That really sucks. Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion are some of my favorite sci-fi books.
The next two books in the series got weirder because of the characters ages… That part doesn’t hold up.
Well shit, I was going to circle back around to them in not too long.
Noooooooo he was such a good author :(
https://bookshop.org/beta-search?keywords=dan+simmons
He did a lot of other books.
“Drood” is a wild tale told by an opium addict, pretty much the ultimate unreliable narrator.
“The Crook Factory” has Ernest Hemingway chasing Nazi submarines lurking near Cuba.
Illium / Olympus is also epic.
Drood was so … long to read (I mean weird pacing) and I couldn’t decide if it was intentional or not.
Also not giving us more of the tusk lady etc was criminal (but I knew that fairly from the start that I’m getting snubbed in my ghostly lore needs).
Drood isn’t for everyone, but I enjoyed the craziness.
‘Black Hills’ is also pretty good. Native man gets a job working on the Mount Rushmore project. It’s a desecration but he needs the work.
Oh, I kinda enjoyed Drood (like a snack I’m already fed up with yet keep munching), but in comparison some passages felt fatiguing, style a bit different, topics a bit mondaine (again, might have been intentional to show opium changes, idk).
Didn’t read Black Hills, almost don’t want to, but prob will at some point (thx for reminding me).
Well, I know what’s going in my reading pile next then
I finished the Fall of Hyperion last week. He was a fantastic writer. May he be remembered and honored the same way as Colonel Kassad
Colonel Kassad was the best.
Damn. That was one twisted man. He’ll be missed.
Well shit. I wish the best for his loved ones. 77 is too young for sure.
Is it? 77 feels just right to me for the end. Not too old to be decrepit, not young enough to regret it.
Depends on how good ones health and savings are I guess
Man I stroke once or twice a day. Didn’t know it could be fatal!
This dude really did write multiple genres pretty well, even mashed together.
Absolutely fantastic world-building in Hyperion Cantos.
I also enjoyed Terror, the world descriptions are just situationally (like in a 3D space) pleasing for me, adjusted historical & mythological facts work really well, and even the story was rounded into a satisfactory end.
Rip.
I always hoped to see a Hyperion movie, now without his guidance it’ll come out and suck.
SyFy (not its predecessor) had rights to it, but it never came to light. The Shrike is so hard to depict. Perhaps HBO or another with deep coffers could make it happen.
IMO the Shrike is kind of unimportant to most of the storytelling. You could almost just narrate it and show shadows of a distant figure. It’s the stalking threat that gives mystery and weight to the decisions of the characters to make the pilgrimage.
I always found the physical description of the Shrike to be one of the silliest aspects of the story.
I loved especially Hyperion, but I said my final goodbye the day I opened Flashback… what an awful piece of rear end production that was.
The Hyperion series was awesome, original, well-thought out, spiced with a background of Enoch the Prophet, flying space trees … and I’ll cherish it forever.
Flashback not so much, what a hateful piece of right wing trash that was. And I’m not necessarily against a solid story that makes me think or even just learn to appreciate other’s viewpoints, but this was more like something Ben Shapiro would write. “leftie bad hur durr”, you probably know what I mean. On top of that, it was shattered, incoherent and relied insanely on Deus Ex Machina constructions throughout.
I never understood and I never ever will I. Sad.
I never understood and I never ever will I.
Oh, I understand it. Simmons was too eager to tell us why he didn’t like “certain people.”
Oh definitely. I just never understood how this could be the same author.
The Terror is my favorite book! I picked it up based on the cover art and texture and it turned out to be a fantastic horror novel. I love how he integrated it with actual historical events. RIP.
Hyperion is awesome… read all 4 and “told” them to my kids who loved them so much they read them as well (my “kids” are big, but I don’t know what else to call them hahaha)
Rest in peace Simmons… may you Freecast in joy for all eternity
Without Dan Simmons and Hyperion, sci-fi literature would’ve been still been regarded as disposable paperbacks. Simmons did away with the trappings of early pulp sci-fi that held a shadow over the genre for many decades. Instead, Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion took the shape of the Western Canon and could be discussed as serious literature. Without spoiling too much, I remember reading the story of Sol Weintraub and his daughter and almost being brought to tears; something that no other book, regardless of genre, has done.
Rest well, scribe. Asimov, Heinland, Clarke, Herbert and, of course, Keats. You’ll be in good company
Without Dan Simmons and Hyperion, sci-fi literature would’ve been still been regarded as disposable paperbacks. Simmons did away with the trappings of early pulp sci-fi that held a shadow over the genre for many decades. Instead, Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion took the shape of the Western Canon and could be discussed as serious literature.
Hyperion was pretty good, but the 70s New Wave of science fiction had already done that: Ursula K. Le Guin, J. G. Ballard, Samuel Delany, etc. They deserve their credit.
Hadn’t Bradbury already been doing a lot of that like 2 decades before? I guess it mentions him as a predecessor in that article, but if the movement is distinguished by “an emphasis on the psychological and social sciences as opposed to the physical sciences”, that sounds like Bradbury to a T.
Sol’s story is incredible, but the priest’s tale is the single best horror fiction ever written imo.
I don’t even have children and Sol Weintraub made me want to cry so hard
See you later, alligator. 😭
WHAT THE FUCK NOOO!
