THE FALL OF HYPERION by DAN SIMMONS (1990)

The Fall of Hyperion is a continuation of the story which Simmons began in Hyperion (reviewed here just previously). Neither book would be complete as a stand-alone novel. As this part of the story begins, a group of pilgrims has just arrived at the valley of the Time Tombs on the planet Hyperion, each hoping to confront the Shrike, a fearsome creature covered in spikes, thorns, and blades, who has emerged from the Tombs. In the meantime, humanity has begun an all-out war between the planets of the Hegemony (who are essentially super-capitalistic and environment-destroying) and the Ouster planets (who are essentially empathetic and environmentally protective). I thought of them as Republicans and Democrats. Ostensibly aiding the Hegemony is the TechnoCore, the artificial intelligence community which had given the Hegemony the Farcaster Web, which allows instantaneous transport from one planet to another.

Thus begins an extremely convoluted plot which contains so many twists and turns that it is impossible to summarize. Suffice it to say that it includes many betrayals; much political maneuvering; space battles; some dubious metaphysics; time travel; the continuing stories of the pilgrims; musings about God/god and religious belief; deaths and resurrections; many references to 18th, 19th, and 20th Century poets, music composers, and artists; and more than a few plot threads left dangling.

All of this is narrated by a cybrid the TechnoCore has created by combining the DNA and memories of the poet John Keats with an artificial intelligence. He is able to describe events at which he is not present because he dreams them. I kid you not.

This is a mess of a book, with too much happening and too many story lines and too many characters and too much left unexplained. It jumps around from character to character and situation to situation. It is confusing. It doesn't always make sense. And yet....

This part of the story was diverting and kept me reading despite its excesses and lack of coherent logic. The first volume was much better. As space operas go, this one is better than many, but not nearly on a par with Frank Herbert's Dune, to which it is often compared.

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The Fall of Hyperion won the British Science Fiction and Locus awards for best novel in 1990.