I’ll second that. There has to be some other group out there somewhere.
(As if I should talk, not having gone out to look for another group since January after putting an end to mine, which was stagnating after many years.)
But I still think celestina has the right idea.
Oooooh, I get to comment without rebuttal? Hyperion wasn’t a bad book. Simmons took an unusual (and sick) idea, and managed to get really good mileage out of it. Of course, you have to subtract points for his picking a subject that’s outstanding mostly for its shock value.
His world wasn’t memorable, for me. I can’t summon to mind a single thing about it, except a vague recollection of the cover. Jack Vance and Avram Davidson created memorable worlds. L. Frank Baum did. Tolkien did. Larry Niven did with Ringworld. But whipping up some two-bit geography that would look stupid to a geology freshman does not constitute “creating a world”. These juvenile efforts at world building make me wonder whether the author has a handle on many of his other facts, frankly.
I’m not sure what I’d pick as the best science fiction book of the 90s, but not Hyperion.
Huh?
What “sick idea”?
Human vs. A.I.? Directed evolution? Combat via time-manipulation? Revesed-aging? Catholic cachethism {sp}? Abraham and Isaac? Memory manipulation? Keats?
And which world are you talking about? Hyperion itself? Maui-Coevnant? Tau Ceti Center? Hebron?
Are we even talking about the same book here?
(This isn’t a debeate. It’s a clarification.)
Just wanted to say that I thought Hyperion was fucking amazing. Giant empires, laberynth worlds, death and resurection, godlike AIs at war, the fate of humanity, and death incarnate in the form of The Shrike. Personally, I found Hyperion to be plenty memorable.
Have you read the second book in the series, Fall of Hyperion? It really expands the scope of the story, and actually manages to answer the seemingly unanswerable questions in the first book. Read together, these two books (which comprise one epic story) are more than the sum of their parts.
One of my absolute favorite books of all time, I can not recommend it highly enough.
uhhh… getting back on topic…
sucks about your discusion group dude. (why did these people bother going if they were not going to read the book? Geeze…)
Ok, look. I can’t consult a copy of the book, because I didn’t think it was worth keeping. All I can do is paraphrase from memory.
As I recall the central theme of the books is a cult that glorifies pain and suffering. HELLO??? Pain is nature’s way of telling a living creature something is wrong. So a book that maintains pain is really worthwhile is sick. Practically by definition.
joshmaker: I’m glad you had a good experience with the book. And that goes for Allesan, too. In answer to your question, I read at least three of them (how many are there?) before I got too bored to go on.
The “AI” was so forgettable, I was trying to remember how it came up. I’m a AI professional, and I may say Simmons knows nothing about it, and demonstrates it amply. The Shike weren’t “death incarnate”, death is just the absence of life. Personifying death is just an empty statement. Turning death into an entity is inventive, but just utterly vacuous.
I might point out here it’s not exactly inventive either, various cultures have personified death as an entity practically forever. I don’t think there’s any pantheon without a death god/dess.
It all depends on how well you do it.
Huh? The “Shrike Cult”, which I’m assuming is what you’re talking about, is a very minor player in the novel (although they are mentioned several times in the first chapter - hmmm…). It’s not a central theme at all, but rather one plot device among many - the Catholic Church, for instance, plays a far greater role. The book does not “maintain that pain is worthwile”, it merely presents that as a possible viewpoint - and a flawed one at that.
Incidentally, pain as a metaphor, as a motivator or as an important part of life is a time honored theme in literature. But surely a writer like you would know that.
Well, you must really be an expert, if you can predict the thought patterns of hyperintelligent sentient supercomputers 800 years in the future. Can I see some credentials, please?
Again: huh? The Shrike (singular) was a biomechanical killing machine sent backwards in time to resolve a battle set millenia in the future. A few minor characters believe it to be “death incarnate”, but none of the major characters do, and neither does the author. It may, though, be a metaphorical (metaphors? Heard of 'em?) agent of destruction, but then again, so was Moby Dick. Personifications of nature, or of abstract concepts, are again very, very common in literature, especially SF.
The thing is, ** partly_warmer**, I don’t even think you read the books. You only bring examples from the beginning, you think it’s all about one planet, the only geological anomaly mentioned is a gorge in the first chapter, etc. In fact, in the first book, each section has a very different tone - military SF, cyberpunk,etc.; the first section is pseudo-Lvecraftian horror. I think you reached maybe page 100 and gave up - your comments about A.I.s make it look like you’re winging it. It’s OK not to like a book, you know. It’s not OK to bullshit us.
