Hyperion Cantos
Encyclopedia
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
s by Dan Simmons
Dan Simmons
Dan Simmons is an American author most widely known for his Hugo Award-winning science fiction series, known as the Hyperion Cantos, and for his Locus-winning Ilium/Olympos cycle....
. Set in the far future, and focusing more on plot and story development than technical detail, it falls into the soft science fiction
Soft science fiction
Soft science fiction, or soft SF, like its complementary opposite hard science fiction, is a descriptive term that points to the role and nature of the science content in a science fiction story...
category. The title was originally used for the collection of the first pair of books in the series, Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion
The Fall of Hyperion
The Fall of Hyperion is the second science fiction novel by Dan Simmons in his Hyperion Cantos fictional universe. The novel was written in 1990, and won both the British Science Fiction and a Locus Awards in 1991...
, and later came to refer to the overall storyline, including Endymion
Endymion (Hyperion Cantos)
Endymion is the third science fiction novel by Dan Simmons in his Hyperion Cantos fictional universe. Centered around the new characters Aenea and Endymion, it has been well received like Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion - within a year of its release, the paperback edition had gone through five...
, The Rise of Endymion
The Rise of Endymion
The Rise of Endymion is a 1997 science fiction novel by Dan Simmons. It is the fourth and final novel in his Hyperion Cantos fictional universe...
, and a number of short stories. Within the fictional storyline, the Hyperion Cantos is an epic poem written by the character Martin Silenus.
Of the four novels, Hyperion received the Hugo
Hugo Award
The Hugo Awards are given annually for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year. The award is named after Hugo Gernsback, the founder of the pioneering science fiction magazine Amazing Stories, and was officially named the Science Fiction Achievement Awards...
and Locus
Locus Award
The Locus Award is a literary award established in 1971 and presented to winners of Locus magazine's annual readers' poll. Currently, the Locus Awards are presented at an annual banquet...
Awards in 1990; The Fall of Hyperion won the Locus
Locus Award
The Locus Award is a literary award established in 1971 and presented to winners of Locus magazine's annual readers' poll. Currently, the Locus Awards are presented at an annual banquet...
and British Science Fiction Association
BSFA Awards
The BSFA Awards are literary awards presented annually since 1970 by the British Science Fiction Association to honor works in the genre of science fiction. Nominees and winners are chosen based on a vote of BSFA members...
Awards in 1991; and The Rise of Endymion received the Locus Award in 1998. All four novels were also nominated for various science fiction awards.
A film adaptation
Film adaptation
Film adaptation is the transfer of a written work to a feature film. It is a type of derivative work.A common form of film adaptation is the use of a novel as the basis of a feature film, but film adaptation includes the use of non-fiction , autobiography, comic book, scripture, plays, and even...
of the series titled Hyperion is being developed by Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
and will encompass the Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion novels.
Hyperion
First published in 1989, Hyperion has the structure of a frame storyFrame story
A frame story is a literary technique that sometimes serves as a companion piece to a story within a story, whereby an introductory or main narrative is presented, at least in part, for the purpose of setting the stage either for a more emphasized second narrative or for a set of shorter stories...
, similar to Geoffrey Chaucer's
Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer , known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey...
Canterbury Tales and especially to Giovanni Boccaccio
Giovanni Boccaccio
Giovanni Boccaccio was an Italian author and poet, a friend, student, and correspondent of Petrarch, an important Renaissance humanist and the author of a number of notable works including the Decameron, On Famous Women, and his poetry in the Italian vernacular...
's Decameron. The story weaves the interlocking tales of a diverse group of travelers sent on a pilgrimage to the Time Tombs on Hyperion. The travelers have been sent by the Shrike Church and the Hegemony (the government of the human star systems) to make a request of the Shrike. As they progress in their journey, each of the pilgrims tells their tale.
