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Hyperion (Hyperion Cantos) Mass Market Paperback – March 1, 1990
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On the world called Hyperion, beyond the reach of galactic law, waits a creature called the Shrike. There are those who worship it. There are those who fear it. And there are those who have vowed to destroy it. In the Valley of the Time Tombs, where huge, brooding structures move backward through time, the Shrike waits for them all.
On the eve of Armageddon, with the entire galaxy at war, seven pilgrims set forth on a final voyage to Hyperion seeking the answers to the unsolved riddles of their lives. Each carries a desperate hope—and a terrible secret. And one may hold the fate of humanity in his hands.
Praise for Dan Simmons and Hyperion
“Dan Simmons has brilliantly conceptualized a future 700 years distant. In sheer scope and complexity it matches, and perhaps even surpasses, those of Isaac Asimov and James Blish.”—The Washington Post Book World
“An unfailingly inventive narrative . . . generously conceived and stylistically sure-handed.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Simmons’s own genius transforms space opera into a new kind of poetry.”—The Denver Post
“An essential part of any science fiction collection.”—Booklist
- Print length481 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherSpectra
- Publication dateMarch 1, 1990
- Dimensions4.2 x 1.1 x 6.9 inches
- ISBN-100553283685
- ISBN-13978-0553283686
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
A stunning tour de force, this Hugo Award-winning novel is the first volume in a remarkable new science fiction epic by the author of The Hollow Man.
Review
“Dan Simmons has brilliantly conceptualized a future 700 years distant. In sheer scope and complexity it matches, and perhaps even surpasses, those of Isaac Asimov and James Blish.”—The Washington Post Book World
“An unfailingly inventive narrative . . . generously conceived and stylistically sure-handed.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Simmons’s own genius transforms space opera into a new kind of poetry.”—The Denver Post
“An essential part of any science fiction collection.”—Booklist
From the Publisher
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The Hegemony Consul sat on the balcony of his ebony spaceship and played Rachmaninoff's
Prelude in C-sharp Minor on an ancient but well-maintained Steinway while great, green,
saurian things surged and bellowed in the swamps below. A thunderstorm was brewing to the
north. Bruise-black clouds silhouetted a forest 0f giant gymnosperms while stratocumulus
towered nine kilometers high in a violent sky. Lightning rippled along the horizon. Closer to the
ship, occasional vague, reptilian shapes would blunder into the interdiction field, cry out, and
then brash away through indigo mists. The Consul concentrated on a difficult section of the
Prelude and ignored the approach of storm and nightfall.
The fatline receiver chimed.
The Consul stopped, fingers hovering above the keyboard, and listened. Thunder rumbled
through the heavy air. From the direction of the gymnosperm forest there came the mournful
ululation of a carrion-breed pack. Somewhere in the darkness below, a smallbrained beast
trumpeted its answering challenge and fell quiet. The interdiction field added its sonic
undertones to the sudden silence. The fatline chimed again.
"Damn," said the Consul and went in to answer it.
While the computer took a few seconds to convert and decode the burst of decaying tachyons, the
Consul poured himself a glass of Scotch. He settled into the cushions of the projection pit just as
the diskey blinked green. "Play," he said.
'You have been chosen to return to Hyperion," came a woman's husky voice. Full visuals had not
yet formed; the air remained empty except for the pulse of transmission codes which told the
Consul that this fatline squirt had originated on the Hegemony administralive world of Tau Ceti Center.
The Consul did not need the transmission coordinates to know this. The aged but still beautiful
voice of Meina Gladstone was unmistakable. "You have been chosen to return to Hyperion as a
member of the Shrike Pilgrimage," contin-ued the voice.
The hell you say, thought the Consul and rose to leave the pit.
"You and six others have been selected by the Church of the Shrike and confirmed by the All
Thing," said Meina Gladstone. "It is in the interest of the Hegemony that you accept."
The consul stood motionless in the pit, his back to the flickering transmission codes. Without
turning, he raised his glass and drained the last of the Scotch.
