It’s all about the Hyperion Cantos which is fair but - the one Dan Simmons book we still talk about, years later, is his first novel: Song of Kali. Short and raw, one of the most horrifying books I’ve ever read.
Dan Simmons, author of Hyperion, has died
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Re: Dan Simmons, author of Hyperion, has died
#162I've had this internet handle since the last century. Most people in here are talking about Hyperion but Simmons was a fantastic cross-genre author. My favorites were his historical fiction that contained a fantastical bent:
Drood: Has Wilkie Collins as an unreliable narrator, depicting the last five or so years of Charles Dickens' life.
Crook Factory: An FBI agent is sent to Cuba to keep an eye on Ernest Hemingway, hijinks ensue.
The Fifth Heart: Henry James and Sherlock Holmes team up to solve a mystery.
The Terror: Tells the story of what happened to the HMS Terror that attempted to make the northwest passage. The Arctic is a character in itself in this amazing story. I thought the TV mini-series was fine.
Abominable and Black Hills: I haven't read these yet but look forward to doing so.
Honestly, I think Dan Simmons is my favorite author. I know his politics became unpalatable but I could never find it in myself to care. My heart sank when I saw this post.
Re: Dan Simmons, author of Hyperion, has died
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hyperion is the better novel but Carrion Comfort is just really exciting and creepy. And the way the mind controllers treated regular humans like toys hits far too close to home now.
Oh absolutely, I don't want to spoil anything but (to sound like a nutcase for a second) if there is an Illuminati then I think they were avid readers of Carrion. Apropos given your username XD
> if there is an Illuminati then I think they were avid readers of Carrion
lol, I never really thought about that but given recent revelations it does almost seem like they were using it as a template.
Re: Dan Simmons, author of Hyperion, has died
#164I enjoyed the Hyperion books but this got him put on my "never read anything from ever again" list: https://web.archive.org/web/20060424105133/http://www.dansim...
>never read anything from ever again I think it's a poisonous and reductive mindset to have. You can separate art from the character of the artist. If you cared about everything everyone has ever said or done in various stages of their lives, you wouldn't have much left to enjoy or appreciate.
On the other hand, there is so so much art out there, I could never hope to consume it all. It’s simple for me to use the character of the artist as a filter. I can break that rule whenever I want, but by default, other things being equal, I would prefer to consume art for pleasure from artists I respect as people.
I do consume art from outside this bubble but more to satisfy academic curiosity than pleasure.
Re: Dan Simmons, author of Hyperion, has died
#165Simmons opened new frontiers of thought for me with his Hyperion Cantos . A house with each room on a different planet. A heartbreaking tale of a daughter aging in reverse. A romance playing out over space and time. A grand piano on the pop-out balcony of a starship. The cruciform parasite. The Shrike. Branches of humanity torn between decadent stagnation and radical evolution. The artificial intelligence civilizatio…
Oh, boy. The Shrike. That thing still haunts me in a way that no other monster or alien across all of Sci-fi or fantasy really does. It's something about the inscrutability of it, especially in the first novel (still my favorite) where its purpose and backstory haven't been revealed. Sure, it's scary, but I think the mystery of its motives - and its ability to unpredictably act apparently benevolently sometimes - is where the real terror lies.
Re: Dan Simmons, author of Hyperion, has died
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
I saw a YouTube video where they said this was more-or-less the original backstory but then they changed it. I think it said that the People In Charge thought the 'living power source' would be easier for the audience to understand? I don't have the link handy, and don't trust everything I read on the Internet, etc, etc. But yeah - this makes so much more sense than breeding, raising, and feeding humans just to harve…
I like to think the machines actually were using them for processing power, and the humans themselves just misunderstood (or oversimplified for Neo) what was actually going on.
What the humans thought they knew came from the Zion archives mostly. And guess where the Zion archives came from…
Re: Dan Simmons, author of Hyperion, has died
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
Processing power is my second favorite explanation. My first favorite would have been: they don’t use the humans for anything, the pods are just the most efficient way to store humans. The machines think they are being benevolent, just want peace and quiet and for humans to stop doing dramatic things like scorching the sky. But I don’t know where the plot would go from there.
There is backstory that the films could have gone into, though I don't know if it was written before or after the first film. The humans in the matrix were allied with the machines and they put them in the matrix to protect them from the war. They were being benevolent.
They benevolently feed the dead to the living
Re: Dan Simmons, author of Hyperion, has died
#168Thank you for the wonderful stories. Hyperion was such a trip. It managed to move me, an aging hardcore sci-fi fan, with its silly, chaotic, poetic universe.
Re: Dan Simmons, author of Hyperion, has died
#169RIP. Absolutely loved his writings
Re: Dan Simmons, author of Hyperion, has died
#170I had a copy of Hyperion but didn't read it for years because the scary knife robot on the cover seemed intimidating. I finally read it, and all the sequels, and they were great books, and hell YEAH that was an intimidating knife robot! Sometimes you CAN tell a book by its cover.
I find it awesome that the true nature and mission of the Shrike remains a secret.