The Fall of Hyperion
This book concludes the story begun in Hyperion. It abandons the frame structure of the first novel, instead using a more conventional chronological narrative (although several jumps in time take place).Endymion
The story commences 272 years after the events in the previous novel. Few main characters from the first two books are present in the later two. The main character is Raul Endymion, an ex-soldier who receives a death sentence after an unfair trial. He is rescued by Martin Silenus and asked to perform a series of rather extraordinarily difficult tasks. The main task is to rescue and protect Aenea, a messiahMessiah
A messiah is a redeemer figure expected or foretold in one form or another by a religion. Slightly more widely, a messiah is any redeemer figure. Messianic beliefs or theories generally relate to eschatological improvement of the state of humanity or the world, in other words the World to...
coming from the distant future via time travel
Time travel
Time travel is the concept of moving between different points in time in a manner analogous to moving between different points in space. Time travel could hypothetically involve moving backward in time to a moment earlier than the starting point, or forward to the future of that point without the...
. The Catholic Church has become a dominant force in the human universe and views Aenea as a potential threat to their power. The group of Aenea, Endymion, and A. Bettik (an android) evades the Church's forces on several worlds, ending the story on Earth
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...
.
The Rise of Endymion
This final novel in the series finishes the story begun in Endymion, expanding on the themes in Endymion as Raul and Aenea battle the church and meet their respective destinies.Short stories
The series also includes three short stories:- Remembering Siri (1983)
- The Death of the Centaur (1990)
- Orphans of the HelixOrphans of the Helix"Orphans of the Helix" is a 46-page short story by Dan Simmons set in his Hyperion Cantos fictional universe...
(1999)
Development
The Hyperion universe originated when Simmons was an elementary school teacher, as an extended tale he told at intervals to his young students; this is recorded in "The Death of the Centaur", and its introduction. It then inspired his short story "Remembering Siri," which eventually became the nucleus around which Hyperion and the Fall of Hyperion formed. After the quartet was published came the short story Orphans of the HelixOrphans of the Helix
"Orphans of the Helix" is a 46-page short story by Dan Simmons set in his Hyperion Cantos fictional universe...
. "Orphans" is currently the final work in the Cantos, both chronologically and internally.
The original Hyperion Cantos has been described as a novel published in two volumes, published separately at first for reasons of length. In his introduction to Orphans of the Helix, Simmons elaborates:
"Some readers may know that I've written four novels set in the 'Hyperion Universe'—Hyperion, The Fall of Hyperion, Endymion, and The Rise of Endymion. A perceptive subset of those readers—perhaps the majority—know that this so-called epic actually consists of two long and mutually dependent tales, the two Hyperion stories combined and the two Endymion stories combined, broken into four books because of the realities of publishing."
Influences
Much of the appeal of the series stems from its extensive use of references and allusionAllusion
An allusion is a figure of speech that makes a reference to, or representation of, people, places, events, literary work, myths, or works of art, either directly or by implication. M. H...
s from a wide array of thinkers such as Teilhard de Chardin, John Muir
John Muir
John Muir was a Scottish-born American naturalist, author, and early advocate of preservation of wilderness in the United States. His letters, essays, and books telling of his adventures in nature, especially in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California, have been read by millions...
, Norbert Wiener
Norbert Wiener
Norbert Wiener was an American mathematician.A famous child prodigy, Wiener later became an early researcher in stochastic and noise processes, contributing work relevant to electronic engineering, electronic communication, and control systems.Wiener is regarded as the originator of cybernetics, a...
, and to the poetry
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
of John Keats
John Keats
John Keats was an English Romantic poet. Along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, he was one of the key figures in the second generation of the Romantic movement, despite the fact that his work had been in publication for only four years before his death.Although his poems were not...
, a famous English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
Romantic
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
poet of the 19th century, and the monk Ummon; a large number of technological elements are acknowledged by Simmons to be inspired by elements of Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World
Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World
Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World is a 1994 book by Kevin Kelly. Major themes in Out of Control are cybernetics, emergence, self-organization, complex systems and chaos theory and it can be seen as a work of...
.
The Hyperion series has many echoes of Jack Vance
Jack Vance
John Holbrook Vance is an American mystery, fantasy and science fiction author. Most of his work has been published under the name Jack Vance. Vance has published 11 mysteries as John Holbrook Vance and 3 as Ellery Queen...