"The situation is very confused," said Meina Gladstone. Her voice was weary. "The consulate and
Home Rule Council fàtlined us three standard weeks ago with the news that the Time Tombs
showed signs of opening. The anti-entropic fields around them were expanding rapidly and the
Shrike has begun ranging as far south as the Bridle Range."
The Consul turned and dropped into the cushions. A holo had formed of Meina Gladstone's ancient
face. Her eyes looked as tired as her voice sounded.
"A FORCE:space task force was immediately dispatched from Parvati to evacuate the Hegemony
citizens on Hyperion before the Time Tombs open. Their time-debt will be a lithe more than
three 1-lyperion years." Meina Gladstone paused. The Consul thought he had never seen the
Senate CEO look so grim. "We do not know if the evacuation fleet will arrive in time," she said,
"but the situation is even more complicated. An Ouster migration cluster of at least four
thousand . . . units ... has been detected approaching the Hyperion system. Our evacuation task
force should arrive only a short while before the Ousters."
The Consul understood Gladstone's hesitation. An Ouster migration cluster might consist of ships ranging in size from single-person ramscouts to can cities and comet forts holding tens of thousands of the interstellar barbarians.
"The FORCE joint chiefs believe that this is the Ousters' big push," said Meina Gladstone. The
ship's computer had positioned the holo so that the woman's sad brown eyes seemed to be staring
directly at the Consul. "Whether they seek to control just I-Iyperion for the Time Tombs or
whether this is an all-out attack on the Woridweb remains to be seen. In the meantime, a full
FORCE:space battle fleet complete with a farcaster construction battalion has spun up from the
Camn System to join the evacuation task force, but this fleet may be recalled depending upon
circumstances."
The Consul nodded and absently raised the Scotch to his lips. He frowned at the empty glass and
dropped it onto the thick carpeting of the holopit. Even with no military training he understood
the difficult tactical decision Gladstone and the joint chiefs were faced with. Unless a military
farcaster were hurriedly constructed in the Hyperion system-at staggering expense-there
would be no way to resist the Ouster invasion. Whatever secrets the Time Tombs might hold
would go to the Hegemony's enemy. If the fleet did construct a farcaster in time and the
Hegemony committed the total resources of FORCE to defending the single, distant, colonial world
of Hyperion, the Worldweb ran the terrible risk of suffering an Ouster attack elsewhere on the
perimeter, or-in a worst-case scenariohaving the barbarians actually seizing the farcaster and
penetrating the Web itself. The Consul fried to imagine the reality of armored Ouster troops
stepping through farcaster portals into the undefended home cities on a hundred worlds.
The Consul walked through the holo of Meina Gladstone, retrieved his glass, and went to pour
another Scotch.
"You have been chosen to join the pilgrimage to the Shrike," said the image of the old CEO whom
the press loved to compare to Lincoln or Churchill or Alvarez-Temp or whatever other
preHegira legend was in historical vogue at the time. "The Templars are sending their treeship
Ydrasi1I," said Gladstone, "and the evacuation task force commander has instructions to let it
pass. With a three-week time-debt, you can rendezvous with the Yggdrasill before it goes
quantum from the Parvati system. The six other pilgrims chosen by the Shrike Church will be
aboard the treeship. Our intelligence reports suggest that at least one of the seven pilgrims is an agent of the Ousters. We
do not . at this time - . have any way of knowing which one it is"
The Consul had to smile. Among all the other risks Gladstone was taking, the 01d woman had to
consider the possibility that he was the spy and that she was fatlining crucial information to an
Ouster agent. Or had she given him any crucial information? The fleet movements were
detectable as soon as the ships used their Hawking drives, and if the Consul were the spy, the
CEO's revelation might be a way to scare him off. The Consul's smile faded and he drank his
Scotch.
"Sol Weintraub and Fedmahn Kassad are among the seven pilgrims chosen," said Gladstone.
The Consul's frown deepened. He stared at the cloud of digits flickering like dust motes around
the 01d woman's image. Fifteen seconds of fatline transmission time remained.
