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Hyperion
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Hyp: Prologue - Sci-Fi Language
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I'm glad other people struggle with the invented jargon that tends to accompany scifi novels.Dune... don't even get me started. But I loved the book, in the end.
I did struggle for the first few pages of Hyperion, but I feel that he settles down and gives me definitions enough that I'm not inundated by new phrasing and ideas. Each story has unfolded the history and the background enough to get a handle on it without reading a glossary. I think it's quite masterfully done, actually.
I struggled even harder recently with the book Glasshouse, by Charles Stross. I found it very difficult to break through all the tech speak and jargon he invented, although it all made sense by the end it felt like work to get through it. Loved the story, but the writing style was off putting for me.
Ironically, I'm not as fussed with words that mean something in the real world like gymnosperm. That tells me more about the character, although reading in that voice the whole time might get a bit brain-busting.
I'm just glad to see that I'm not the only one who gets a bit bogged down with it, at least until the book gets rolling.
David wrote: "Still not clear exactly how the time debt business works!"It's Relativity!
As one approaches the speed of light, as during space travel, time slows down from your perspective, while remaining similar elsewhere. So, a 2-year journey from inside the spaceship could look like a 400-year journey from outside. Simmons has just named this effect the "time debt." At least, as I understand it so far.
Timothy wrote: "David wrote: "Still not clear exactly how the time debt business works!"It's Relativity!
As one approaches the speed of light, as during space travel, time slows down from your perspective, whi..."
Yep. Readers will get a much greater grasp of it when they reach the Consul's tale as time debts are a major part of the story as two characters must deal with being apart while one incrues a time debt and the other does not.
terpkristin wrote: "The weird language in science fiction (and some fantasy) books is why I always feel like I need to devote extra time to start some books. I like to have at least an hour when I'm first starting a b..."When I started reading Hyperion I thought the same thing!
I started Hyperion after finishing the 7th book in a series, and it took me some time to adjust my self to the new setting and terminology...
Makes me wonder if this has any relationship to the way many folks relate to / know science.
Makes me wonder if this has any relationship to the way many folks relate to / know science. I wonder how much it also fits well with "Comfort in Discomfort."
I see this a lot with my classes. I have some students who simply don't like to be not know the answer at the beginning. It's not that they're the kind that "always must have the right answer" (that's a different kind of kid) but that they simply don't like the idea of "Plug the numbers into the equation and see what happens."
Sci Fi (and some other genre's like Fantasy) usually have us in some level of unease about what can happen in the world. Sure there are Rules for every universe that we discover but between the vocab, the gadgets, the new races, etc, there's always little bit of the unknown, always something to be "Discovered".
Some people don't really like "discovering". Tell me what I'm doing and let me do it.
Rob wrote: "Some people don't really like "discovering". Tell me what I'm doing and let me do it."And yet, the reason I love Sci-fi (Books, Movies or TV) is exactly that reason... Why would I want normal and reality when I live that every day?
Yes, there was more novel-specific terminology in those first few pages than I have encountered in a long while! (so early in such a short amount of pages I mean) I actually stopped and noted them so I could refer to them later: Hegemony, Consul, fatline, interdiction field, Hyperion, Tau Ceti Center, Shrike Pilgrimage, Church of the Shrike, the All Thing, Time Tombs, Bridle Range, FORCE, time-debt, the Senate, Ousters, Ouster migration cluster, single-person ramscouts, can cities, comet forts, the Worldweb, Camn System, a military farcaster, pre-Hegira, The Templars, treeships, Parvati system, & Vikken EMV. Wow, that's twenty-seven ~ at least character names were kept to a minimum. LOL That said, I really enjoyed the prologue. (not sure whether to get into that in this thread or another -- I'll read the other threads first just in case!)
Jess wrote: "the All Thing"I really want to know what in the hell that one is.
Nimrod wrote: "In Hyperion, I noticed some terms were harder to visualize than others... Loved "Hawkins' Drive" still trying to get my head around "Tree Ship" I was thinking Moya in Farscape (living ship?)."Hey Nimrod God,
I was immediately intrigued by the tree ship (in part because its name was one of the first "jargony" words that I recognized -- from the Dragon Warrior/Dragon Quest video game series).
I picture the inside structures are all made out of wood, and the living spaces, meeting spaces and other rooms make up an enormous colony of treehouses. I envision the ship is lit by millions of tiny little lightning bug type lights floating in the air beneath a roomy canopy of itty bitty leaves. It might not sound very practical (I don't have a lot of experience with spaceships), but its defintely one that I'd want to travel on.
