The Fall of Hyperion: It’s the End of the World

The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons
Mass Market Paperback: 528 pages
Publisher: Spectra (November 1, 1995)
ISBN-10: 0553288202

In this sequel to Hyperion, Dan Simmons picks up right where he left at the end of the first book, following the pilgrims as they descend into the Shrike’s valley. We again meet The Consul, Brawne Lamia, Fedmahn Kessad, Sol Weintraub and his daughter Rachel, Martin Silenus, Father Lenar Hoyt, and Het Masteen, the pilgrims all striving to reach and petition the Shrike for their one wish to be granted. In another part of space, we also follow Meina Gladstone, the CEO of the Hegemony, the empire of man, as she prepares to fight a war within a war.

An interesting addition to the cast is Joseph Severn, a duplicate of the original Keats retrieval persona from the first book whom Brawne Lamia protected and fell in love with. Severn assists Gladstone, giving her information about the pilgrimage that no one else could have access to, due to the fact that he dreams their activities while he sleeps. Perhaps this is because of some strange connection to the persona Brawne Lamia is carrying in her storage device, the Shron loop, but the connection is never really explained.

As the book progresses, we begin to learn of a dark secret that lives under the surface of the Hegemony. Humans are mere unwitting slaves to the TechnoCore, the mass data community of the super-powerful AI’s. Gladstone is determined to break free from the control of the TechnoCore at any and all costs, in order to save humankind from an eon of slavery. The Ousters, thought to be man’s greatest enemy, are in fact the enemy of the Techno-core, having created new and amazing technologies in order to avoid using Techno-core devices. They desire to control Hyperion and the Shrike, not to destroy the Hegemony of Man.

First of all, you can not really follow this book without first reading Hyperion. There are series where it’s possible to read out of order and understand, but this isn’t one of them. Think of Hyperion as merely a prologue to the events in this book, something you can’t do without when getting to the main story. The stories of the pilgrims are vital to understanding the events that befall them at the end of their quest, and there is just not enough space in Fall of Hyperion to recap effectively. I think viewing Hyperion as the prologue is very accurate, because there isn’t time to develop all the myriad characters well in the second installment. You need Hyperion to feel emotionally attached to the pilgrims.

This is a very complex book, and really, an extremely complex series. Simmons is adept at creating and following stories within stories, at weaving characters with convoluted pasts while making their future just as confusing and unclear. This makes for a slow but rich read; it isn’t a book where you can just turn your brain off and enjoy. Constantly keeping up with the many main characters is difficult but doable, and following all the story lines is the task of a dedicated reader.

The themes in Fall of Hyperion are as varied as the characters. The love of a parent for a child, sacrifice, love, hate, revenge, redemption, acceptance, tolerance, the search for freedom, the fear of death, the search for understanding and God, pain. Each character is striving to complete some personal quest, while at the same time, complete the ultimate quest of learning the truth about the Shrike, and through that, the TechnoCore.

There are two main female characters in this, Brawne Lamia and Meina Gladstone. I feel like Brawne was even more reduced in this book, her role becoming that of observer and carrier. She rarely takes any action of her own, instead she follows others and watches as they take action. There is one scene where she faces the Shrike and wins, but it’s played down later on when we begin to learn the source of her power. Brawne went from gritty P.I. to tragic lover to an incarnation of the Virgin Mary, her personality decreasing with each change of status. This is a total waste, and I’m saddened that a character that started out so vital was reduced so heavily in this way.

Meina Gladstone is a more interesting character, although we never learn much about her background. She is determined to make the hard, impossible decisions in order to reach her ultimate goals. She’s a sharp, uncompromising, and often ruthless woman, but underneath, she is wracked by pain and guilt for the things she must do in order to help the Hegemony of Man. Gladstone is very much human, and generally the fact that she’s a woman has absolutely nothing to do with her story, which is how I wish all characters were written. But the last scene of her, I think would not have been written if she were a man. As ruthless and unapologetic as she appears to be throughout the story, she seems to admit her mistakes and give up, giving over to the mob in a way that punishes her for doing the right thing. I think this is a total cop-out. It seems much more likely that she would have continued in some capacity as CEO, rebuilding and reshaping the Hegemony, rather than stepping down in a dramatic and pointless gesture.

I won’t even mention what happens to Rachel, but I didn’t like it at all.

It’s a great book, with heart wrenching scenes and lines that make you think very deeply. The poetry included is at times beautiful, at others bleak, and it’s use in this story is a good contrast and an interesting premise. There are times where I think Simmons was being complicated just to be complicated, rather than to further the story, and I can’t really approve of the women in this book. They’re made to seem powerful, but it is eventually revealed that none of them are, that they are merely pawns in a greater storyline. I recommend this book as a classic in science fiction, as an amazing look at one possible future for the human race, and as an interesting idea about where artificial intelligence and reliance on technology could take us, but Feminist SF this is not.

