Dan Simmons - "Hyperion"

Hyperion is a rather rare find: a literary science fiction novel.  The title is that of a John Keats poem, the structure follows The Canterbury Tales, and there are innumerable references to the poetry of Shakespeare and others.  Keats himself appears as a character, albeit in bizarre cyborg form.  As insufferable as all this may seem, it’s an excellent novel that any SF fan should read.  It’s one of the few novels that I’d recommend to someone who normally avoids the genre.

Hyperion is characterized by a pervasive sense of wonder that's often lacking in science fiction.  Much SF features a future that has been somewhat tamed; technological advances have reduced the number of unknown facts in the universe.  Pick your favorite future intellectual achievement: whether psychohistory, nanotech, strong AI, or something else, they all depend on knowing more about how the world works.  Hyperion turns this on its head: here, the universe is a vast and profoundly unknowable place.  Humanity has mastered FTL travel and colonized the galaxy, but ultimately we remain clueless about the true nature of things.

 

Yet this isn’t Lovecraftian pessimism.  Rather than retreat to the safety of the known, Simmons’ characters are driven to explore the reaches of the universe they find themselves in.  The characters themselves are refreshingly well done: space opera is notorious for forgettable protagonists who speak in dry, expository dialog.  The seven pilgrims here are believable and compelling; their unique and tragic histories drive them to seek answers to fundamental mysteries.  The novel’s structure supports the story well: rather than flip back and forth between subplots as is common in the genre, Simmons chooses to tell each story in sequence, at length, with only a few minor interludes.  The actual plot of the book is rather minimal; the true action is in each character’s novella-length history.  Yet the stories all exist within a common universe: the genre pyrotechnics of works such as David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas would detract from the overall atmosphere of awe and wonder.

The literary references are too many to count, and I am sure that most of them went over my head.  I am not well read in the Romantic poets, and I’ve missed out on most of Shakespeare’s sonnets, but they do appear here.  There are even some entertaining references to other works of science fiction: one character’s story is a straight rip on early William Gibson, and talk of semi-sentient dolphins and small, earth-destroying black holes reminds me of David Brin.  This is peripheral, though; one does not need to understand all or even most of the name-dropping to enjoy the novel.

It is worth discussing whether Hyperion is even science fiction.  It is certainly not speculative fiction, in the sense that it does not claim to make plausible guesses about humanity’s future.  The future as such is barely a theme: it’s just a convenient setting.  Is a novel science fiction because it uses the acronym “FTL” and expects the reader to know what it means?  Perhaps not, but it doesn’t really matter:  Simmons is tackling other equally big themes: the nature of religious faith, the power of literature, the problem of evil, the possibility of understanding other cultures.  

Ultimately, Hyperion is an extremely satisfying read.  It’s earned a place among my favorite science fiction novels.  I look forward to reading the sequels.