Tanya wrote:...Thanks for the Description, it was pretty close to what I imagined, but I did change the image in my head to include the wooden structures and tree houses :-)
Yay! I'm glad that I'm not the only one who finds the science fiction verbage challenging at first. Most of the time when I get this annoyed I'd lemm it, but I'm gonna trust your judgement Tom and Veronica and push through the opening. :0)
I am finding it incredibvly difficult to get into Hyperion because if the jargon included in the first few chapters. I understand the Telsa Trees and that is about it.
I'm only partially through chapter one, so this is the perfect time to chime in here. I don't mind the technical jargon, because I think if it was that important, it would be explained either now or later. I just think of it like a person's or city's or ship's name. I'm sure there's an etymology for the name, but if it was important, it gets explained.What I do find interesting with this book is the juxtaposition of late Roman Empire/Crusade terminology with this future universe. Consul, Senator, Templars, etc facing a barbarian invasion just smacks of that time period being repeated in the future.
At this point having read very little, I would equate Worldweb with the Roman Empire, Church of Shrike with the Roman Catholic Church as during the Crusades, Hegemony as the Emperor/Senate or Pope/College of Cardinals type of leadership or more likely some morphing of all the above.
With this in mind, I think the naming of the ship Yggdrasil is significant because it is Norse in origin. That and you have a Catholic priest, a Jew and an Arab on board as pilgrims. Throw in a potentially strong female character, and that makes for a very odd grouping considering the history of the Crusades.
The way I see it, if you don't recognize the terms, it doesn't detract from the reading. But if you do recognize terms, it just adds to the reading.
Can't wait to see what kind of story unfolds.
The opening scene was definitely rough, I think we could do with a bit more on-the-nose description. I am still not sure what sort of creatures were being warded off by the "interdiction barrier." Was the consular hearing from an AI, are the Templars human? I imagined them as a type of beast-man.Getting a grasp on his understanding of physics and faster-than-light travel (fatlines, spinships and farcasters) was less pressing, those ideas can be left for later.
Was the consular hearing from an AI, are the Templars human? I imagined them as a type of beast-man.They are human though genetic engineering and such may have modified them to some degree.
I actually liked the prologue and how it just dove into the jargon. It transported me immediately into the scifi world but kept me grounded here in the reference to classics, such as the music reference.Though I like to categorize at least a couple different types of jargon. There's the generic space technobabble, spouting off the engines and designs and the types of ships and all that. Stuff that gives you flavor, gives you that scifi feel. Fantasy can do the same depending on the type that one is dealing with (high-medieval (Tolkien) vs urban-fantasy (Dresden Files))
Then there's the plot based jargon, stuff that we don't know about and will ideally get answers for in the future. Like the Shrike and the All Thing (yes, wtf is that?). Those are jargon for that universe and we just have to get through the book and hopefully gain some answers by the time we get to the end. If not, then we just look to the next one and hope that has more answers, depending on how long this series might last.
Don't worry, all the following chapters expand on the prologue's setup. You get to fill in more and more of the blanks :)
I think I've officially read too much fantasy/sci fi because almost all the "jargon" from the prologue was something I could guess at in context or using notions of the genre I had before I started this one. Selected choices from the list above:
Hegemony - I knew this was a form of Gov't from history and other sci-fi so just assumed it was some sort of political entity.
Consul - Another historical/political word I assumed meant he was a gov't agent of some kind at the very least.
interdiction field - This one I had an idea of just based on old Star Wars novels where people would set up interdiction fields so that others couldn't go faster than light, assumed it was something similar.
The Templars - Fantasy background came into play in this one, assumed instantly they were some sort of religious/military order outside of the official gov't.
treeships - Found this one fairly self-evident in my head, as a big ship in the shape of and maybe even made of a giant tree.
Most of the other ones, outside of the proper nouns which I felt would be explained later, seemed fairly self-obvious or referential to things I already knew. That's the problem with being so deep in the genre though, I look at that and can't even see where those words would cause issues.
I learned something in this discussion though and will remember that in my own writing. Not all your readers will be avid genre readers and these terms aren't universal outside of the genre.
@Justin something else to keep in mind in your writing is that it's always nice to have some character outside the loop in some way so that the terms can be explained in a natural way...One thing I am not liking in Hyperion is that the terms that the author feels we need explanation on, are explained in a way that does not make sense... If a character is supposed to know what something is, but they have to ask, it feels unrealistic to me.
Guess its all a delicate balance.
I just now realized, midway through the Poet's tale, that I'd been reading "flatline" instead of "fatline" this whole time. This is all William Gibson's fault. Me and my obsession with Neuromancer.
In Hyperion, I noticed some terms were harder to visualize than others... Loved "Hawkins' Drive" still trying to get my head around "Tree Ship" I was thinking Moya in Farscape (living ship?).
In the end though, I figure terms you don't understand, are not that important.
I have to point out though, while non Sci-Fi readers may blame the stigma of unknown terms for their lack of reading the genre, I don't believe this is the only genre that suffers from it... ANY fiction book can have these elements.