"We need your help," said Meina Gladstone. "It is essential that the secrets of the Time Tombs
and the Shrike be uncovered. This pilgrimage may be our last chance. If the Ousters conquer
Hyperion, their agent must be eliminated and the Time Tombs sealed at all cost. The fate of the
Hegemony may depend upon it."
The transmission ended except for the pulse of rendezvous coordinates. "Response?" asked the
ship's computer. Despite the tremendous energies involved, the spacecraft was capable of
placing a brief, coded squirt into the incessant babble of FTL bursts which tied the human
portions of the galaxy together.
"No," said the Consul and went outside to lean on the balcony
railing. Night had fallen and the clouds were low. No stars were visible. The darkness would
have been absolute except for the intermittent flash of lightning to the north and a soft
phosphorescence rising from the marshes. The Consul was suddenly very aware that he was, at
that second, the only sentient being on an unnamed world. He listened to the antediluvian night
sounds rising from the
swamps and he thought about morning, about setting out in the
Vikken EMV at first light, about spending the day in sunshine,
about hunting big game in the fern forests to the south and then
returning to the ship in the evening for a good steak and a cold beer.
The Consul thought about the sharp pleasure of the hunt and the equally sharp solace of solitude:
solitude he had earned through the pain and nightmare he had already suffered on l-lyperion.
Hyperion.
The Consul went inside, brought the balcony in, and sealed the ship just as the first heavy
raindrops began to fall. He climbed the spiral staircase to his sleeping cabin at the apex of the
ship. The circular room was dark except for silent explosions of lightning which outlined
rivulets of rain coursing the skylight. The Consul stripped, lay back on the firm mattress, and
switched on the sound system and external audio pickups. He listened as the fury of the storm
blended with the violence of Wagner's "Flight of the Valkyries." Hurricane winds buffeted the
ship. The sound of thunderclaps filled the room as the skylight flashed white, leaving
afterimages burning in the Consul's retinas.
Wagner is good only for thunderstorms, he thought. He closed his eyes but the lightning was
visible through closed eyelids. He remembered the glint of ice crystals blowing through the
tumbled ruins on the low hills near the Time Tombs and the colder gleam of steel on the Shrike's
impossible free of metal thorns. He remembered screams in the night and the hundred-facet,
ruby-and-blood gaze of the Shrike itself.
Hyperion.
The Consul silently commanded the computer to shut off all speakers and raised his wrist to
cover his eyes. In the sudden silence he lay thinking about how insane it would be to return to
Hyperion' During his eleven years as Consul on that distant and enigmati world, the mysterious
Church of the Shrike had allowed a dozen barges of offworld pilgrims to depart for the windswept barrens, around the Time Tombs, north
of the mountains. No one had returned. And that had been in normal times, when the Shrike had
been prisoner to the tides of time and forces no one understood, and theanti-entropic fields had
been contained to a fewdozen meters" around the Time Tombs. And there had been no threat of air
Ouster invasion.
The Consul thought of the Shrike, free to wander everywhere on, Hyperion, of the millions of
indigenies and thousands of Hegemony citizens helpless before a creature which defied physical laws and which communicated only
through death, and he shivered despite the warmth of the cabin.
Hyperion.
The night and storm passed. Another stormfront raced ahead of the approaching dawn.
Gymnosperms two hundred meters tall bent and whipped before the coming torrent. Just before
first light, the Consul's ebony spaceship rose on a tail of blue plasma and punched through
thickening clouds as it climbed toward space and rendezvous.
Product details
- Publisher : Spectra (March 1, 1990)
- Language : English
- Mass Market Paperback : 481 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0553283685
- ISBN-13 : 978-0553283686
- Item Weight : 8.6 ounces
- Dimensions : 4.2 x 1.1 x 6.9 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #6,342 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #105 in Space Operas
- #415 in Epic Fantasy (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Dan Simmons was born in Peoria, Illinois, in 1948, and grew up in various cities and small towns in the Midwest, including Brimfield, Illinois, which was the source of his fictional "Elm Haven" in 1991's SUMMER OF NIGHT and 2002's A WINTER HAUNTING. Dan received a B.A. in English from Wabash College in 1970, winning a national Phi Beta Kappa Award during his senior year for excellence in fiction, journalism and art.
