The Fall of Hyperion (Hyperion Cantos, #2)

by Dan Simmons

Gladstone loved the Web. She loved it enough to know that she must help in destroying it.

As Hegemony CEO, she was the symbolic leader of a hundred and fifty billion human souls. She was prepared to betray them all in order to save humanity.

[We all agreed that Earth had to die so we killed it

“The best lack all conviction,” he thought, “while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”