hyperion20102 minutes ago
To me, the Hyperion Cantos present a vision of the future that is incredibly hopeful. The path along the way may at times be bleak, and I find the handling of the TechnoCore to reveal echos of the great chain in a work that otherwise seems to totally reject it. Despite those and a few other shortcomings the Cantos are essential guides for charting our way toward a distant future that is filled with warmth, love, and compassion rather than the cold empty void of hate. To receive such a vision is a rare gift. Choose again. Thank you Dan.
Freak_NL3 hours ago
The Hyperion Cantos is a masterpiece which every scifi fan ought to have read, but I would like to recommend a lesser known title of Simmons for readers who have read at least some works of Charles Dickens (self-explanatory) and Wilkie Collins (such as The Woman in White or The Moonstone).
Simmons wrote Drood (2009), which takes these two classical authors and places them in a mystery novel. What struck me as particularly masterful is that Simmons managed to write his prose in such a way that as a reader you soon forget that this book was not written in the 1800s — his tone and style match that of Dickens and Collins so convincingly.
nz2 hours ago
Great writer. For people who want to get a taste of Simmons without committing to an entire book, I would recommend this (very) short story: The River Styx Runs Upstream[1].
[1]: https://talesofmytery.blogspot.com/2013/02/dan-simmons-river...
rdedevan hour ago
I tried reading it but I couldn't get into it. Maybe it the heavy religious themes or just the science fiction being so far into the future? I really should give it a shot again
samus38 minutes ago
It starts very slowly and the worldbuilding is exquisite and you will likely uncover many facets only upon rereading it. However, it is well worth persisting.
Work with considerably more action are Olympus and Ilium.
piloochan hour ago
Try Flashback, it's darker but genius as well, maybe more approachable.
matthewsinclair3 hours ago
100%. One of the genuine great writers.
layer82 hours ago
> The Hyperion Cantos is a masterpiece which every scifi fan ought to have read
You have to have some affinity to religious/Christianity/church topics, otherwise it’s quite a turn-off.
stickfigure6 minutes ago
I don't want to dogpile on the other comments (atheist, loved the book) but I think there's something interesting here.
Most science fiction tends to assume that religiosity will fade as humanity matures, and in a few thousand years we'll all have a good laugh at those silly ancient humans. This feels generally right to me. But it's not the only possible future, and Hyperion explores a far future in which religiosity becomes more ingrained.
I thought it was one of the more interesting aspects of the book, and contributed to the feeling of "not just another space opera". You don't have to appreciate religion to like the story.
mbeex2 hours ago
Atheist here: Not true, there is much more in Hyperion (and even Endymion)
layer82 hours ago
I’m not saying that you have to be religious. But if you find those topics and related symbolisms rather uninteresting in your sci-fi, then the books may not be for you.
Brian_K_Whitea minute ago
People are interesting, and religion is a thing people do. You as the reader aren't actually supposed to be mystical about the god/devil in the story the way the characters themselves are. It's not C. S. Lewis
Do you also find LeGuin uninteresting?
indubioprorubik17 minutes ago
Well, i detest jihadism, but still could enjoy dune
Freak_NL2 hours ago
I mean, it's not my fandom, but Catholics do have a wicked sense of symbolism and decoration. Hyperion wouldn't be as colourful if Simmons used a bunch of Evangelicals instead.
castral2 hours ago
To be fair, the first novel Hyperion is quite literally a survey of major world religions, not just Christianity. It does settle onto Christian symbolism in the second book onward, but the first two novels alone are still worth reading for their ideas. No affinity required, it's just the default Western canon at work.
layer82 hours ago
> just the default Western canon
It’s particular topics of that canon, and you have to fancy their treatment in a science-fiction setting. Some people like science-fiction because/when it proposes fresh perspectives that aren’t rooted in, by lack of a better description, non-enlightenment parts of that canon.
indubioprorubik14 minutes ago
The clean slate of banks - where we discarded culture to embrace the "culture" and look where this "winging" it got us. Turns out the operating system of a society is important- and the atheist distilled synthetic one is not really working - same goes for alot of others.
The utopist urge for cultural tabula rasa is a retardation, a attempt of the brain to shirk embracing and discovering complexity. One has to look at the "backwards" parts to start to understand what works in a society and with the actual human beeings lifing in a actual society, not the wingless Star Trek Angels in PJs.
