Hyperion Cantos
Yet another scifi thriller? You’re going to be disappointed.
A science fiction series, one of the few that hasn’t really been adapted to the electronic media yet. And it can’t really be made compatible for TV or the cinema. The universe is too vast, the background elements and themes are so creative that to give them shape would be equivalent of undermining them. It is just too succulent to be even slightly altered. If you’re a science fiction reader, and you haven’t read this yet, what are you doing with your life?
There are four books, in the series; Hyperion, Fall of Hyperion, Endymion, Rise of Endymion. Hyperion and Endymion are characters from the Greek mythology. In this series, Hyperion is the name of the planet in the outback where the Time Tombs are present. Endymion is the surname of a character in the last two books. The series constantly pays homage to various people from history. And that is saying something, considering that the setting is many years into the future when Earth no longer exists (its not really destroyed, more of a misplaced). There are references to Churchill and Lincoln. John Keats is a major character. And apparently John Muir has a whole faction of followers who live on a giant Tree planet and fly Tree trunks as spaceships which are powered by little sentient beings called ergs.
To understand the enormity of the plot in this series, you need to understand that the story is not about good and bad. Good stories never are. There’s really no distinction. There are just groups which hold power in one way or another in the Hegemony of Man. The Hegemony is the government-esque system of ruling that humanity has adopted ever since migrating from a dying Earth. This migration is termed the ‘Hegira’ a quaint reference to the ‘Hijrat’ events predominant in Islam. Anyway, these power holders include:
- The Senate, which is aided by the All-Thing (analogous to an amalgam of all sorts of media) Speaker. Headquarters at the planet Tau Ceti Center or TC²
- The Christianity’s Church. Plays a very vital role in the last two books. They live on Barnard’s World, where they have built a new Vatican with original pieces of art brought from the Old Earth.
- Brotherhood of Muir. The environmentalists who carry seeds for planting on planets they travel to, have large tree spaceships. They are the templars and live on God’s Grove.
4. TechnoCore, the AIs that help the Hegemony by providing them with all the machines and the technology. They’ve gifted the Farcasters, a teleporter network to humanity. There is no hardware to these computers and no planet where they excluively live. They exist ‘somewhere’ and keep in touch with the Senate by the Council of AI, where some of them manifest as holographs, kind of. Later we learn that the AI’s like humans have graduations among them; the Ultimates, Stables and Volatiles
5. Church of the Final Atonement, is a group of weird psychos who believe that the Shrike is the Lord of Pain. Their true motives and workings are unknown but they just seem to be at the center of everything and seem to be involved in everything.
6. The Shrike. Oof. The Shrike, to say too much about it would be a spoiler.Suffice it to say that the shrike is not the Lord of Pain as the Church of Final Atonement puts it. It is not the villain or the foe. It is not an ally. It is not a henchman or a servant. It is almost nature manifest. Perhaps it is a force of nature, doing what it was made to do, and doing it efficiently and without regard of anything or anyone else. If to do that, it has to mechanically kill millions of people ruthlessly, then so be it. To confuse Shrike for a machine, would be a fatal error. It is just an entity. A certain character says that the Shrike will just be a footnote in the pages of history. Really, now? A chromium armored, havoc wreaking entity, a machine (not literally) of destruction laced with spikes whose very thought sends shivers through the spine, cannot be just a footnote. The Shrike is an interesting character in the books. One of the few ones to prominently appear in all four books. It is the only character that appears in the cover of all four books. And to know who, what the Shrike is and what willed it into being, you’ll have to read the whole series.
7. Ousters, who aren’t really a part of Hegemony of Man. In fact they are the Russia to the America that is the Hegemony. I almost typed in details about Ousters that are potentially vital to enjoying the story. Let me just say that they are creatures who do not inhabit on one planet. They live on marvellous space-ships, which are in fact entire mobile planets. This gives them agility and makes them a constant threat to the Hegemony
You might ask what these massive groups do, or what they bring to the table. They bring politics, evolution, religion, environmental conservation, mystery, action and a power struggle or a status quo establishment to the plot.
The first book is like the Canterbury Tales. There are pilgrims who are going to the last ever pilgrimage (duh) to the Time Tombs, which are monolithic structures sent back in time from the future. Their contents which haven’t been revealed yet will soon be disclosed. They are also conveniently the stronghold of the Shrike. The pilgrimage is pretty much a one way trip arranged by the Church of Final Atonement who claim that the Lord of Pain fulfills the request of one pilgrim and kills the others. How jocular! The pilgrims each tell stories which reveal their backgrounds and which clear many vague details. They introduce us to this universe, and explain the reasons why these people are the pilgrims. A brief word about the pilgrims, who play a vital role in the series.
- The Hegemony Consul: Top diplomat of the Hegemony, the unsaid protagonist of the first two books
- Feidman Kassad: Probably the best soldier that the Hegemony millitary, FORCE had.
- Brawn Lamia: A private investigator who is neurally linked to a cybrid of John Keats persona. This sounds whacky but her story clarifies it
- Het Masteen: The true voice of the Tree. Captain of Yggdrasil.