Dan received his Masters in Education from Washington University in St. Louis in 1971. He then worked in elementary education for 18 years -- 2 years in Missouri, 2 years in Buffalo, New York -- one year as a specially trained BOCES "resource teacher" and another as a sixth-grade teacher -- and 14 years in Colorado.
His last four years in teaching were spent creating, coordinating, and teaching in APEX, an extensive gifted/talented program serving 19 elementary schools and some 15,000 potential students. During his years of teaching, he won awards from the Colorado Education Association and was a finalist for the Colorado Teacher of the Year. He also worked as a national language-arts consultant, sharing his own "Writing Well" curriculum which he had created for his own classroom. Eleven and twelve-year-old students in Simmons' regular 6th-grade class averaged junior-year in high school writing ability according to annual standardized and holistic writing assessments. Whenever someone says "writing can't be taught," Dan begs to differ and has the track record to prove it. Since becoming a full-time writer, Dan likes to visit college writing classes, has taught in New Hampshire's Odyssey writing program for adults, and is considering hosting his own Windwalker Writers' Workshop.
Dan's first published story appeared on Feb. 15, 1982, the day his daughter, Jane Kathryn, was born. He's always attributed that coincidence to "helping in keeping things in perspective when it comes to the relative importance of writing and life."
Dan has been a full-time writer since 1987 and lives along the Front Range of Colorado -- in the same town where he taught for 14 years -- with his wife, Karen. He sometimes writes at Windwalker -- their mountain property and cabin at 8,400 feet of altitude at the base of the Continental Divide, just south of Rocky Mountain National Park. An 8-ft.-tall sculpture of the Shrike -- a thorned and frightening character from the four Hyperion/Endymion novels -- was sculpted by an ex-student and friend, Clee Richeson, and the sculpture now stands guard near the isolated cabin.
Dan is one of the few novelists whose work spans the genres of fantasy, science fiction, horror, suspense, historical fiction, noir crime fiction, and mainstream literary fiction . His books are published in 27 foreign counties as well as the U.S. and Canada.
Many of Dan's books and stories have been optioned for film, including SONG OF KALI, DROOD, THE CROOK FACTORY, and others. Some, such as the four HYPERION novels and single Hyperion-universe novella "Orphans of the Helix", and CARRION COMFORT have been purchased (the Hyperion books by Warner Brothers and Graham King Films, CARRION COMFORT by European filmmaker Casta Gavras's company) and are in pre-production. Director Scott Derrickson ("The Day the Earth Stood Stood Still") has been announced as the director for the Hyperion movie and Casta Gavras's son has been put at the helm of the French production of Carrion Comfort. Current discussions for other possible options include THE TERROR. Dan's hardboiled Joe Kurtz novels are currently being looked as the basis for a possible cable TV series.
In 1995, Dan's alma mater, Wabash College, awarded him an honorary doctorate for his contributions in education and writing.
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Reviewed in the United States on November 20, 2022
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As an apocalyptic war between competing sides of the descendants of humankind builds to its ultimate confrontation, a small band of 7 unrelated people make a dangerous pilgrimage to the contested and mysterious world of Hyperion to make a plea to something called The Shrike--they may all die horrifically, or one of them may somehow move The Shrike with their story and be granted their deepest, and magical, wish.
As they travel through the different phases of their journey, and as events in the world outside their near-light-speed phase of their trip progress quickly--since real world time is proceeding at a much faster rate of time--like another group of pilgrims long ago, they become acquainted by telling their individual stories to each other, each of which is compelling as an individual Tale, and also gives glimpses into the nature of how the world now works. They come from diverse backgrounds, on disparate worlds that had been settled and changed by their distant Earthling ancestors, and they each have a heart-breakingly compelling story to tell, and a need or wish that they believe only The Shrike has the power to grant--and they also understand that, at best, only one of them will be granted their desire--but it is their last hope to undertake this perilous, and most-likely fatal expedition to have their wish granted.