Embrace complexity, embrace analysis, build something without defining the endstate first. Make small things that work, combine them into bigger things that work. Way less calling for cullings of the "sabotaging traitors" as they are usual with utopists on the march.
bayindirhan hour ago
The religious themes are a thin veil in Hyperion, looking behind them opens another dimension to ponder about.
I’m not a Christian, BTW.
ceejayoz2 hours ago
I have zero affinity for those and found it a fascinating read.
Supermancho2 hours ago
It's interesting how different stories have different underlying religious underpinnings in different parts of the world. It's important to consider that these themes are precisely because the stories are born from the surrounding culture.
Christian references in the Cantos were probably incidental, given the expected familiarity of the intended audience (american white male young men). eg The Matrix trilogy started with the obvious messianic hero's journey, then attempted to expand it in the following films (karma, cycles of death and rebirth, etc).
For some, these religious messages can be a turn off, I agree. I happened to be raised in a culture that allowed me to ignore it more or less and I can recognize that.
sgillen2 hours ago
Not sure if I agree with the christian references being incidental ... the first book is literally a retelling of the The Canterbury Tales, all the characters are on a pilgrimage. there are a bunch of religious groups with at least one being central to the story, there are cross shaped parasites that grant eternal life.
I still think you can enjoy it without caring much about religion.
AlanYxan hour ago
>there are cross shaped parasites that grant eternal life
Without giving away any spoilers to the books, the parasites are only that on the surface. If anything, the books present a wary picture of religion, especially the last two Endymion books, but also a wary picture of technology.
Barrin92an hour ago
>Christian references in the Cantos were probably incidental,
They're not at all incidental. The themes and the literal Catholic Church don't just make it into the books by osmosis, they're central to it and deliberate.
Like Gene Wolfe he's part of a pretty small group of US authors who wrote Catholic speculative fiction. Like Wolfe his writing is also fairly un-American. If Heinlein or Asimov are examples of archetypal US science fiction, Simmons is about as far as the other end as you can be, with the post-modern structure, the Canterbury Tales as a template for the story and so on.
samusan hour ago
It's up to anybody to not have a particular taste for religious topics, however, spirituality (or the lack thereof) is an important part of human culture and psychology. Therefore a science fiction novel in a sufficiently different setting from Earth's early 21st century really ought to cover these topics as well, l lest the worldbuilding would be very shallow and the resulting work would likely lack depth.
Brian_K_White22 minutes ago
Atheist. Loved it.
loloquwowndueo32 minutes ago
Entirely untrue.
kakacik2 hours ago
Atheist/agnostic here, completely untrue statement
Trasmatta2 hours ago
I disagree strongly. I'm not religious at all, and have a strong aversion to Christianity, and I loved those books.
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iamtheworstdev2 hours ago
:shrug: I'm an Atheist, I loved the series.
UltraSane2 hours ago
Carrion Comfort is a ridiculously entertaining novel.
tsumnia2 hours ago
I favor Carrion over Hyperion and find myself repeating Sheriff Bobby Joe Gentry's line "I like junk" quite often.
UltraSanean hour ago
Hyperion is the better novel but Carrion Comfort is just really exciting and creepy. And the way the mind controllers treated regular humans like toys hits far too close to home now.
washadjeffmad8 minutes ago
I still think about it relatively often. It took me almost a year to finish it between breaks to recover.
tsumnia35 minutes ago
Oh absolutely, I don't want to spoil anything but (to sound like a nutcase for a second) if there is an Illuminati then I think they were avid readers of Carrion.
Apropos given your username XD
rwmj38 minutes ago
Yeah, one of the bad guys even had a private island where he invited all his rich psychopathic friends.
clarkmoodyan hour ago
Simmons opened new frontiers of thought for me with his Hyperion Cantos. A house with each room on a different planet. A heartbreaking tale of a daughter aging in reverse. A romance playing out over space and time. A grand piano on the pop-out balcony of a starship. The cruciform parasite. The Shrike.
Branches of humanity torn between decadent stagnation and radical evolution. The artificial intelligence civilization with its own agenda. The All Thing (Internet) as the third branch of government.