- Martin Silenius: A poet who looks young but is so old that he was born on the old Earth literally.
- Sol Weintraub: A scholar and philosopher whose daughter studied Time Tombs and becomes diseased. She barely features in the last book. There is a very interesting concept that Sol constantly fosters. It is about Abraham’s sacrifice. He concludes his train of thoughts with the following idea:
Sol Weintraub suddenly understood perfectly why Abraham had agreed to sacrifice Isaac, his son, when the Lord commanded him to do so. It was not obedience. It was not even to put the love of God above the love of his son. Abraham was testing God. By denying the sacrifice at the last moment, by stopping the knife, God had earned the right — in Abraham’s eyes and the hearts of his offspring — to become the God of Abraham.
7. Father Hoyt: A christian who appears to be incurably depressed and distressed. He has a very important character later in the series, however we do not see a lot of him. His story is the first in the book and it is also probably the best. Such a terrifying and gruesome tale that one could have found the likes of it in Skeleton Crew. I am sure, even standalone this story would lead to an excellent read.
The second book resolves many conflicts that appear throughout the pilgrim’s stories. These conflicts just happen to affect the rest of the Hegemony too in one way or another. It ends neatly, giving us a big picture to look at which allows some unexplained things to be cozily explained but at the same time unravels other ambiguous points. This installment is perhaps one of the best scifi mystery, thriller, adventure, whatever the fuck.
The third and the fourth books are nice. Not as good as the first two. Religion stars heavily in varying facets of the plot. The good parts in these books are the exploration of the large universe that we were introduced to but never shown. The endings and the revelation moments of what happened to certain things and certain characters of previous books are also something to look forward to. The overall ending to the series in the 4th book is very well rounded, balanced and self-explanatory. I hereby christen it as one of the best endings to a scifi novel series.
However, the fact that some characters dont get any kind of closure makes these two books, for lack of a better word in the entirety of the English language, shitty. But what makes it worse is the ongoing romantic relationship between the two main characters. Raul Endymion and Aenea. The age gap is, if I recall properly, more than 10 years. Then conveniently there is some time debt (time dilation) to Raul involved in the 4th book so basically the age gap shortens to 9 or something. You can’t make this sound okay. Even if the child has visions of possible futures and is some great leader, you still can’t. Its still absurd and downright fucking wrong. To put the cherry on top, the lewd scenes are written in quite detail and in abundance. Raul spends a lot of time musing about her or their relationship and even though the last book is called the “Rise of Endymion”, its not exactly a rise, as Raul starts being too dependent on Aenea. Oh and by the way, this relationship is not a spoiler. Not at all. The first lines of the third book quite clearly make you aware of this exquisite detail.
Sweet Quotes:
“Mobs have passions, not brains.”
“Its hard to die. Harder to live”
“We are destined and designed to bear our pain with us, hugging it tight to our bellies like the young Spartan thief hiding a wolf cub so it can eat away our insides.”
“Evolution brings human beings. Human beings, through a long and painful process, bring humanity.”
“The shortest route to courage is absolute ignorance.”
“Words are the only bullets in truth’s bandolier. And poets are the snipers.”
Themes:
- Self-lessness and the power of love
- The monotony of life and the innate ability of man to fall into a groove and carve everything around it to fit his need
- The need for adaptation to survive and thrive
- Faith in its true meaning and what an unwavering belief really means
- The strength of unity
- The importance of evolution and growth. The vitality of change and diversity.
Interesting concepts:
- Farcasters: Portals. Rich people have farcaster homes, where one room is on one planet and the other room is in another
- Fast space-ships: At a certain point in the stories, a fast courier space-ship is designed which travels super fast but kills its inhabitants in the process. A system of resurrecting them is inculcated into the ship. A certain crew in the story, volunteers to die hundreds of times in this manner and be resurrected in the line of duty and for the sake of their beliefs.
- Cruciform: A parasite, that doesnt let you die. Vital in the resurrection process of humans. People are immortal, kind of in the last two books.
4. Consul’s ship: As farcasters make inter-planetary travel easy, the need for space-ships isnt really a thing. But being the top dawg of the Hegemony, the Consul has a fancy space-ship which later underoges modifications and becomes just mind-blowingly cool. Its not weaponised but boy does it have tricks up its sleeves.
5. In the last two books many different planets and their ecology is described and the detail and thought process put into this must be immense and intense. Similarly the fact that most major religions of today, Islam,Christianity, Judaism, and Hinduism have entire planets full of its followers.
6. A certain (Alladin’s) flying mat, termed the Hawking mat features in all of the four books and it is just uncannily an important part of the story
7. There’s also another interesting concept by which capital punishment is dealt to a certain person. He is locked inside a schrodinger box and then left to live the rest of his life there or wait for the cyanide to be automatically released which it will on a random and unknown trigger or time. No executioner and nobody gets their hands dirty. Schrodingers cat? Pfft. Schrodingers prison? Ding ding ding.
8. Then of course there are the typical scifi paraphernalia. Laser blasters, body integrated computers and crazy yet helpful gadgets and what not.
