Hyperion / The Fall of Hyperion / Endymion / Rise of Endymion

Hyperion Cantos #1-4

by Dan Simmons

Sotni mirov vovlecheny v mezhzvezdnuju vojnu, ot ishoda kotoroj zavisit sud'ba chelovechestva. Na planete Giperion, igrajushhej kljuchevuju rol' v jetoj vojne, nachinajut otkryvat'sja Grobnicy Vremeni - gigantskie sooruzhenija, dvizhushhiesja iz budushhego v proshloe. Semero palomnikov, sud'by kotoryh nerazryvno svjazany s Grobnicami i ih zhestokim Bozhestvom - Shrajkom, otpravljajutsja vputeshestvie k nim. Chem zavershitsja ih palomnichestvo? Kritiki i chitateli edinodushny: `Giperion` - luchshij nauchno - fantasticheskij roman poslednego desjatiletija!

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Fantasy, Space, Science Fiction Fantasy, Collections, Speculative Fiction

Hardcover

First published December 5, 2013

About the author

Dan Simmons is an American science fiction and horror writer. He is the author of the Hyperion Cantos and the Ilium/Olympos cycles, among other works that span the science fiction, horror, and fantasy genres, sometimes within a single novel. Simmons's genre-intermingling Song of Kali (1985) won the World Fantasy Award. He also writes mysteries and thrillers, some of which feature the continuing character Joe Kurtz.

Reviews

[George Schaffer · Rating 5 out of 5]

The absolutely best science fiction I've ever read.

I'm 70 years old and have read many different science fiction/ fantasy books since my teen years. This, by far, is the most riveting story I've read
, in this genre. Dan Simmons is a very creative and cohesive writer who can manage a huge story with many diverse characters and bring them all together to a coherent conclusion. I just finished the series, tonight and am." blown away".
If I could, I would give this series a.ten star rating and highly recommend it to teens/young adults to seniors like.myself. Thanks again, Dan Simmons for many happy reading hours.

[Paul Dobson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This series for me honestly beats out The Dark Tower, A Song of Ice and Fire, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Lord of the Rings, The Wheel of Time, and any other book series in recent memory. Yes, it’s that good.
Amongst so many other brilliant motifs, time travel in this series is wonderfully imagined and played out in the plot. Certain characters go backward in time and it’s written so intricately that it hits hard in all the right places.
One of my favourite images is of the River Tethys. It’s a massive interplanetary waterway, comprised of many sections located on different worlds and connected via farcaster.
Dan Simmons did not include all these pieces of sci-fi as novelty, or sparkly fad - they were well-purposed, thought out, and modular components to weave these worlds through time.
The character design is very distinctive, and the settings lavish. His descriptions of each is apt but never long-winded.
There is so much more , but I’ll leave that to you. Enjoy.

[Olethros · Rating 3 out of 5]

¿Quiere saber más de esta tetralogía, sin spoilers? Visite:

http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/...

http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/...

http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/...

http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com....

[Ira · Rating 2 out of 5]

The first two books in this series are pretty good, sort of a sci-fi Canterbury Tale. The whole thing is very ambitious, but ultimately just tries to do too much, borrowing from nearly every possible resource from Dante to Robinson Crusoe to Asimov to the Matrix to Star Trek. There are Martian Palestinian Refuge camps, time travel, backwards aging, superheros, space battles, giant trees in space, bioengineered butterfly people, androids, artificial intelligence, holodecks, crusaders, regeneration and rebirth, human sacrifice, the inevitable "healers." In the end though, even with a healthy suspension of belief, the whole thing is just way too implausible, inconsistent, gets way too preachy and ultimately is just silly. Though it takes place in a future about 1,000 years after earth's "destruction", the characters all have an amazing recall of arcane history, philosophy, religion and art from the 20th century and prior. I mean, even Captain Kirk would occasionally throw in a reference to Rygell 7 or the like when recounting historical events, but here culture seems to have stopped in about 1920 and post 20th century history is basically limited to the "Big Mistake" of 08. While the first two books are provocative enough and an enjoyable quest, Simmons makes some questionable choices in the last two, creating a teenage girl Jesus figure with her older brother and then lover disciple Raul (pronounced like Paul or Saul with an R) an evil self generating anti-pope, a brutal shape and time shifting artificial henchgirl named Nemes (semen backwards, anagram for Menses?) an inquisition, Crusades, frozen Jews, Hindus, Moslems and Buddhists. The writing is done well enough to keep it going and there are definitely a lot of fun characters and ideas. I did enjoy my several weeks getting through it all, but it is just too derivative and over the top to stand up to truly great Sci Fi creation.