So much good stuff, published in 1989 no less.
Rest in Peace to a true legend.
samus33 minutes ago
He predicted social media as well. So many themes in this work only mentioned in passing, too many to develop in full...
melecas3 hours ago
The TechnoCore using human minds as unwitting processing nodes — to solve a problem humans couldn't even be told about — reads differently every few years. 2026 is a particularly strange time to reread it.
perardi3 hours ago
Also, that should have been the backstory of the Matrix, and not the whole “living power source” nonsense.
ortusdux3 hours ago
I'm convinced that the studio forced the change to 'human batteries' out of concern over a conflict with Hyperion.
bee_rider2 hours ago
Probably the idea is broad enough to get away with borrowing it or putting their own spin on the general idea (I mean, it is expected that stores will influence each other and ideas will spread). I’d rather guess that a studio executive thought the battery idea would be more understandable to people (if that is the case though, I think they were dramatically wrong, the computing idea makes much more sense and I think all of us in the audience would have been fine with it).
Henchman213 minutes ago
Remember that all critiques of Hollywood require you to think like you’ve just consumed a massive line of cocaine. Because that is how they think and live. So, empathy reduced to zero, all your ideas are great, everything else is dumb, etc. Making decisions under the influence of strong narcotics is a recipe for idiocy.
Source: me, I had a huge cocaine problem and worked many years in the tech side of music and movies
MikeTheGreat2 hours ago
I saw a YouTube video where they said this was more-or-less the original backstory but then they changed it. I think it said that the People In Charge thought the 'living power source' would be easier for the audience to understand?
I don't have the link handy, and don't trust everything I read on the Internet, etc, etc.
But yeah - this makes so much more sense than breeding, raising, and feeding humans just to harvest their body heat.
perardi2 hours ago
According to Reddit…so, grain of salt…that is an urban legend, related to a Neil Gaiman short story that appeared on the Matrix promo website.
https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/1amree7/theres_a_wi...
bee_rideran hour ago
I think we the urban legend really sticks around because the compute explanation just makes much more sense and we all want this beloved movies not to have a sill (albeit inconsequential) plot hole.
perardian hour ago
Oh, totally, it’s my head canon as well.
bee_rideran hour ago
Mine is either that, or, the idea I mentioned in this post:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47185076
Machines trying to be benevolent, but overly controlling.
tempestn2 hours ago
I like to think the machines actually were using them for processing power, and the humans themselves just misunderstood (or oversimplified for Neo) what was actually going on.
bee_rideran hour ago
Processing power is my second favorite explanation.
My first favorite would have been: they don’t use the humans for anything, the pods are just the most efficient way to store humans. The machines think they are being benevolent, just want peace and quiet and for humans to stop doing dramatic things like scorching the sky. But I don’t know where the plot would go from there.
jemmyw31 minutes ago
There is backstory that the films could have gone into, though I don't know if it was written before or after the first film. The humans in the matrix were allied with the machines and they put them in the matrix to protect them from the war. They were being benevolent.
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xg152 hours ago
I like how the other story that has this premise is Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
ping00an hour ago
don't forget Sirens of Titan!
gostsamo2 hours ago
I'm sure that one Star trek episode had the same premise, together with something from Lem. The connection human/machine brain is rather old and human brains being used for computation is so reused, it is practically public domain.
skipkey6 minutes ago
Back in the 90s and the early aughts Simmons was on my “automatically buy everything he writes” list. But it seemed like he had stopped writing. But then I happened to browse Barnes and Noble beyond the SF&F and horror aisles and discovered he had been writing crime novels. And they were good.
I think if he had ever decided to write romance novels I would have probably enjoyed those as well.
Aromasin2 hours ago
Wow. I picked up a copy of Hyperion this morning while taking a random stroll through town - something I rarely do during a work day anymore. I popped into a book shop on a complete whim, and picked it up as it had been on my list for a while. The coincidence feels deeply uncanny.
occz8 minutes ago
And I just finished The Rise of Endymion a few days ago. Uncanny indeed.
Kaibeezy2 hours ago
I started reading it for the first time this week. It’s just a statistical anomaly… but humans are wired to notice and feel coincidence; it connects us to space and time in a way that must have helped make religion more believable.
bookofjoe2 hours ago
"Coincidence is a glimpse of the scaffolding of reality."
