with its own creations in order to obtain its technology. You even get to find out who God is. The main character in Fall of Hyperion does not even appear in the first book. Though the two volumes tell one story, they seem disjoint, which is not a good thing if you read them back to back. But on the whole these two volumes make for a very readable and very interesting sf tale. The main disappointment is that the pilgrims and the Shrike really have little to do with what is happening out in the universe. In volume one we are led to believe that the Shrike and the Time Tombs are the key to everything. In the volume two we find out they are only a sidelight. Clearly the events on the planet Hyperion are not irrelevant, but they are not the prime mover of the really important stuff that happens elswhere. All that the Hyperion happenings do is speed up something that was a long time coming. This book could easily be re-written as a standard SF tale with the Shrike diked out. I'll admit this conclusion is controversial, but it would require too many spoilers to elaborate. Also, not everything is resovled or explained. That's not necessarily a failing, but I couldn't help but get the feeling that Simmons was just setting us up for the sequel. Indeed, he's already written two: Endymion and Rise of Endymion, which I have not read. There are things not to not like about these books. However, in an age where ten of the top 25 bestsellers at amazon.com are Star Wars and Star Trek spinoffs, they are a welcome relief. Even in the better days gone by, this story would certainly come across as a solid effort. If you can stomach the fantasy, Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion are definitely worth picking up. %A Simmons, Dan %T Hyperion %I Bantam Spectra %D 1989-06 (original publication) %G ISBN 0-553-28368-5 %P 482 pp. %O paperback, US$6.50 C$8.99 %A Simmons, Dan %T Fall of Hyperion %I Bantam Spectra %D 1990-03 (original publication) %G ISBN 0-553-28820-0 %P 517 pp. %O paperback, US$6.50 C$8.99 -- Aaron M. Renn (arenn@urbanophile.com) http://www.urbanophile.com/arenn/