Hyperion

English language

Published Feb. 17, 2005

ISBN:
978-0-575-07637-2
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4 stars (4 reviews)

Hyperion is a 1989 science fiction novel by American author Dan Simmons. The first book of his Hyperion Cantos series, it won the Hugo Award for best novel.The plot of the novel features multiple time-lines and characters. It follows a similar structure to The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. The next book in the series was The Fall of Hyperion, published in 1990.

9 editions

reviewed Hyperion by Dan Simmons (Hyperion Cantos, #1)

Far better than I recalled

5 stars

Thoroughly enjoyable, and vastly better than I remembered from when I last read it 25 years ago. There were so many details I didn't recall. I somehow callowly missed all the obvious link the Canterbury Tales amidst the other literary allusions.

The world-building was exceptional, even if things like the world web now seem like a product of the era when it was written. To wit: the the writer and academic describe work conditions in several hundred years from now that seem firmly rooted in the past, let alone the present.

From memory the rest of the series declines in quality, but wow, this was good.

reviewed Hyperion by Dan Simmons (Hyperion Cantos, #1)

A smashing, gripping story, with prominent elements I'm unable to decode.

4 stars

Content warning Major recapitulation of the first of the book's six interwoven tales, short phrases describing three characters, one of whom only appears late in the book, and some fruitless discussion of the novel's many connections with John Keats.