Note: Retrospective Review
This review is NOT based on a recent reading of the work. I will have read it sometime before 2022 but still want to express my thoughts and comments, or just record that I have actually read it.
These reviews are included in the list of works by this author but do not count towards any of my reading goals or annual statistics!
I thought it would be good to provide a retrospective review of the first of the “Hyperion Cantos” by Dan Simmons as a tribute following his recent passing.
I had a paperback copy of Hyperion in my early twenties and was blown away by the sheer imaginative power of this novel. As Eric Berger said in his own tribute we both knew little of the novel before starting it and I too cried at the story of Sol and his daughter. Indeed on my first re-read I actually skipped that particular tale as it was just too painful to read.
I hope that I don’t need to explain too much of the story – in fact the frame narrative doesn’t really get too far, just takes our travellers across some interesting landscapes towards the time tombs.
It is the stories that the travellers tell each other, Canterbury Tales style that are the real meat. And each story is in its own right a tremendous example of creative imagination, differing in style and very much differing in content but overall a staggering achievement.
It is only by reading the rest of the Cantos that these very disparate tales are threaded together, again with huge feats of imagination and descriptive power. And it is for this reason that I’m not awarding this a ‘recommended’ tag - although the story telling is great nothign is actually resolved or explained, and some of the later volumes do drag a little. So it is indeed of great interest but it isn’t something I would recommend unless you are really prepared to work through the whole set.
If you are looking for the ultimate “unfilmable” work of science fiction this might be a good candidate. There is so much back story, so many different experiences packed into this work that even a film trilogy would be hard pressed to do it justice.
How about a new special edition of the cantos (with matching covers, maybe even hardback?) with a foreword and evaluation by someone like Adam Roberts? Take my money for the pre-order now!