[The Reading Ruru (Kerry) · Rating 5 out of 5]

How did I miss reading these incredible books (especially books 1 & 2) in all my years of reading SFF?! Brilliantly written, beautifully told and a must read for lovers of sci-fi.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great read. I enjoy Dan Simmons style and find it very satisfying. Intriguing and substantive characters and topics with obvious and not so obvious ramifications. Mr. Simmons does an excellent job of not only creating other worlds for us to visit, but immerses you in that experience to make you feel like you are walking down a main venue of one of these developed worlds or feeling a bit lost and displaced in an undeveloped and wild world. Truly a journey worth experiencing. I could not call it light reading. The chapters are extensive at times because it takes time and detail to build a world or a scenario. If you set any of these books down in the middle of a chapter, be prepared to back-track later on when you pick it back up so you can remember where you're at. But be prepared for long reading sessions, because there are times when you will not want to put the books down. After all that's why we read books like this, right?

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

I started this May 23rd?! Wow it does feel like I've been reading these four books for awhile. Most of it was time well spent and very few of it dragged on.

A lot of smart and unique ideas were put in these books around, really, a two part story. First two books of the pilgrimage and the last two of the messiah and the evolution of human beings.

Anybody who likes a great odyssey in around 2000 pages should take the time to enjoy this one.

[Lucas Chance · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF’d after the first book.

Didn’t really grab me with its prose or it’s themes

[chort · Rating 4 out of 5]

но позвольте, я же подписывалась на один том в 700 страниц, а не на два таких тома и нечитабельную поэму 19 века. предупреждать же надо

из первой книжки по-настоящему понравилась только первая байка, про бикара и крестоформ. мороз по коже как от жука в муравейнике

допишу про падение гипериона, если асилю его

упд: ладно, вторая половина падения гипериона это чистые пять звёзд. примерно с момента уничтожения Рощи Богов. которую, кстати, ужасно жаль

[Roger Alix-Gaudreau · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed the first pair of this four-book set more than the second pair. The author's writing style was generally good and engaging, and I really enjoyed the literary allusions/homages liberally sprinkled throughout the text -- homages to the Canterbury Tales and The Odyssey seem most obvious, along with frequent use of poetry from John Keats, but there are hints of others as well. There are a lot of great hard science elements, with a lot of fun story wrinkles due to time manipulations, and I also enjoyed the meandering through various philosophical questions (deism vs humanism, stability/stagnation vs evolution/chaos, etc.).

My main complaint is that there are stretches of the books that are way too slow and wordy, places where the author goes on and on listing names and details in a Tolkienesque fashion that detracts (for me) from the energy of the narrative. The final book felt way longer than it needed to be, and it started to feel like work toward the end. The first book is also pretty slow, being one long set up for the second. There is a huge transitional period between the second and third books, which initially felt uncomfortable, but which I came to appreciate because it gave the author the opportunity to explore quite fully the consequences of the end of the second book.

Overall, not quite strong enough for 5 stars IMO, but my complaint isn't strong enough to pull it down to 3 stars.

[Anthony Mandra · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hyperion: 4.5
Endymion: -2.5 (it's that bad)

The first two books are unique and can stand on their own within reason. Please pretend there are only two books!

The second two books are an absolute mess. I'd swear Simmons passed away and his middle school son finished the series with a healthy helping from every Sci-fi cliff's notes he could get his hands on. There are a dozen mini-plots, none of which are fully fleshed out; many of which are left ambiguously hand-wavy. The worst part is the plagiarism. There are blatant plot and atmosphere structures stolen from a bunch of popular books and movies.

The fourth book consists of mostly "I have the answer, but I can't tell you right now" dialogue. Unfortunately, there's not enough plot there for you to feel invested enough in the question to wait for the answer. It's shoddy suspense if I'm being forgiving.

It took forever to finish. I'd find myself reading a page or two, sighing, then putting it down, preferring sleep to reading. The only reason I finished was because I was invested enough in the first two books to hope the disaster in the second two would come together. It didn't. By halfway through the fourth I knew how everything ended, and skimmed through the end, ready to slow down if something interesting happened. It didn't.