Also, one of them is a spy, possibly, somehow bent on betrayal/destruction of the Hegemony that controls the greater universe they all live in--will the telling of their stories reveal which of them is the traitor, and are any, or all, of them telling the complete truth?
The world-building is phenomenally complex, and each story is compelling, and the descriptive passages painted pictures in my mind I had to stop to just gaze at in awe. Each story, I found myself wondering--is this one true; or is this story a lie, designed to distract from the teller's real intention to betray all of them?
I was kept guessing until nearly the last page, and as with any truly great story, I find it difficult to drag myself back into the real world when the story ends--and I definitely want to know what will happen next. Since anyone reading this novel will probably realize there are 3 more installments in the series, it seems not too much of a spoiler to say that--while we do learn a lot by the end--including who is the spy--some things are not resolved, and I very much want to learn what will happen next. The question is--how long can I make this last, since I am enjoying the ride so much? Will I immediately race through all the sequels, or will I read other things, so as to prolong the immense enjoyment I get from reading (these books). I would definitely give 10 stars, if I could, and I cannot think of
anything bad to say about this novel--I may read it again immediately. Besides, there was a lot to absorb, and a re-read may help click it all into greater understanding.
I picked it up at the recommendation of my adult son, but put it down already in the first chapter as frankly boring. WTH - why would I get into a story of a few random strangers setting out on an interplanetary journey? But he encouraged me to pick it back up without giving away any clues (so I won't here), but I am so glad I did.
This series is on the one hand another story of humanity having migrated out into the cosmos, but it is an order of magnitude more complex than The Expanse or Dune, with fantastical creations even beyond what Tolkien might have imagined. The writing itself is both creative and compelling, and the creative sci-fi mechanisms keep coming in a cascade to the very end. I found myself constantly asking how one author could could be so adept at so many dimensions of a story? Such a masterpiece of genius.
Overall, just wow! But warning - don't pick it up unless you plan to spend the next few months of your life engaged in this epic journey amongst the stars with all four books. Once you get past the somewhat slow start, it won't let go of you until the end.
Known space stands on the brink of interstellar war between the human Hegemony and the barbarous Ousters, a nomadic branch of humanity that has lived for generations in a nomadic existence in the dark between the stellar oasis of the stars, and have evolved and mutated into something perhaps other than human. And all the while a third faction – the independent AIs of humanity’s making – keep to their inscrutable plans, offering computing service to all while seeking to manipulate organic life to further the AIs’ own interests.
In this pivotal moment, poised at a conflict of unprecedented scale that could well mean the extermination of sentience at worst and the devastation of civilization at best, news comes from the mysterious world of Hyperion: the legendary Time Tombs are opening, and a final pilgrimage is called.
Artifacts of an unknown and immeasurably advanced power, the Time Tombs are gateways to eternity, offering enlightenment and puissance to the worthy pilgrim. To the unworthy pilgrim, the reward is death most brutal and terrifying, because first, the sojourners must face the guardian of the Time Tombs: the Shrike.
To quote one character: He’s Michael the Archangel and Moroni and Satan and Masked Entropy and the Frankenstein monster all rolled into one package. He hangs around the Time Tombs waiting to come out and wreak havoc when it’s mankind’s time to join the dodo…
Personally, I’d add Gort the robot from The Day the Earth Stood Still to that list. The real one, not that godawful remake. Like Gort, the Shrike is terrifying and inscrutable, beyond reason and appeal, and if it’s programming concludes that you die, the Shrike will execute that program, and it’s target, and no force in the universe can stand against it.
And the Shrike is on the move.
