Product Description

The Hyperion books are credited with single-handedly reinventing and reinvigorating SF in the 1990s. A broad canvased, hugely imaginative and exciting SF epic, the books draw on the works of Keats and provide a uniquely intelligent and literary approach with cutting edge science, compelling characterisation and edge-of-your-seat excitement. The story is continued in ENDYMION and THE RISE OF ENDYMION, which Gollancz will also be publishing in an omnibus volume.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #21358 in Books
• Published on: 2004-12-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 560 pages

About the Author
Dan Simmons arrived on the scene with the epic horror novel THE SONG OF KALI. Then in the 1990s he rewrote the SF rulebook with his Hyperion Cantos quartet. He has also written thrillers. Alongside his writing he maintains a career as a college lecturer in English Literature in the USA.

Customer Reviews

Over-rated
This work is hailed by many to have reinvigorated the sc-fi genre, mainly by the publisher, and is supposedly a work of the utmost quality bordering the works of Shakespeare, again the publishers are only to happy to tell you this.

I'm anything but sycophant, so I will tell you my honest opinion.

This book is not hard sci-fi, it contains stuff that would make the weakest of Star Trek writers wince. It feels more like a fantasy novel within a sci-fi setting.

The plot almost becomes interesting on a few occasions only to be pulled back into silliness again. A long dead poet is re-animated from nothing, a pseudo-Christ and then we have the glorious Shrike that belongs in a Troma film.

In short this work tries too hard to be an epic, but instead is an epic failure to impress.

If you want to read up on "how not to write sci-fi" then by all means buy it. Pay close attention to the AI conversations and try not to sigh too hard.

(I'd love to more carefully craft a review like so many of these amazon critic wannabes, but to do so would credit this authors work with an effort it doesn't deserve.)

Excellent
Fantastically detailed and imaginative narrative. Glad I bought both at the same time as I immediately wanted to read the second after the first. Story progresses at breakneck speed and I was totally gripped. Not perfect, buy any means (wizard of Oz scenes made me cringe) but worth 5 stars nonethless. If you like sci-fi, you won't be disappointed.

Sci-Fi at its best - possibly better than Dune?
But that's only after second reading. I don't know how it happened but on the first reading I was left with a very mixed sense. There had been some superb action, amazing far out ideas, touching emotional aspects and some fairly deep moral philosophy, but somewhere I dropped the ball and lost the plot, which is about as complex as a plot can be, and I came to the end, having liked a lot of what I'd read, but feeling that I hadn't understood what it was all about.

The star of the book(s) rather than the ostensible cyber John Keats, who is a beautiful observer throughout, is the amazing Shrike. A terrifying bogeyman to beat all bogeymen. An invincible monstrous machine from the future who can manipulate time so as to be there at one moment and then instantly appear to be here, deadly and silent.

It was finding a meaty but creepy synth sound that made me think of writing a piece of music for the Shrike, which in turn made me think let's read the book again. I've just finished it, and this time I've managed to hang on to the plot lines and see them all come back together, and I have closed the book with complete satisfaction.

While I was reading it I had the constant envious feeling of 'Cripes, this is the sci-fi book I wish I could have written'. Above all, I am in awe of the plot. The skill with which the multiple threads are all bought together to leave nothing untied is quite breathtaking.

Secondly, the characterisation is beautiful. We have a group of people all from very different backgrounds and very different outlooks on life, and each are imagined in superb detail, as are the growing relationships between them. The cyber John Keats, who is one of the characters in the first book and a primary, first-person observer in the second is written with great eloquence and grace. I don't think you would have to know Keats' poetry or life to get more from this book, but it might just make you want to go check him out afterwards. I intend to.

Add to that, amazing technologies, dense political intrigue, human and AI (I think that's where I got lost first time round), and time travel conundra as rival futures fight for the timeline and you have the very best Sci-Fi experience you could ask for.

Possibly better than Dune? I don't know. Dune I've read 4 or 5 times. The last time quite recently, and got a whole different experience out of it again. This I've now read twice. I won't try and decide. What I would say is that these two, along with Samuel Delany's Dhalgren (Vintage), are far and away the most literary works of SF I know of after years of reading, and stand above the rest of the genre as genuine literary art as opposed to mere entertainment.