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Hyperion: Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

Hyperion by Dan Simmons
Mass Market Paperback: 512 pages
Publisher: Spectra (February 1, 1990)
ISBN-10: 0553283685

Hyperion is told from the point of view of six characters, each one a member of a pilgrimage to the planet of the title‘s name. Hyperion is a strange and dangerous planet, filled with unanswered mysteries and deadly dangers, the most dangerous being the Shrike, a creature of metal and menace that kills indiscriminately and often. The pilgrimage is one in which seven people journey to the Time Tombs, another mystery of Hyperion, and petition the Shrike. Of the seven, it is said, only one will be granted their wish; the other six will die.

Due to an imminent invasion of the planet Hyperion by one of mankind’s greatest enemies, this is said to be the last Shrike Pilgrimage. The seven people are as follows: The Consul, a man of important history and mysterious purpose, Sol Weintraub, a lapsed Jew on a quest to save his cursed daughter, Father Lenar Hoyt, a Catholic priest afflicted with a strange and brutally painful malady, Colonel Fedmahn Kassad, a former soldier with a personal grudge against the Shrike, Martin Silenus, a prolific and profane poet trying to find his muse, the only woman, Brawne Lamia, a private detective carrying two secrets, and Het Masteen, a Templar nature priest and the only one whose story is not told.

In the style of Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, we hear each pilgrim’s tale, and slowly begin to make connections between all of them and the strange planet Hyperion. Each has their reasons for being on the pilgrimage, each has lost something or gained something through contact with the planet, and each is bent on being the one whose wish is granted by the Shrike. Simmons does a fantastic job of building the suspense of the story through the six characters’ stories, each one slowly revealing more of the history of Hyperion, each disturbing and strange in their own way.

One of the best aspects of the book is the range shown by Simmons. The different perspectives give him a chance to tell widely different tales, while still following a main storyline. There is horror, science fiction, cyberpunk, epic fantasy, gritty noir, love story, and military fiction all rolled into one book. The different voices are distinct and memorable for the most part, although as the stories unfold, the earlier ones begin to lose some of their relevance. The thread he manages to weave through the six tales grows darker and more frightening as they go on, until at the end, you are shocked at all that is finally revealed.

The characters themselves are developed deeply in the space each is given to explain their reasons for coming on the pilgrimage. Brawne Lamia is a self-sufficient and dangerous woman, although there does seem to be the suggestion that she is more muscle than brain. She is very quick to anger, but also quick to love and fight for those she cares for, so I see her as a very passionate person in general. I don’t, however, like one of the secrets that she carries. I think it’s very cliché for a female character, and an obvious plot device. Surely Simmons could have chosen some other way to make her story more dramatic. There are several other female characters, a couple of whom are very admirable and very much in charge and in power, so that’s a point in his favor, but most often, the women have things happening to them, rather than causing things to happen.

The majority of the characters are male and white, but the addition of Fedmahn Kassad is a good one, especially considering this book came out in 1989. It isn’t often we see a positive example of a fighter from the Arab culture, and Kassad is a well-respected and even revered figure in the military culture of the book. There are some points in his story that come off as stereotypical, as he is seen as being more savage and ruthless then his white officer counterparts, but that’s as easily attributed to his upbringing on the streets as it is to his Arab culture. Sol Weintraub is also a nice addition, as I think there is a general under-representation of people of Jewish culture in science fiction and fantasy, and I think he reflects a modern demographic of those of Jewish ethnicity but lapsed faith and practice. The overall tone of the book is white and male, though, so I can’t help seeing Brawne and Fedmahn as token characters. I’ll be interested to see how the next book turns out in regards to these people.

The biggest drawback to this book is the ending. A somewhat out of place scene unfolds, where the main characters are moments away from their destination and the culmination of the pilgrimage, whatever that may bring. Sol Weintraub begins to sing lines from the Wizard of Oz, and the pilgrims end up walking together side by side, as Dorothy and her friends did, down into the valley of the Shrike, where the story is abruptly ended without resolution. It continues in The Fall of Hyperion, but the cliffhanger is so sharp and unexpected, and the ending so silly and jarring, that I almost feel like it will be difficult to begin the next book. It was definitely a WTF moment, which explains my title, although there were some other moments in the book that were as surprising, but more pleasantly so.

Of course, the rest of the book was so captivating that I will definitely be picking up the next, but I was seriously thrown off by the way Simmons ended the Hyperion. It feels very rushed and not well thought out, and I can only hope that the next one ends better. Over all, this was a very engrossing read, and I am anxious to find out what happens to the pilgrims once they confront the Shrike. A classic science fiction work, Hyperion would be a fun read for anyone. The stories make it easy to read in pieces and digest slowly, and the tie-ins towards the end will give you many Ah ha! moments. Again, considering this was written in 1989, I think this is a pretty inclusive work, and comparing it to today’s releases, it gets extra points for even it’s token characters, which most authors don‘t even bother with today. Absolutely worth reading.

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