The reader’s introduction to this epic comes in the vector of seven different people from very different walks of life, and even from different times, since many have spent time in stasis or have experienced years or centuries compressed into minutes or days during faster-than-light travel through space. Seven people who under normal circumstances would never have met, now travel together across the world of Hyperion to the Time Tombs, knowing that only one will survive. All the while, Hyperion is on the front lines and will be among the first targets hit by the Ouster attack.
As they travel, they agree to take turns sharing their stories, what brought them to Hyperion, what they want and why they are willing to risk everything to get it.
And to add an extra layer of complication, one of the pilgrims may well be an Ouster operative.
The story takes the form of six novellas as the seven pilgrims take their turn. Each novella is masterful, written in a different style and a different voice, relating the character’s story while serving to explore different aspects of this vast universe and its history.
A disgraced Catholic priest discovers a race of beings who may have achieved the immortality his faith has promised, or is it an obscene parody of life?
A debauched poet chronicles his rise and fall and his drive to create a poem unlike any other, even if it is humanity’s funeral dirge.
A private detective is hired by an AI avatar solve a murder. The victim? The AI himself.
A ruthless warrior, hero and butcher, tells the story of his defense of a planet in a pitched campaign to fight off an Ouster incursion, and now seeks the true meaning of war and it’s answer.
And more.
The framing narrative is fraught with perils as well, since our pilgrims must worry not only about the approaching Ouster invasion, but a murder mystery among their own ranks.
And in the end, somehow Simmons manages to wrap up all these threads and leave us on the springboard for the true epic promised in the following three novels of the Hyperion Cantos.
All in all, a seamless masterpiece. I not only loved it, but I truly can’t understand how anyone could not be sucked in immediately. I plan to devour the next novels soon, and I only hope they live up to the start in Hyperion.
I can only say that the first book is definitely worth re-reading, and the Shrike deserves iconic status.
On a side note, readers will also benefit from a familiarity with some of the literary references in the book, particularly Keats’ unfinished Hyperion, from which the tale draws many influences.
Also, the narrator of the audiobook, Marc Vietor, is a genius in terms of conveying different characters.
Top reviews from other countries

Firstly it annoys me that someone would take so much time describing an entire culture to write it off as worthless and for want of a better term sinful. Derogatory terms are thrown out one after the other until I wanted to put the book down. I only finished this because I’d paid for it.
People say now that the writers comments about Greta Thunberg and his prejudice against Islam are a recent trend but reading this book it was clear that he was happy to write off enormous groups of people 30 years ago. The story of the priest amongst the indigenous people reads as if Hitler wrote it. I won’t deny the story was interesting by the end but it’s not worth giving money to this kind of nonsense.



Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 23, 2019



It just doesn't matter though. Having rolled my eyes at all the sci-fi nonsense in the first chapter, I found myself drawn in and read half the book in one sitting. It follows a Generation X style format where characters take turns to tell their own stories and each story is fascinating. The characters feel very different, their stories really do seem to come from different narrators. Some are pulpy and exciting, others are really touching.
The end is a bit disappointing, it is basically put off to be dealt with in the second book. However, this first entry in the series is so well written that reading the next one was necessity for me anyway.

It is written in the style of The Canterbury Tales, each character's story gives us an insight into that character and introduces us to a different part of the vast world Simmons has created. Think of it as several novellas that are linked together by their pilgrimage which works well.
There are plenty of references to various other literary works which I liked, the ending was rather anticlimactic but if I think of this book as the introduction to the world Simmons has created and as several novellas then I'm fine with that.

This book proves me wrong. That there are still authors who care about building complex worlds without resorting to tropes. The book is a complex weaving of narratives in a way that does not feel forced or unnatural. Its marvelous.
It is well paced and has sufficient complexity and interesting characters that draw you in for the duration. Simmons has constructed a fascinating world that I wanted to learn more about. Whilst the conclusion is a little underwealming there is sufficient mystery in the whole experience to leave you wanting more.
In summary this is excellent science fiction and for sure something that fans of Clarke, Asimov and Herbert will enjoy.