, explicitly acknowledged in one of the later books.
The title of the first novel, "Hyperion," is taken from one of Keats's poems, the unfinished epic Hyperion
Hyperion (poem)
"Hyperion" is an abandoned epic poem by 19th-century English Romantic poet John Keats. It is based on the Titanomachia, and tells of the despair of the Titans after their fall to the Olympians...
. Similarly, the title of the third novel is from Keats' poem Endymion
Endymion (poem)
Endymion is a poem by John Keats first published in 1818. Beginning famously with the line "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever", Endymion, like many epic poems in English , is written in rhyming couplets in iambic pentameter...
. Quotes from actual Keats poems and the fictional Cantos of Martin Silenus are interspersed throughout the novels. Simmons goes so far as to have two artificial reincarnations of John Keats ("cybrids": artificial intelligences in human bodies) play a major role in the series.
Settings
Much of the action in the series takes place on the planetPlanet
A planet is a celestial body orbiting a star or stellar remnant that is massive enough to be rounded by its own gravity, is not massive enough to cause thermonuclear fusion, and has cleared its neighbouring region of planetesimals.The term planet is ancient, with ties to history, science,...
Hyperion. It is described as having one-fifth less gravity than Earth standard
Standard gravity
Standard gravity, or standard acceleration due to free fall, usually denoted by g0 or gn, is the nominal acceleration of an object in a vacuum near the surface of the Earth. It is defined as precisely , or about...
. Hyperion has a number of peculiar indigenous flora and fauna, notably Tesla trees
Tesla trees
Tesla Trees are a fictional plant lifeform in Dan Simmons' Hyperion Cantos series. They are native to the planet Hyperion. They appear to store up electricity inside their body during certain seasons, releasing all of it in huge arcs of lightning from their crown, burning away all that was growing...
, which are essentially large electricity-spewing trees. It is also a "labyrinthine" planet, which means that it is home to ancient subterranean labyrinth
Labyrinth
In Greek mythology, the Labyrinth was an elaborate structure designed and built by the legendary artificer Daedalus for King Minos of Crete at Knossos...
s of unknown purpose.
Most importantly, however, Hyperion is the location of the Time Tombs, large artifacts surrounded by "anti-entropic" fields that allow them to move backward through time. The region where the Tombs are located is also the home of the Shrike
The Shrike
The Shrike is a character from Dan Simmons' Hyperion universe, set far in humanity's future.The Shrike appears in all of the Hyperion books and is something of an enigma; its true purpose isn't 'revealed' until the second book, but even then it is left a malleable purpose. In fact, this explanation...
, a menacing being that features prominently in the series.
Hawking Drive
The Hawking Drive was developed by humanity before the Big Mistake, allowing the faster than light travel which led to the Hegira. It was named after Stephen HawkingStephen Hawking
Stephen William Hawking, CH, CBE, FRS, FRSA is an English theoretical physicist and cosmologist, whose scientific books and public appearances have made him an academic celebrity...
; whereas the hawking mat was named after the species of bird found on old Earth. Aenea later revealed that the TechnoCore
Technocore
The TechnoCore is the 'race' of post-singularity Artificial Intelligences in Dan Simmons' sci-fi novel Hyperion. The Core consists of a grid of AIs hidden throughout human space, residing in "datasphere" networks, hidden underground computers, and other hidden locations...
created FTL drive by utilising the Void Which Binds.
Farcaster
The FarcasterFarcaster
A farcaster is an instantaneous transportation device in the fictional Hyperion universe. Farcasters allow two points separated by a vast distance to be brought together at a Farcaster Portal. The Farcaster network connects hundreds of planets of the Hegemony of Man into their WorldWeb...
network was given to humanity by the TechnoCore
Technocore
The TechnoCore is the 'race' of post-singularity Artificial Intelligences in Dan Simmons' sci-fi novel Hyperion. The Core consists of a grid of AIs hidden throughout human space, residing in "datasphere" networks, hidden underground computers, and other hidden locations...
and again it was another use of the Void Which Binds that allowed this instantaneous travel between worlds.