I read that many years ago, forgot the source.
mwigdahlan hour ago
It would be interesting if it were Dan Simmons…
mark_l_watson4 minutes ago
I enjoyed his sci-fi so much. Rest in peace brother.
anp2 hours ago
I read the Hyperion books during a particularly intense period of my life and found them quite powerful. I didn’t know anything about Simmons at the time, but I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that like Tolkein these stories started with an oral format for children.
EvanAnderson2 hours ago
My "intense time of life" story re: Hyperion. I was finishing "The Rise of Endymion" and was stricken with a kidney stone. It was absolutely eerie, and has cemented my memory of that book in a strange way.
ctvo2 hours ago
Carrion Comfort is still one of the most creepy horror books I've ever read and is seldom mentioned when we talk about Dan Simmons.
Arainach2 hours ago
Very much agreed. I haven't read all of Dan's work to comment how it ranks among his output, but Carrion Comfort is a book that I still think back on years after I read it.
ChicagoDave17 minutes ago
Hyperion was the first science fiction book that made me cry.
I love all four books in the series.
I never really engaged in any of his other writing. I have a signed copy of Ilium but never read it.
saltysalt23 minutes ago
Oh no! I just finished reading Hyperion this week and it has become one of my favorite books of all time. I will treasure my signed copy more so now, RIP.
anvuong21 minutes ago
RIP
Hyperion Cantos is the most influential scifi story I've ever read personally. The first book is a masterpiece, while the rest remains one of the greats.
:(
plasma_beam2 hours ago
I see everyone talking about Hyperion, so I will play up The Terror as one of my favorites. The TV series did NOT do it justice.
nurblan hour ago
Well there was no way the show would be quite as good as the book. But I was still pleasantly surprised, it was definitely better than the average TV adaptation. The actors were very good.
MonkeyIsNull2 hours ago
Yeah, I never got pulled into Hyperion but The Terror was.. something else. Just a masterpiece, and the TV series came nowhere near.
93benzan hour ago
Currently finishing up The Terror. I've never read a horror story until I got this. There are times I struggle to put it down, incredible book. Simmons painted quite a colorful picture of what it's like to die from scurvy so now I bring an emergency orange wherever I go.
virgil_disgr4cean hour ago
THANK YOU!!! The Terror—the book—absolutely blew me away. I still am in awe of that book. Just everything about it.
And yeah the adaptation was so, so weak. But it faced the same problem many horror movies do, which is that if you're forced to show the Thing™ it loses all its power.
teeray3 hours ago
Enjoyed the first Hyperion, but Fall of Hyperion was a bit of a slog for me. If Fall of Hyperion were compressed into the conclusion of Hyperion and other stories left as novellas (in the way James S.A. Corey has done), I think I would have enjoyed the story more.
k__an hour ago
Yeah, Hyperion had an interesting structure, but the second book was quite basic compared to that.
If The Fall of Hyperion were 1/3 of the length and part of the first book it would be perfect.
Trasmatta2 hours ago
In contrast, getting through Hyperion was hard for me (some of the character stories I LOVED and some felt like a slog), but I really loved Fall of Hyperion.
globular-toastan hour ago
I did find the transition from Hyperion to Fall a little jarring. It has a completely different narrative structure for a start, but more importantly the scope goes from a single group of people doing a pilgrimage to a huge interstellar conspiracy. I think it works best if you read each book slightly separately rather than as one huge work.
rwmj3 hours ago
Although it's quite a flawed novel compared to brilliant space opera like Hyperion, I have a bit of a soft spot for Carrion Comfort. I think it'd make a great movie!
perardi3 hours ago
I have a real soft spot for Summer of Night.
It obviously owes a lot to Stephen King’s IT. But it stands on its own merits…and I give it extra credit because it was set in my home town. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_of_Night)
nurblan hour ago
Carrion Comfort was my introduction to Dan Simmons, I loved it. Not as good as some of his later stuff but it's really inventive, and never boring.
boznz3 hours ago
I would also rate this above hyperion, like hyperion book 1 it crossed into the horror genre quite well, the rest of the hyperion books were a little bit too preachy but a good series never the less. RIP Dan.
jabroni_salad3 hours ago
See you later, alligator...
jnellis3 hours ago
The library wait list for Hyperion was months. I'm in the middle of Fall of Hyperion right now. Great writing.
