171–180 of 218 posts
Hyperion cries out for a good film adaptation.
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> just the default Western canon It’s particular topics of that canon, and you have to fancy their treatment in a science-fiction setting. Some people like science-fiction because/when it proposes fresh perspectives that aren’t rooted in, by lack of a better description, non-enlightenment parts of that canon.
The clean slate of banks - where we discarded culture to embrace the "culture" and look where this "winging" it got us. Turns out the operating system of a society is important- and the atheist distilled synthetic one is not really working - same goes for alot of others. The utopist urge for cultural tabula rasa is a retardation, a attempt of the brain to shirk embracing and discovering complexity. One has to look at…
(The State of the Art)
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Also, that should have been the backstory of the Matrix, and not the whole “living power source” nonsense.
I like how the other story that has this premise is Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
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It's interesting how different stories have different underlying religious underpinnings in different parts of the world. It's important to consider that these themes are precisely because the stories are born from the surrounding culture. Christian references in the Cantos were probably incidental, given the expected familiarity of the intended audience (american white male young men). eg The Matrix trilogy started…
Not sure if I agree with the christian references being incidental ... the first book is literally a retelling of the The Canterbury Tales, all the characters are on a pilgrimage. there are a bunch of religious groups with at least one being central to the story, there are cross shaped parasites that grant eternal life. I still think you can enjoy it without caring much about religion.
As we have both read the books, it's notable that you associate pilgrimage with Christianity. This illustrates the point.
I 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...
I don’t think he was particularly kind to any proselytizing religion.
Did you read the Cantos?
One of the friends asked Claude-AI "what are the top five space opera novels of all time," and it ranked Hyperion as #2, only behind Dune.
I personally think LLM "knowledge" is… kind of stupid… but I have to admit it speaks to Simmons legacy that even the word swamp recognizes Hyperion as an all-time classic.
(it ranked Stars Are Legion by K. Hurley as #5, which I unconditionally agree with, but am also kind of shocked, I've never heard of this book so much as referenced in any kind of article or conversation. But yeah, read it. Star Wars meets Alien — the Death Star is the alien)
I 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.
It's rare to see their caches but a few times I've been out hiking in the desert and seen the remains of a little critter on a cactus thorn.
I 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...
Interesting. I don’t think he was particularly kind to any proselytizing religion. Did you read the Cantos?
The books were incredibly influential on me as a teenager, twenty years later on re-reading the cantos I found some of the specific language around intergenerational romance to be troubling and the focus on it to be a major distraction from the rest of the excellent story. Praying for his friends and family. RIP
I read the book years ago so might have forgotten - what intergenerational romance ?