[Phil Chenevert · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Fall of Hyperion is of course the sequel to Hyperion which I really liked even though it was chopped off mid stream. This one was not nearly so enjoyable to listen to; the stories seem to go on and on and on forever with way too many repetitions and descriptions of descriptions. This was NOT the kind of book where I eagerly waited for the next development; it was the kind of book where I was eagerly waiting for the author to finish beating this particular thought to death from 12 different angles. Interminable was the thought while listening. I gave it two stars because he did wrap up the threads of the first novel although it could have been done in half or a third of the time and would have been even more satisfying to me. Just my opinion. I won't be moving on to the rest of the series.

[Sara Facchin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read many science fictions, it's always been my favourite genre, and this is by far the best saga I've had the pleasure to read. All characters are well built, the story unravel itself little by little, keeping you glued to the pages. The scientific explanations seem coherent and convincing, they almost convince you that they could be real in our world too.
If I have to find a flaw I'd say that in the last book the descriptions take way too much space and aren't particularly needed but the beauty of the story makes you forget about it in an istant.
I've just finished Rise of Endymion and I'm literally in tears. Loved it.

[Elpresidente · Rating 2 out of 5]

A very long messy, and ultimately unsatisfying pulp-sci-fi.

I started reading this because I wanted something interesting, entertaining, something with aliens, monsters a mystery and maybe a love story thrown in. Well, I got what I wanted, at least in the beginning. But then I realized that the facade is false. The first novel started very promising, but ended abruptly without any resolution. Yearning to find answers I then read the second one, and while it had plenty of plot events happening, still no resolution. In the third one, the focus shifted a little bit with new heroes and new storyline, but again - it ended up in the middle of the story and I had to read an extremely long fourth novel just to reach the end of this whole thing and realize that we, me, anyone reading this - will not get an answer to their burning questions. I can't say I was surprised, I already had serious doubts that Dan Simmons can bring his complicated story to a satisfactory end, the pattern in the first three novels of the series was quite obvious. He had some interesting elements - The Shrike, the Labyrinth worlds, the cruciforms, the mysteries surrounding the Time Tombs and he made a book out of it, but he had zero idea how to explain these elements and tie them together. I really hate such exploitative narrative, that relies on throwing mystery after mystery against the reader/viewer but without any way to explain it or conclude it. It's cheap, it exploits certain psychological traits of humans, it's bad writing. Dan Simmons can use words and his scenes aren’t boring, I'll give him that at least, but there is a serious lack of overall structure to this saga. As a writer he gets bored and gets stuck sometimes. His solution is to make a huge jump from one storyline and leap to something more interesting. What happened to the abandoned characters is maybe briefly summarized in a page from the perspective of other characters. This is also really annoying gimmick. Many villains do not get satisfactory end, we don't even know if they are dead. Important plot points are only briefly mentioned.
One of the worst things Dan Simmons does in this series is that he changes his mind about certain plot elements. For example: the ousters in the first book started as filthy smelly cruel rogue race of humans, almost space savages, who wouldn’t think twice to dismember their prisoners and still keep them alive, with the body parts spread on a table. They bombed Bresha into oblivion and massacred the locals, if anyone remembers this needlessly long plot element. Then at some point Dan Simmons decides that the ousters are now going to be an advanced race of nano-customized and genetically enhanced humans, very noble, very spiritual and forgiving. This 180 degree turn was so baffling. The same thing with the Shrike – he started as an unexplained demon who impaled people on a metallic tree for some reason and by the end he was turned into a faithful protector puppy sadly standing over the grave of one his former victims. Speaking of that, which is one of the many things that remained unexplained – what the hell was that all about? The entire pilgrimage of the first seven character ended so absurdly with literally some unexplained magic and abilities that one of the characters got and was able to defeat The Shrike. What happened to the tree? Was there a tree even? Why wasn’t the tree ver mentioned again? What happened to the hundreds of thousands of people lying connected through their heads in one of the tombs? Not a word about it.
What about the labyrinths? Who made them? Why were there so many dead human bodies packed in one of them? Dan Simmons again facing a mystery too hard to explain, simply doesn’t mention them anymore.
What happened to the Compassion element of the A.I from the future, which the Shrike was supposed to lure and destroy? Nothing. Loose threads abandoned by Dan Simmons as too hard to turn into something that makes sense.
One of the most annoying things about his writing is that while he skips important plot points, he would gladly invest serious amount of pages describing a hero simply moving from one planet to another and trudging through mud, or meticulously describe the landscape of some planet complete with names of peaks and cities, as if we can relate to them.
He also tends to use the annoying trope of someone failing to explain something simple with few simple words, just to keep the mystery “riveting”. This is not only annoying but also leads to the humorous situation where the reader can see something happening from ten miles away, but the main character looks extremely stupid. Speaking of stupid characters – lets talk about Raul Endymion. Lets talk about this stupid, extremely jealous, dumb oaf. It’s a rare situation when I’ve met such an unlikable character who was pushed to be a hero for some unknown reason. I didn’t like him from the first moment he appeared.
As for Aenea, she was a a very badly written female character. Only such badly written female character could swoon over such an unlikable character as Raul Endymion.
The ending was abrupt, unsatisfactory and frankly: boring. I spent so much time reading hoping to see the Technocore destroyed, yet it didn’t happen. Worst letdown since the ending of Game of thrones.