BigTTYGothGFan hour ago
I enjoyed the Hyperion books but this got him put on my "never read anything from ever again" list: https://web.archive.org/web/20060424105133/http://www.dansim...
ZpJuUuNaQ518 minutes ago
>never read anything from ever again
I think it's a poisonous and reductive mindset to have. You can separate art from the character of the artist. If you cared about everything everyone has ever said or done in various stages of their lives, you wouldn't have much left to enjoy or appreciate.
isr5 minutes ago
He's referring ... to his "art". Thats what the piece he linked to was a part of.
Its not poisonous nor reductive to decide not to follow an "artist" because his "art" is repulsive.
fatbirdan hour ago
Same here. It's a fading memory, but the decade following 9/11 really did feature a lot of big brains turning THE COMING CALIPHATE into an existential threat to humanity. Which seems quaint, now.
RemainsOfTheDay32 minutes ago
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lordleft3 hours ago
Hyperion was a wonderful sci-novel. Thank you Dan, for your amazing writing; may you rest in peace.
zabzonk2 hours ago
I liked all of the Hyperion/Shrike novels, except when Raul Endymion persistently refers to the heroine/love-interest as "my young friend", or similar phrasing - slightly creepy/boring.
I didn't know that Summer of Night was a series - really liked the original book - will have to investigate.
And, of course, I'm sad he's died.
aerhardt2 hours ago
I read Hyperion last year. It's an ode to the English letters and a phenomenal exercise in world-building. RIP.
matthewsinclair3 hours ago
Vale Dan Simmons. You brought the world a _lot_ of joy.
globular-toast2 hours ago
A girl I was infatuated with told me to read Hyperion when I was in my early 20s. Never read a book to try to win someone's affections. It won't work, but what's worse is you won't even enjoy the book.
I read a lot of SF and just last year I thought it was about time I gave it another go. I couldn't put it down. Almost couldn't believe what I was reading, it was so good. Continued to read the other three and it was just a good all the way through. Was quite sad when I finished and it was all over.
It now has a permanent place in my library. I expect I'll enjoy it even more on my next reading. I can only dream of giving people as much joy as an author like Simmons.
ortusduxan hour ago
I wonder if the adaptation is still in the works?
https://deadline.com/2021/11/bradley-cooper-set-hyperion-at-...
genjipressan hour ago
As a general rule, if an announcement about a movie project is over a year old and nothing else has been mentioned since, you can safely assume it's no longer a thing.
textm0de3 hours ago
Here lies one whose name was writ in Eternity.
LaurensBER3 hours ago
I'm sorry to read this, I was just thinking about rereading the entire saga the other day. His words and ideas will forever life in my mind.
ChipopLeMoral2 hours ago
Hyperion Cantos might be my favorite sci-fi series ever. What a great writer.
takko_the_bossan hour ago
Rest In Peace Dan Simmons.
R.I.P.
dtj1123an hour ago
I have to admit that I found the Hyperion Cantos to be a bit of a disappointment. There were some decent bits and pieces scattered throughout, but overall the story never seemed to resolve into something I could find engaging.
Can someone who liked it share why?
k__an hour ago
Pro: Interesting world building, Canterbury Tales in space, Huckleberry Finn in space, strong female characters.
Con: Pro Judaism and Christianity (albeit with much criticism to both) and anti Islam, awkward sex scenes, awkward Lolita-esque vibes in the latter books.
Trasmatta2 hours ago
I recommend everyone read Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion. The messages about AI and human stagnation are highly relevant to our current world.
DonHopkins3 hours ago
I had a copy of Hyperion but didn't read it for years because the scary knife robot on the cover seemed intimidating. I finally read it, and all the sequels, and they were great books, and hell YEAH that was an intimidating knife robot! Sometimes you CAN tell a book by its cover.
hinkley3 hours ago
The scary knife robot is way, way more intimidating in person.
