Parasitic Cruciforms. Ghost Lovers. Daughters Aging In Reverse. Murderous Monsters. Cybrid Lovers. John Keats. Reading Dan Simmons’ novel Hyperion, the winner of the 1990 Hugo and Locus Science Fiction awards, is a little bit like opening a box filled with puzzle pieces and not knowing what the puzzle is supposed to look like. Read as a stand-alone book, it is a series of short stories, woven together by a central plot. Each story describes what has driven one of the characters to go on a pilgrimage to the Time Tombs, where they risk being killed by the Shrike. Based on what I have read on the internet, the almost five hundred page novel is the first half of a longer story that is completed in Fall of Hyperion.
My first reaction was that I didn’t like the book. It was too coarse and violent for me.—I like science fiction books with a lot of science and sympathetic characters—Yet, the book is unusual and very original. Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion combined won a total of four major awards and were even mentioned in one of the books in the Mars Series by Kim Stanley. Why? Out of sheer curiosity I am going to read Fall of Hyperion.
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