In conclusion, I really wanted all this to make sense in the end, but sadly it didn’t. Cheap thrills is all I got.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dan Simmons managed to keep my rapt attention through four books of The Hyperion Cantos, with an immensely engaging writing style, great descriptions of the Hyperion universe, and actively made me wonder where he was heading down to the last novel. An excellent series for any lover of fantastical science fiction.

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

Magnificent story and brilliant writing

I’m not given to glowing reviews. I am here. The story arc across books is a collection of different techniques & styles. At times hard science fiction, horror, dreamlike words painted or sung. An homage to great poets, scientists - a love letter to humanity in all its failings & glories. A roller coaster of life.

[Stephen P Dickey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Epic

This is an incredible story, weaving our collective past and future together in a heartfelt, heart stopping adventure. With an amazing message of love, a story, a Cantos, worth every moment.

[Ian · Rating 5 out of 5]

The whole series should be read as one novel. The idea of genre is redundant here. This is one of the great novels of the late 20thC, never mind if you categorize it as SF. It is just a staggering feat of the human imagination, and if you don't cry at the end, you have a heart of stone.

[Jeremiah · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Hyperion Cantos was my introduction to Dan Simmons and I highly recommend this series to anyone who loves hard sci fi that is based on a blend of physics, spirituality and damn good writing.

[Sergei · Rating 3 out of 5]

Очень барочная фантастика, на грани графоманства, второй раз не смог и бросил.

На третий смог. Интересно, но не так что бы.

[Morten Bjoernsvik · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best sci-fi book(series) ever

[Mark's endless quest · Rating 5 out of 5]

What is there left to say ? An SF jewel. Up there with LOTR, Dune ,etc.

[Justin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ahead of it's time. Forsees the functionality of high-speed wireless internet to an impressive degree of accuracy for a book published in 1989 and conceived who knows how much earlier.

Classic series. Takes place maybe a couple hundred years from now, can't exactly remember. Humans have spread throughout the galaxy.. or maybe galaxies, it's been a while, meeting new intelligent beings and terraforming many planets. Anyway AI have split off from humanity, and humanoidity?. On Hyperion, mysterious spoiler spoilers are about to spoiler and certain factions of AI society would risk war with humoidity?? to control the moon before...

A pilgrimage of 5 people...mostly are secretly sent to Hyperion to be present for the spoiling of the spoilers. On the slower than light speed trip to Hyperion, the pilgrams feel compelled for spoilerish reasons to turn by turn reveal their incredibly interesting life stories. Funny, it's as if each one of these (not so) randos is an incredibly talented author/storyteller. No shallow cookie cutter characters, we get to know and empathize with everyone.

Very well written, characters so strong Id've loved the books if there were zero plot, (which certainly is not the case, just sayin). Like I said, classic series, characters are still alive to me near a decade later. All this and still the plot ideas... and the world building? or predicting? telegraphed from 1989 and still on track in 2022 and plausible for further.. well it's all spoilery and added bonus to the stand-alone skill of the 5 pilgram storytellers' tales.

