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istorio_grph 's review for:
Hyperion
by Dan Simmons
I felt compelled to write a review because of how absurd this book was. I'm torn here: Simmons clearly has the ability to write interesting stories BUT Hyperion didn't feel like sci-fi to me.
Let's start with the pros first. The Shrike is an intriguing mystery with great potential. All of the stories (except for Hoyt's) are very good and as the connections between them start to show up and the overarching story of the pilgrims is revealed, I felt awed. The characters are very well written too; Silenus's responses and comments had me chuckling the entire book.
However, the universe of the book felt completely unimaginative and mediocre. Most of the futuristic technologies in the book are just names thrown in there. Very little or no explanation is given about the farcasters, weapons (deathwands, hell-whips, etc), Templar's trees, TechnoCore, Hawking drive and so on. It's as if Simmons didn't have the imagination to develop them as anything more than the basic "future weapon that is extremely lethal", "future space drive that allows FTL travel", etc or didn't think it was necessary to do so. Also, most colonies don't feel futuristic at all. Crawford, on Barnard's World, as Simmons puts it "might have been reconstructed from some nineteenth-century mid-American template". On Hyperion the pilgrims had to use a manta pulled boat; AN ANIMAL PULLED BOAT. In the 28th century. In addition passage up the river was only possible by boat, skimmer or dirigible - even today one can fly to anywhere on Earth within 24 hours. All other smaller colonies were described as technologically primitive, which makes absolutely no sense. Sad King Billy build an entire city on a new world in a few years. Yet colonists sent to new worlds which had to had been terraformed to support human life (a huge effort by any standards) live out their lives like primitives.
All in all, the story behind the book had great potential, but Simmons failed to execute it properly.
Let's start with the pros first. The Shrike is an intriguing mystery with great potential. All of the stories (except for Hoyt's) are very good and as the connections between them start to show up and the overarching story of the pilgrims is revealed, I felt awed. The characters are very well written too; Silenus's responses and comments had me chuckling the entire book.
However, the universe of the book felt completely unimaginative and mediocre. Most of the futuristic technologies in the book are just names thrown in there. Very little or no explanation is given about the farcasters, weapons (deathwands, hell-whips, etc), Templar's trees, TechnoCore, Hawking drive and so on. It's as if Simmons didn't have the imagination to develop them as anything more than the basic "future weapon that is extremely lethal", "future space drive that allows FTL travel", etc or didn't think it was necessary to do so. Also, most colonies don't feel futuristic at all. Crawford, on Barnard's World, as Simmons puts it "might have been reconstructed from some nineteenth-century mid-American template". On Hyperion the pilgrims had to use a manta pulled boat; AN ANIMAL PULLED BOAT. In the 28th century. In addition passage up the river was only possible by boat, skimmer or dirigible - even today one can fly to anywhere on Earth within 24 hours. All other smaller colonies were described as technologically primitive, which makes absolutely no sense. Sad King Billy build an entire city on a new world in a few years. Yet colonists sent to new worlds which had to had been terraformed to support human life (a huge effort by any standards) live out their lives like primitives.
All in all, the story behind the book had great potential, but Simmons failed to execute it properly.