Eddy_Viscosity22 hours ago
I still remember the first time I met a scary knife robot. Working fast food night shift was crazy times.
howard9412 hours ago
Hyperion cries out for a good film adaptation.
virgil_disgr4cean hour ago
...does it though? I mean we don't have to argue about personal desires and opinions. But Hyperion simply doesn't seem adaptable. You would lose everything that makes it great.
sandmnan hour ago
Not sure about a film, but maybe TV series? I thought Game of Thrones was not adaptable but then HBO did it.
fr377242 minutes ago
Read Hyperion some years ago. I was totally trhrilled to read it because of the good reviews... But I was very fast disappointed about the overwhelming focus on boring religion. The interessting stuff like TechnoCore was so sparse that I never came into a flow reading the book. After 2/3 I just wanted to finish it fast.
shaunxcode2 hours ago
you mean, author of Song of Kali.
poisonarena44 minutes ago
I remember I was in a hotel in detroit years ago and read the whole book, in pdf form on my laptop, it was that fun!
hardlianotion2 hours ago
RIP Dan
cess112 hours ago
If one enjoys the Hyperion books, then it is highly likely one would also enjoy the Ilium books.
It's nice that he ruminated on these old stories these books riff on without being smug about it.
It's sad that he didn't manage to resist the fear based, fiercely reactionary politics of the last quarter of a century or so.
lysace2 hours ago
'Hyperion' is a brilliant name of a book in 1989.
toomuchtodo2 hours ago
idontwantthis2 hours ago
Hyperion is the first sci-fi series I have ever described as beautiful. I just heard about and read all four in the past year.
Izikiel432 hours ago
I picked up Hyperion on a whim on Kindle because it was on sale for 2$.
Amazing book, I bought and loved the other 3, I still hope they do a good miniseries with the books.
pelagicAustral2 hours ago
I sincerely hope they don't make any adaptation... after the slaughterhouse they've made with 3 Body Problem, Foundation, Altered Carbon, et al Not to mention all the damage done to other more traditional works of fiction.
therealdrag019 minutes ago
You don’t have to watch them.
nilamo2 hours ago
Sometimes it's done right, like with The Expanse. Although the writers also wrote some of the episode scripts, so that probably helped...
lotsoweinersan hour ago
To each their own I guess. I never found the Expanse television series to be very good when compared to the books.
wowtipan hour ago
Hm altered carbon season 1 was pretty good?
the books are still on my to read list.
okasaki3 hours ago
RIP. I really liked the Hyperion books and Ilium/Olympos. He seemed to become a bit of a chud after 9/11 but the books are still well worth reading.
AdmiralAsshatan hour ago
Yeah, the Islamophobia in Ilium/Olympos made me really tempted to put the books down several times. It's such a strange about-face from when he wrote the character Kassad in the Hyperion Cantos.
Like Frank Miller, it seems like 9/11 just broke him.
JackFr2 hours ago
Loved Ilium, and Olympos a little less so. Inspired me to read the Iliad.
poisonarena42 minutes ago
> He seemed to become a bit of a chud
I will now read Ilium/Olympos
hinkley2 hours ago
Things most people don’t know about Illinois is that while the Mason Dixon line officially goes around the bottom of the state, philosophically it cuts through the middle. Peoria is maybe thirty miles north of the rednecks.
Add that he was a boomer and I was disappointed but not surprised when people started complaining about him.
perardi2 hours ago
Ha, I’d argue it starts right at Pekin.
hinkleyan hour ago
That puts several university towns below the line. But little towns outside big towns in the Midwest have their own vibe.
brcmthrowawayan hour ago
Does this book date well, or is it cheest/unreadable like Neuromancer?
k__an hour ago
The first too books aged well.
Loughla2 hours ago
Fuck
throw0101aop3 hours ago
liquidise3 hours ago
Thanks for posting this. It should be the link in the OP frankly.
tomhow2 hours ago
Done.
shablulman3 hours ago
[dead]
Sebguer2 hours ago
The type of person the concept 'death of the author' was invented for, because whoo were some of his other books ideological garbage.
ceejayoz2 hours ago
9/11 kinda broke his brain, as I recall. (The book Flashback is… ooof. Hyperion includes a major Muslim character and it’s just a wild shift between the two.)
avazhian hour ago
Almost like he updated his view of the world, which isn't a bad thing.
Sebgueran hour ago
his updated view of the world involved global warming being a hoax and that obama (literally obama, not even a fake obama parallel) caused the end of the west.