Hyperion Cantos

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Hyperion

The Hyperion Cantos is a series of

Endymion, The Rise of Endymion, and a number of short stories.[3][4] More narrowly, inside the fictional storyline, after the first volume, the Hyperion Cantos is an epic poem written by the character Martin Silenus covering in verse form the events of the first two books.[5]

Of the four novels, Hyperion received the

British Science Fiction Association Awards in 1991;[7] and The Rise of Endymion received the Locus Award in 1998.[8]
All four novels were also nominated for various science fiction awards.

Works

Hyperion (1989)

Main article: Hyperion

First published in 1989, Hyperion has the structure of a

Decameron
. The story weaves the interlocking tales of a diverse group of travelers sent on a pilgrimage to the Time Tombs on Hyperion. The travelers have been sent by the Hegemony (the government of the human star systems), the All Thing, and the Church of the Final Atonement, alternately known as the Shrike Church, to make a request of the Shrike. As they progress in their journey, each of the pilgrims tells their tale.

The Fall of Hyperion (1990)

Main article: The Fall of Hyperion

This book concludes the story begun in Hyperion. It abandons the storytelling frame structure of the first novel, and is instead presented primarily as a series of dreams by John Keats.

Endymion (1996)

Main article:
Endymion (Hyperion Cantos)

The story commences 274 years after the events in the previous novel. Few main characters from the first two books are present in the later two. The main character is Raul Endymion, an ex-soldier who receives a death sentence after an unfair trial. He is rescued by Martin Silenus and asked to perform a series of rather extraordinarily difficult tasks. The main task is to rescue and protect Aenea, a messiah coming from the distant past via time travel. The Catholic Church has become a dominant force in the human universe and views Aenea as a potential threat to their power. The group of Aenea, Endymion, and A. Bettik (an android) evades the Church's forces on several worlds, ending the story on Earth.

The Rise of Endymion (1997)

Main article: The Rise of Endymion

This final novel in the series finishes the story begun in Endymion, expanding on the themes in Endymion, as Raul and Aenea battle the Church and meet their respective destinies.

Short stories

The series also includes three short stories:

Development

The Hyperion universe originated when Simmons was an elementary school teacher, as an extended tale he told at intervals to his young students; this is recorded in "The Death of the Centaur", and its introduction. It then inspired his short story "Remembering Siri", which eventually became the nucleus around which Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion formed. After the quartet was published came the short story "Orphans of the Helix". "Orphans" is currently the final work in the Cantos, both chronologically and internally.

The original Hyperion Cantos has been described as a novel published in two volumes, published separately at first for reasons of length.[3][9] In his introduction to "Orphans of the Helix", Simmons elaborates:

Some readers may know that I've written four novels set in the "Hyperion Universe"—Hyperion, The Fall of Hyperion, Endymion, and The Rise of Endymion. A perceptive subset of those readers—perhaps the majority—know that this so-called epic actually consists of two long and mutually dependent tales, the two Hyperion stories combined and the two Endymion stories combined, broken into four books because of the realities of publishing.[10]

Influences

Much of the appeal of the series stems from its extensive use of references and

Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World.[11]

The Hyperion series has many echoes of Jack Vance, explicitly acknowledged in one of the later books.

The title of the first novel, "Hyperion", is taken from one of Keats's poems, the unfinished epic Hyperion. Similarly, the title of the third novel is from Keats' poem Endymion. Quotes from actual Keats poems and the fictional Cantos of Martin Silenus are interspersed throughout the novels. Simmons goes so far as to have two artificial reincarnations of John Keats ("cybrids": artificial intelligences in human bodies) play a major role in the series.

Setting

Much of the action in the series takes place on the planet Hyperion. It is described as having one-fifth less gravity than Earth standard. Hyperion has a number of peculiar indigenous flora and fauna, notably Tesla trees, which are essentially large electricity-spewing trees. It is also a "labyrinthine" planet, which means that it is home to ancient subterranean labyrinths of unknown purpose. Most importantly, Hyperion is the location of the Time Tombs, large artifacts surrounded by "anti-entropic" fields that allow them to move backward through time.