[Severt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Long, convoluted and complex but still an intriguing read. Set in the future, when faster than light travel and communication is possible, The story begins with a confrontation between the human race and descendants of humans (Ousters) that have evolved after living in space. Artificial intelligence has come to the aid of humans and advises them, and how to survive the threat, facing them from the ousters. The aftermath of this war leaves the human race without its faster than light capabilities, isolating, all of the worlds that humans have bio engineered to be suitable for human life. Using the slower than light, speed travel, the Catholic Church, reestablishes dominance of the human universe. The church, though, is dependent upon the artificial intelligence which leads to complications. Overtime, a Messiah arrives that attempts to lead humans away from the dominance of artificial intelligence and the Catholic church.

Even though this series of novels was written in the 90s, it effectively foreshadowed potential issues, arriving from artificial intelligence. Other broad topics are explored, including fascism, and the history of fascism, and how it might evolve in the future, spirituality, and the existence of God.

[Serendipity · Rating 3 out of 5]

This series has absolutely everything you could ever dream or imagine in a science fiction novel. The grand scope of Dan Simmons' imagination and the complexity of his worldbuilding is incredible and imaginative.

The first book "Hyperion" is absolutely amazing and such a page-turner — the nested egg style is masterfully done, weaving in a variety of styles into each of the pilgrims' stories. The later books began to introduce new ideas in more detail. However, in my opinion, the series began to lose steam as the stories progressed, and the originality of the structure of the first book was lost. A lot of these complex ideas of high potential Dan Simmons began with were explained in a way that didn't seem to do justice to the grandeur of his vision. I also just could not love the characters in the latter two books as much as the earlier ones... At the end of the series, I still have a lot of unanswered questions, and I think there are QUITE A FEW loose ends. A good finish, but not a complete one. But wow what a trip~

[Patrick Stoffregen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic sci-fi series, absolutely wonderful! It's one that too few people have read, so I always recommend it. Each book is unique, and they all work together to form the boundaries of a wonderful story that tells what it means to be human, in a thousand different ways.

-----------SLIGHT SPOILERS BELOW----------------

One thing this (my third) read that bothered me, perhaps because I'm now the age of Raul by the end of the story, and not closer to Aenea's age, is their age difference. It's not only them, but the story of the Hawking mat's inventor that gets brought up time and again (and as the books go on, turns from "winning favor with" or something, to "seducing" his young niece - ew). It's disturbing at worst, and distracting at best. I wish the author would have reconsidered Aenea's age. Plus 5 - 8 years would've been sufficient, I think, and wouldn't have taken away from the story.

[Sam Swanner · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolute banger if you enjoy scifi, fiction, philosophy, or all three. The first book is a great adventure with lots of ideas thrown in, where the next three are a little heavier on the thoughts and rational of the characters.

I was sucked into the story though and had to finish it even if some sections in the third and fourth book did not hold my attention as well as the first had, but it has a very well designed ending.

Would highly recommend anyone interested in fiction to read the first book, Hyperion, as it is just a fantastically written novel. And if you get sucked in as I did go for the rest!

[Aki Ranin · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s quite an achievement to spin such a complex story across time and space, and 3000+ pages, without drawing it out unnecessarily.

The level of ambition is high, weaving together major questions about artificial intelligence, philosophy, culture, technology, and religion pretty seamlessly.

Ultimately the author is highly successful in satisfying the reader in the depth of and breadth of solving the grand mysteries and tying loose ends gracefully.

Why not 5/5? I think more contemporary attempts at answering the big questions can lend more relevant science and are therefore more powerful. The Three Body Problem comes to mind.

[Santi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Simplest way to put it: Read books #1-#2 and stop there.

That way, you will get all the big themes (AI, Religion, Evolution, Time Travel, Free Will vs Predestination, etc), all the world building, all the best characters, and 75% of the big threads solved or addressed.

You'll miss out on the remaining 25%, but you will also miss out on boring/bland characters, a narrative slog where the author becomes self indulgent, a lot of description of an endless list of worlds and their topography, and painful retconning which will stain the original thinking of the series.

Individual book scores:
Book 1: 5 stars
Book 2: 3.5
Book 3: 2
Book 4: 1 (and I would go lower if I could).

[JJacy1 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cantos finished...

This is a review of all four books. Epic in sweep - a galaxy of societies based on very intimate characters.

I’d say I preferred the first two tales over the last two overall but they do book end and intertwine in very interesting ways to make for a very complete sense of a few hundred years.

Time and space travel can make for some frustrating moments of paradox or worse nonsense but the author either dug in or left things blurry in a satisfying way.

For those with an interest in sci-fi I give it a hearty recommendation.