About book Hyperion / The Fall Of Hyperion / Endymion / Rise Of Endymion (1998)
The first two books in this series are pretty good, sort of a sci-fi Canterbury Tale. The whole thing is very ambitious, but ultimately just tries to do too much, borrowing from nearly every possible resource from Dante to Robinson Crusoe to Asimov to the Matrix to Star Trek. There are Martian Palestinian Refuge camps, time travel, backwards aging, superheros, space battles, giant trees in space, bioengineered butterfly people, androids, artificial intelligence, holodecks, crusaders, regeneration and rebirth, human sacrifice, the inevitable "healers." In the end though, even with a healthy suspension of belief, the whole thing is just way too implausible, inconsistent, gets way too preachy and ultimately is just silly. Though it takes place in a future about 1,000 years after earth's "destruction", the characters all have an amazing recall of arcane history, philosophy, religion and art from the 20th century and prior. I mean, even Captain Kirk would occasionally throw in a reference to Rygell 7 or the like when recounting historical events, but here culture seems to have stopped in about 1920 and post 20th century history is basically limited to the "Big Mistake" of 08. While the first two books are provocative enough and an enjoyable quest, Simmons makes some questionable choices in the last two, creating a teenage girl Jesus figure with her older brother and then lover disciple Raul (pronounced like Paul or Saul with an R) an evil self generating anti-pope, a brutal shape and time shifting artificial henchgirl named Nemes (semen backwards, anagram for Menses?) an inquisition, Crusades, frozen Jews, Hindus, Moslems and Buddhists. The writing is done well enough to keep it going and there are definitely a lot of fun characters and ideas. I did enjoy my several weeks getting through it all, but it is just too derivative and over the top to stand up to truly great Sci Fi creation.
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