Fatline
Faster than light communications technology, Fatlines are said to operate through tachyonTachyon
A tachyon is a hypothetical subatomic particle that always moves faster than light. In the language of special relativity, a tachyon would be a particle with space-like four-momentum and imaginary proper time. A tachyon would be constrained to the space-like portion of the energy-momentum graph...
bursts. However, in later books it is revealed that they operate through the Void Which Binds.
Gideon Drive
A Core-provided starship drive that allows near-instantaneous travel between any two points in human-occupied space. The drive's use kills any human on board a Gideon-propelled starship; thus, the technology is only of use with remote probes or when used in conjunction with the Pax's resurrection technology.Resurrection Creche
The resurrection creche can regenerate someone carrying a cruciform from their remains (though not always); this is integrated into the Pax Christian church original concept of resurrection. Usually it requires a clergy man to oversee (apparently, only a small percentage know the secrets involved), but Gideon Drive Pax spaceships, whose near-instantaneous travel killed its passengers, were equipped with automatically working devices.Treeship
Living trees (related to Dyson treeDyson tree
A Dyson tree is a hypothetical genetically-engineered plant, capable of growing in a comet, suggested by the physicist Freeman Dyson...
s) that are propelled by ergs (spider-like solid-state alien being that emits force fields) through space. The ergs also generate the containment field
Containment field
In Dan Simmons's Hyperion universe, the containment field is a common technology with many uses varying from military defense shield to civilian safety restraint....
s around the enormous tree that keep its atmosphere intact. There are only a small number of Treeships in existence - in Hyperion, the Consul remarks that the Yggdrasill is one of only five.
Weaponry
- Lasers: Commonly referred to as Hellwhips, these range in power from small pistols to large vehicle based weapons. Lasers are not commonly used on ships, which can mount more powerful particle beam weapons.
- Plasma bombs and grenades: A type of weapon available to military forces (and civilians, through the black market). Plasma weapons are described as being very powerful and destructive, as well as producing large amounts of radiation. During the Ouster invasion of Hyperion, plasma bombs are used and are seen as brilliant semispherical explosions of light. In the riots on Hyperion, shortly before the arrival of the Consul and the other pilgrims, several plasma grenades were used on the Shrike church, reducing the massive stone-and-steel structure to a mass of smoldering rubble and slag.
- CPBs: Ship based particle beam weaponry. These range in power from small beams with a radius of only a few meters, as seen in Endymion, to weapons capable of leveling cities, as used by the TechnoCore in The Fall of Hyperion, and are the main armament of Torch Ships.
- Hawking Missiles: Missiles equipped with their own Hawking Drive, allowing them to travel faster than light and giving them a much greater range than conventional weaponry. Only seen in Endymion and The Rise of Endymion.
- Bhees: Beams of High Energy Electrons, these are beams of focused and accelerated electronElectronThe electron is a subatomic particle with a negative elementary electric charge. It has no known components or substructure; in other words, it is generally thought to be an elementary particle. An electron has a mass that is approximately 1/1836 that of the proton...
s with considerable penetrating power. - Deathwands: Weapons given to humanity by the AI TechnoCoreTechnocoreThe TechnoCore is the 'race' of post-singularity Artificial Intelligences in Dan Simmons' sci-fi novel Hyperion. The Core consists of a grid of AIs hidden throughout human space, residing in "datasphere" networks, hidden underground computers, and other hidden locations...
. These are the ultimate "clean" weapon: capable of killing people while leaving property intact. Deathwands burn out all the synapses in a human brain, causing almost instantaneous death; thus they would kill humans but not damage physical property (compare neutron bombNeutron bombA neutron bomb or enhanced radiation weapon or weapon of reinforced radiation is a type of thermonuclear weapon designed specifically to release a large portion of its energy as energetic neutron radiation rather than explosive energy...
