“Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands dressed?
What little town by river or sea-shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul, to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e’er return.”
Hyperion is, I think, first and foremost a story for people who love stories. That, on the surface, may not seem particularly high praise (nor is it actually the highest praise I owe the novel, that part comes later), but it speaks to something unique about this book as a whole. While it is not writers alone who can appreciate a story in this way, it certainly helps being (that little bit that I am actually) a writer when looking at Hyperion, and the stories within.
This is because, too, Hyperion is first and foremost a story of stories. Think Chaucer in space. The novel follows a pilgrimage of distinct, colorful characters on the universes’ last pilgrimage to the namesake planet, Hyperion (“’It sounds like a brand name for some new household product’” one character opines in a wonderfully self-aware piece of worldbuilding), one the eve of its invasion by modified humans known as Ousters (who apparently ride on comet fort cities as spaceships and that sounds incredible).
They know what awaits them: the Shrike, a monster-myth made real that, it is said, will grant the wish of one of the pilgrims and kill the rest. Each pilgrim has been informed, as well, that one of their number is a spy, set to betray the Hegemony of Man and give Hyperion over to the Ousters. To help them find the spy, and to pass the time before what they all know and feel are their imminent deaths, the characters decide to tell the stories of how they are connected to Hyperion, and why they are returning.
They are beautiful, entrancing tapestries of characters, worldbuilding, religion and philosophy, and purpose. Each is written in a distinctive enough voice, formatted differently from each other, and can stand alone as a testament to character studies and worldbuilding. Some are heartbreaking, some are meditative, some are horrifying, and some unfathomably intriguing.
There are intimate reflections on the nature of humanity (“’…you’ve already seen things I cannot imagine. You probably know more facts about the universe than I would guess exist. But you know very little, my darling.’”), of where we’re headed (anyone who has worries about AI will fit right in reading the wonderful view of the TechnoCore organization of sentient AI’s loosely allied with the Hegemony of Man), of religion (“’[The Church] must go into the darkness not willingly but well - bravely and firm of faith - like the millions who have gone before us, keeping faith with all those generations facing death in the isolated silence of death camps and nuclear fireballs and cancer wards and pogroms, going into the darkness, if not hopefully, then prayerfully that there is some reason for it all, something worth the price of all that pain, all those sacrifices), and of morality (“…any allegiance to a deity or universal concept which put obedience above decent behavior toward an innocent human being was evil. -So define “innocent”?”).
Perhaps because I am who I am, I trend towards liking “The Poet’s Tale: Hyperion Cantos,” the best, because harbors the kind of self-congratulatory sentiment writers often feel about their own craft (“’Words are the only bullets in truth’s bandolier. And poets are the snipers.’”) and the acknowledgement that “Belief in one’s identity as a poet or writer prior to the acid test of publication is as naïve and harmless as the youthful belief of one’s immortality… and the inevitable disillusionment is just as painful.” It’s also written in a wry, comic, engaging way, narrated by the drunken poet Martin Silenus, and emblematic of the various shades of tone and voice so perfectly woven throughout all of Hyperion. Liking something the best and acknowledging it as the best are two different things, however, and the story that I find the most engaging is “The Scholar’s Tale: The River Lethe’s Taste is Bitter,” (like if you cry every time) for its profound questions, heartbreaking narrative, and admittedly brilliant worldbuilding examples. Also, I am serious, I cry every time. Like a baby (no pun intended). I cried on the reread for writing this blog post, and in a recent audiobook re-listen.
To that last point, Hyperion is deep enough to warrant rereads, and I found myself no less enamored with the world or the characters even with these recent reexaminings. That’s a word, yeah? Taken in the individual pieces on its individual stories, and as I’ve already stated, it’s a masterpiece of characters, literary study, the creation (and destruction) of worlds, voice (and the lack thereof), and storytelling.
Taken as a whole, and now coming to the highest praise I do owe the book… it’s terrifying. Hyperion was the first book I ever read that made me feel genuine fear. I admittedly do not read a lot of horror, but even the horror I’ve read tends to be viewed almost academically (although, I will say, I am currently working through my first reading of House of Leaves, and it’s doing its job well). When I say academically, I mean reading through the sort of in-joke lens that horror movies and books have. We all know it’s a story.
Hyperion owns up to being a story, too, it’s even in the text as that, but there’s something more to it.
First, there’s the Shrike. A character in its own right, a force of nature as much as an avenging God, a Grendel, the death of worlds, a weapon of redemption, the Lord of Pain. In a phrase, it’s an instant classic of a monster, at another look, it’s fear inmetalic (incarnate pun, anyone?). I think what warrants some of my fear at the very nature of its existence is that, despite the different voices and tones of the individual stories, its description remains consistent. It’s as if there is no other way for it to be, or for it to be described. So much weighs its impression on the mind and spirit (not to mention, the reasons it is so aptly named, the impressions it leaves on flesh).
Second, there’s this kind of overwhelming existential dread that swells from the text. Science fiction is no stranger to examining where mankind is headed (it’s kind of the point of the genre) to where we are now (or in Hyperion’s case, 1989). The worldbuilding is subtle, but not exclusionary about it. We learn, through almost offhand remarks in the stories themselves, about the death of “Old Earth,” the Manhattan Archipelago, limited nuclear exchanges, time-debt incurring space travel, a second Holocaust, a rush of new technologies, weapons, and diseases. Whereas something like Star Trek speaks to a kind of optimistic view of the future, and mankind’s role in it, Hyperion takes something of a more sobering look, given the way we are (were) when it was written. And for something that’s a little over thirty years old, some of what it thinks remains startingly pertinent. Maybe the hope is we can avoid the future it discusses because of the fear of them, or else we’re resigned to it for the same reason.
If that’s the kind of thing that makes you afraid, then maybe Hyperion both is and isn’t for you. It was for me, it helped me give voice to those fears. If you’re able to put your fears aside, or else relish in them, appreciate Hyperion for what I said at the beginning.
It’s a story of stories. The story of stories. Best explained by The Poet:
“Among us we represent islands of time as well as separate oceans of perspective. Or perhaps more aptly put, each of us may hold a piece to a puzzle no one has been able to solve since humankind first landed on Hyperion… It’s a mystery… and to tell you the truth I am intrigued by mysteries even if this is to be my last week of enjoying them.”
