RIP Dan
Dan Simmons, author of Hyperion, has died
71–80 of 218 posts
Re: Dan Simmons, author of Hyperion, has died
#72Fuck
Re: Dan Simmons, author of Hyperion, has died
#73RIP. I really liked the Hyperion books and Ilium/Olympos. He seemed to become a bit of a chud after 9/11 but the books are still well worth reading.
Loved Ilium, and Olympos a little less so. Inspired me to read the Iliad.
Re: Dan Simmons, author of Hyperion, has died
#74The TechnoCore using human minds as unwitting processing nodes — to solve a problem humans couldn't even be told about — reads differently every few years. 2026 is a particularly strange time to reread it.
Also, that should have been the backstory of the Matrix, and not the whole “living power source” nonsense.
I'm sure that one Star trek episode had the same premise, together with something from Lem. The connection human/machine brain is rather old and human brains being used for computation is so reused, it is practically public domain.
Re: Dan Simmons, author of Hyperion, has died
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Atheist here: Not true, there is much more in Hyperion (and even Endymion)
I’m not saying that you have to be religious. But if you find those topics and related symbolisms rather uninteresting in your sci-fi, then the books may not be for you.
I mean, it's not my fandom, but Catholics do have a wicked sense of symbolism and decoration. Hyperion wouldn't be as colourful if Simmons used a bunch of Evangelicals instead.
Re: Dan Simmons, author of Hyperion, has died
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The Hyperion Cantos is a masterpiece which every scifi fan ought to have read You have to have some affinity to religious/Christianity/church topics, otherwise it’s quite a turn-off.
To be fair, the first novel Hyperion is quite literally a survey of major world religions, not just Christianity. It does settle onto Christian symbolism in the second book onward, but the first two novels alone are still worth reading for their ideas. No affinity required, it's just the default Western canon at work.
> 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.
Re: Dan Simmons, author of Hyperion, has died
#77A girl I was infatuated with told me to read Hyperion when I was in my early 20s. Never read a book to try to win someone's affections. It won't work, but what's worse is you won't even enjoy the book.
I read a lot of SF and just last year I thought it was about time I gave it another go. I couldn't put it down. Almost couldn't believe what I was reading, it was so good. Continued to read the other three and it was just a good all the way through. Was quite sad when I finished and it was all over.
It now has a permanent place in my library. I expect I'll enjoy it even more on my next reading. I can only dream of giving people as much joy as an author like Simmons.
Re: Dan Simmons, author of Hyperion, has died
#78you mean, author of Song of Kali.
Re: Dan Simmons, author of Hyperion, has died
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also, that should have been the backstory of the Matrix, and not the whole “living power source” nonsense.
I'm convinced that the studio forced the change to 'human batteries' out of concern over a conflict with Hyperion.
Probably the idea is broad enough to get away with borrowing it or putting their own spin on the general idea (I mean, it is expected that stores will influence each other and ideas will spread). I’d rather guess that a studio executive thought the battery idea would be more understandable to people (if that is the case though, I think they were dramatically wrong, the computing idea makes much more sense and I think all of us in the audience would have been fine with it).
Re: Dan Simmons, author of Hyperion, has died
#80RIP. I really liked the Hyperion books and Ilium/Olympos. He seemed to become a bit of a chud after 9/11 but the books are still well worth reading.
Yeah, the Islamophobia in Ilium/Olympos made me really tempted to put the books down several times. It's such a strange about-face from when he wrote the character Kassad in the Hyperion Cantos.
Like Frank Miller, it seems like 9/11 just broke him.