They’re weird, spooky, or both, and they’re great at making your inner Keanu Reeves say “whoa.” Cool Lightning Trees

Hyperion is rightly remembered as being on the surreal end of science fiction, and the best aspects of its world follow accordingly. This novel is often compared to The Canterbury Tales, but at least Chaucer didn’t give his protagonists a high-tension goal only to detour from it immediately.īut what kind of setting is revealed to us through this collection of tragic backstories? Is it a thrilling galaxy of bizarre creatures and marvelous worlds, or is the worldbuilding as scattered as the plotting? Let’s find out. In theory, the story is about six pilgrims * traveling to meet a spooky entity called the Shrike so they can either get a wish or die horribly, but in practice, the book is taken up by the main characters’ tragic backstories or, in some cases, the tragic backstories of people they know. Although calling it a “novel” is a bit misleading, as the book’s structure makes it more akin to six novelettes in a trench coat. Perhaps the most famous of those novels is Hyperion, the first book in a space-opera quartet.

But in ye olden days, he was famous for a series of weird, genre-bending novels that made readers say either “wow, that’s deep” or “the heck did I just read?” These days, Dan Simmons is mostly known as a hard-right Islamophobe * who thinks that moderately progressive social policies will destroy America and tries to keep himself relevant by scolding climate activists.

Hyperion cantos by dan simmons