The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons Search Amazon for other books by or about Dan Simmons. Rating: Reviewed by: James Serendip

"It was there. Just a moment ago, the shining metallic humanoid form made of razors and hooks and needles was over there. Now it's here, its arms around you, slowly, almost tenderly embracing you. At first you hardly feel the spikes sliding into your flesh, but then you are lifted and carried. A distant wail of agony becomes clearer as the Tree comes into view through a visible fog of suffering. You are being taken to it, to be impaled on one of its many steel thorns, writhing in unceasing agony as the Tree moves outside of time."

Dan Simmons' Hyperion stories (for this review, Hyperion and The Fall Of Hyperion) contain a strong element of horror, but also a rich vision of a fantastic, complex future. The first book in this series, Hyperion is the story of a group of pilgrims who tell their tales to each other during the course of their pilgrimage to find The Shrike, a metallic monstrosity that bends time and harvests pain from the field of human life. The Fall Of Hyperion delves further into the Gordian knot of these characters' lives, and how all their fates are bound together with the awful Avatar, the Shrike.

The Shrike (the mysterious metal reaper around which the story evolves) is a truly marvelous monster. A classic terror, capable of generating a fear that is greater than the fear of death, perhaps even the more terrifying because it's seemingly technological origins remove it from the realm of the supernatural (in which one might have hope of supernatural aid). The lucky victims of the Shrike live only long enough to suddenly realize they have just been torn apart by razor sharp blades, without so much as the blink of an eye between life and death. The unlucky ones are taken to the Tree. The Shrike's Tree of Pain is a poignantly gruesome, if somewhat overly symbolic image. An enormous shining metal thorn tree reaching into the sky, it exists outside of time and upon it's giant barbs are impaled the undying bodies of The Shrike's victims, writhing in a chorus of agony as they ever futilely attempt to pull themselves off the frictionless spikes. Since the Tree exists outside of time, as does the Shrike itself, this allows for the truly horrifying possibility of seeing ones self on the Tree, knowing you are fated to be impaled there, knowing in a way you already are.

The tree is a dominant image in these books, which is interesting given the technological future they encompass. I was hooked on Hyperion from the very beginning, with the depiction of the Templars' Tree Ship, the Yggdrasill an actual tree of immense dimensions, which travels through space in some kind of space-bending field. The image of people spiraling up the exterior of a giant tree in space, the stars turning around them and sparkling through the foliage, the base of the tree always "down" because of a false gravity, held me mesmerized.

Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion are more than page-turners. This is the kind of story that begins to fill your thoughts, to come up in conversation a little more than a book you're reading should. It's a book that you'll want your friends to read so you'll have someone to talk to about it, but once they do you have nothing to say - you just look at each other and nod.

Now don't get me wrong - I'm not saying this is The Brothers Karamozov or anything. But the Hyperion stories are very ambitious, and full of ideas that are worth a lot of thought. Simmons is unafraid to play with concepts of time, perception, reality, faith, and still keep an exciting plot and a sense of the concrete instead of drifting into abstract musings. His seven pilgrims depict almost archetypal aspects of human nature, which are then explored as they each must face extremities of emotion: pain, fear, guilt, despair, anger, longing. As the pilgrims proceed on their journey to meet The Shrike, they reveal the deep and often terrible stories that account for why anyone would knowingly seek the Lord of Pain.

As this story unfolds, a futuristic world is shown to us. It is a future where humans have spread out from the earth (now destroyed in "The Big Mistake") in a galactic web of inhabited planets connected by space-bending portals. A new race of artificial intelligences has evolved, living in the immense data structure of these interconnected worlds, helping humans with advanced technology (like the portals themselves), but always mysterious and working toward their own secret agendas. Imagine a mansion that exists on dozens of planets simultaneously, a single room on each one. You walk through a door to find yourself on a raft in the middle of an entire world of ocean, or walk down a flight of stairs to enter the top of a castle tower! The real genius of these stories is Simmons' imaginative creations. Many varied worlds are described in a rich detail, which become almost tangible, as if you can almost remember having been there once.

Simmons has an interesting style of blending familiar "real" images in with words and ideas supposedly from the future, without explaining the futuristic terms, as if taking for granted that the reader knows about life in the World Web. These allusions are interlaced in a way that does in time reveal the nature of the reference, and it also connects the world of Hyperion with the world we know. The frequent references to classical literature that Simmons makes (the name Hyperion is derived from a poem by Keats, who also figures into the story) are tossed in with reference to other "literary giants" the reader must assume are yet to be born. Reading the Hyperion books gives the pleasant reward of eventually learning what the words and concepts mean, as well as how the plot will unfold.

There are many mysteries throughout these books: who are the Ousters and what do they intend? Where do the AIs exist and what are they doing? Who is Moneta, the warrior woman, and what side is she on? What are the cruciforms? What is the explanation of the labyrinth worlds? The Time Tombs?

Simmons is a true craftsman, weaving these plot threads together with often agonizing patience. It is worth the wait to learn how they all interrelate - and yes, some elements may be left unanswered. There are times when the writing slips into sci-fi melodrama, but these can be excused in the overall scope of the story. I highly recommend these books to anyone with the vaguest interest in fantasy/sci-fi and a desire to be immersed in a new world for a little while. Very entertaining, and more than a little thought provoking!