). These weapons were normally handheld, though with a wide dispersal beam. Just before the Fall of the Hegemony (in The Fall of HyperionThe Fall of HyperionThe Fall of Hyperion is the second science fiction novel by Dan Simmons in his Hyperion Cantos fictional universe. The novel was written in 1990, and won both the British Science Fiction and a Locus Awards in 1991...
), the TechnoCoreTechnocoreThe TechnoCore is the 'race' of post-singularity Artificial Intelligences in Dan Simmons' sci-fi novel Hyperion. The Core consists of a grid of AIs hidden throughout human space, residing in "datasphere" networks, hidden underground computers, and other hidden locations...
introduced a large scale deathwand variant which it claimed would kill the entire population of a planet, as well as any other world in a 1.5 light year radius of its point of detonation. Its introduction was apparently pushed by the Volatile and Ultimate factions of the TechnoCoreTechnocoreThe TechnoCore is the 'race' of post-singularity Artificial Intelligences in Dan Simmons' sci-fi novel Hyperion. The Core consists of a grid of AIs hidden throughout human space, residing in "datasphere" networks, hidden underground computers, and other hidden locations...
; this origin as well as other indirect evidence suggests the possibility that TechnoCoreTechnocoreThe TechnoCore is the 'race' of post-singularity Artificial Intelligences in Dan Simmons' sci-fi novel Hyperion. The Core consists of a grid of AIs hidden throughout human space, residing in "datasphere" networks, hidden underground computers, and other hidden locations...
was lying about the lethal radius, and that the radius was either indefinite (as the Hegemony's scientists had concluded and is supported by Aenea's contention in the Endymion duology that a deathwand operated by means of disturbances in the Void-Which-Binds) or vastly greater than that of the Hegemony's spatial expanse. Another possibility is that they lied about the number of the deathwand bombs built, and actually had enough to wipe out every system individually. - Flechette guns and rifles: Weapons which shoot thousands of small steel darts. These weapons have a wide dispersal and are capable of ripping practically anything in their path to shreds.
- Stunners: Small weapons which are used to subdue rather than injure (point blank headshots, however, are lethal). Neural stunners cause paralysis by affecting the nervous system. A person hit by a stun beam is incapable of even blinking.
Cultural references
- Danish progressive power metal band ManticoraManticoraManticora is a Heavy metal band from Hvidovre, Denmark formed in 1996 by Lars and Kristian Larsen. Their current label is Locomotive Music. Their lyrical content typically consists of literature, fantasy, and science fiction. Although they are considered to be a progressive power metal band, they...
released a concept album called "Hyperion" based on the first book. - The anime The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi contains numerous references to Hyperion, hinted at by the appearance of the book itself in the second episode of the remake (2009) of the series.
- The EinhänderEinhänderis a scrolling shooter developed by Square for the PlayStation console. It was released in Japan on November 20, 1997 and in North America on April 30, 1998. It was also re-released for the Japanese PlayStation Network on June 25, 2008...
(1997) video game for PlayStation contains references to "Hyperion". - The song Raspberry Jam Delta-V by Joe Satriani is most likely a direct reference to Endymion.
- The album and song "Razorblade God" by DrakkarDrakkarDrakkar may refer to:*Drekar, a Viking longship*Drakkar Entertainment*Drakkar Productions, a French underground black metal label*Baie-Comeau Drakkar, a junior hockey team*Drakkar, an Italian power metal band...
refers to the Shrike. - A flagship battlecruiser in the StarcraftStarCraftStarCraft is a military science fiction real-time strategy video game developed by Blizzard Entertainment. The first game of the StarCraft series was released for Microsoft Windows on 31 March 1998. With more than 11 million copies sold worldwide as of February 2009, it is one of the best-selling...
series is named Hyperion.
External links
- Hyperion Cantos - News on the Hyperion Cantos movies, books and universe.
- Interview with Simmons where he mentions the origin of the Hyperion Cantos universe
- "The whole of SF history as a theophany" - (a review of the Endymion duology)
- Treeship
- Hyperion Movie - Hyperion Movie news and updates.