In the fictional universe of the Hyperion Cantos, the Hegemony of Man encompasses over 200 planets. Faster than light communications technology, Fatlines, are said to operate through

force fields
) through space.

The Shrike

The region of the Tombs is also the home of the Shrike, a menacing half-mechanical, half-organic four-armed creature that features prominently in the series.

Endymion and The Rise of Endymion
. In these novels, the Shrike appears effectively unfettered and protects the heroine Aenea against assassins of the opposing TechnoCore.

Surrounded in mystery, the object of fear, hatred, and even worship by members of the Church of the Final Atonement (the Shrike Cult), the Shrike's origins are described as uncertain. It is portrayed as composed of

Loggerhead Shrike, a small fierce bird that impales its victims on thorns, spines, or twigs.[14]

Worlds and Systems

In the fictional universe of the Hyperion Cantos, the Hegemony of Man encompasses over 200 planets. The following planets appear or are specifically mentioned in the Hyperion Cantos.

Planets of the old neighborhood, the section of space relatively close to the Sol system
Worlds of the Hegemony and later Pax
  • Acteon, Asquith, Bressia, Castrop-Rauxel, Deneb Drei, Deneb Vier (Two planets of
    Deneb star system
    ), Earth 2, Esperance, Freeholm, Freude, God's Grove, Grass, Lee III, Lusus, Madre de Dios, Maui-Covenant, Metaxas, Nordholm, Nuevo Madrid, Pacem – The planet is around 90 light years away from the Sol system, Parsimony, Patawpha, Renaissance Minor, Renaissance Vector, Tempe, Thalía, Villefranche-sur-Saône
Worlds of the Hegemony, later mainly independent from Pax
  • Fuji, Lambert Ring Territory, Mao Four, Nevermore New Earth, New Harmony, New Mecca, Qom-Riyadh, Tsingtao-Hsishuang Panna
Labyrinth planets
  • Armaghast, Hyperion – Home of the Time Tombs and the mysterious Shrike, Svoboda – 3 light-years from the planet Pacem
Independent outback planets and worlds
  • Aldebaran
    – Homeworld of the "Ergs", an alien non-intelligent species that can generate natural force fields
  • Amritsar, Garden – A forest world close to Hyperion
  • Camn, Groombridge Dyson D, Hebron, Ixion, Madhya, NNGC 4645 Delta – A Outback system, from which, 280 light years away, there is an unnamed jungle planet that is part of Tethys and where Aenea and Raul Endymion began their journey on the river.
  • Orbital Forests – Not actually planets, but orbiting forests, having atmospheres kept in by containment fields; eventually these grow into Dyson trees, a biological variant of Dyson Spheres.
  • Parvati – The closest planet to Hyperion, only a few dozen light years away
  • Sol Draconi Septem, St. Theresa, T'ien Shan, Whirl – A gas giant that was formerly occupied by the Zeplin, a species of semi-intelligent, large, buoyant lifeforms which occupy the thermals between layers of gas.

See also

References

  1. ISBN 978-1-56865-175-0
    .
  2. ISBN 978-0-415-93888-4
    .
  3. ^
    ISBN 978-0-7653-0617-3
    .
  4. ^ "About Dan: Publishing history". dansimmons.com. Archived from the original on March 8, 2010. Retrieved March 1, 2010.
  5. ISBN 9780307781888
    .
  6. ^ "1990 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved July 16, 2009.
  7. ^ "1991 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved July 16, 2009.
  8. ^ "1998 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved July 16, 2009.
  9. ISBN 978-1-57003-585-2
    .
  10. ISBN 978-0-06-050604-9
    .
  11. ^ "Philip Purser-Hallard – Interview with Dan Simmons". www.infinitarian.com. The best discussion of our relationship to our autonomous creations – present and future – is to be found in the book I acknowledged at the beginning of The Rise of Endymion – Kevin Kelly's Out Of Control and other related writings.
  12. ISSN 0362-4331
    . Retrieved March 8, 2012.
  13. ^ The Fall of Hyperion
  14. ^ "Shrikes Have an Absolutely Brutal Way of Killing Large Prey". September 6, 2018.

External links

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