It’s funny how cyclic this thread has become. It’s starts with the OP complaining about idiots who either didn’t read the book or were too dense to understand it, it gets hijacked, shoots off on various tangents, and concludes with an idiot who either didn’t read the book or was too dense to understand it. Weird. Eerie.
Hey, vivalostwages, thanks for seconding me and reiterating the question. I was beginning to feel so ignored and unloved in this thread. [giggle] I’m still confused as to why JohnT would want to participate in a group that by now he knows is will not provide the kind of substantive discussion about sci-fi books that he would like.
Well Celestina and vivalostwages, the reasons why I don’t start my own group are manyfold. I already co-moderate 2 other discussion groups (movies and X-Files/Buffy) and have no wish to start a third. I have a life that includes career, wife, and baby, and to take even more time away from them to mod yet another group is too much. My wife co-mods the two groups with me and we do such things as post flyers, make sure we’re listed in the local free press, and to come up with topics for discussion in case the talk lags.
Frankly, if I could find a monthly science fiction discussion group on the web I would participate. I used to have a link to one on AOL way back in 1997, but I don’t have it anymore and can’t remember the name… but the last I remember of them they were moving to the net from AOhell.
Alessan: “It’s funny how cyclic this thread has become. It’s starts with the OP complaining about idiots who either didn’t read the book or were too dense to understand it, it gets hijacked, shoots off on various tangents, and concludes with an idiot who either didn’t read the book or was too dense to understand it. Weird. Eerie.”
You know, something similar happened in my last Pit thread. 
But please, let’s not declare this thread concluded until it dies the true death. Thanks.
God: Emp. I don’t know, I guess I buy it. I think it humorous that the very problems you have with the novel are the very things that Leto brags about having imposed upon humanity with his monopoly on spice: a very restricted horizon, boredom, a sense of atrophy, with nothing happening and nothing never going to happen.
If I recall correctly, that was kind of the entire point of the book: by repressing human instincts to expand and grow for 3,000+ years, Leto created a social condition where Humankind would explode so far out into the galaxies that it would be impossible for one man, using prescience, to control them all, thereby freeing us from the tyranny of foreknowledge. Leto’s universe is seething in frustration, but totally unable to do anything about it… until he dies and the sandworms return to Arrakis.
But the characters (except for Leto) are kind of lame, that is true.
Hyperion is a wonderful novel, beautifully written and executed. Partly, I gotta agree with Alessan in conclusion, if not in tone: please read the entire book before commenting on it. Thanks!
There is a HUGE plot hole in Hyperion and its sequels, though. In Fall of Hyperion, the Shrike removes the cruciform from Father Dure - “The Shrike granted me death without killing me.” But in Endymion, he makes a return being resurrected from his cruciform. I emailed Dan Simmons about this when he was more available on the net, but he never got back to me on that. Wonder why?
You know, Meina Gladstone is one of my all-time favorite sci-fi characters. I don’t know why, but I liked her from page 1.
“2. I’ve always thought of the Gap Cycle as first and foremost a character study. You?”
I’ve always thought of the Gap Cycle as a study in plotting and structure. There is nothing that goes on in the latter 4 books that is not mentioned in the first (The Real Story), and it was pretty amazing for me to re-read TRS right after my first reading of the cycle and see that, yes, he mentioned Holt Fasner, Warden Dios, the Amnion (the greatest aliens in sci-fi), etc.
If you are a true fan of the Gap series I highly recommend the following essay. It’s long, but worth it.
I also had the sci-fi group read it for the January meeting (we have no meeting in December so everybody got two months). Of course, none of them finished it by the time of the meeting, though I should note that M actually finished it by the next meeting and liked it.
JohnT -
-
I see your point about God Emperor. It was a fascinating subject, and it would have made a terrific short story. For a novel, though, it needed a bit more to work.
-
Time to read the Gap again. It’s been, what, two years? Way too long.
-
IIRC, Father Dure had two cruciforms; one of his and one of the young priest’s (whose name always eludes me); the Consul notices them both after he concludes his story. Only one fell off.
That said, I’m not sure Simmons had Endymion planned when he wrote the first two books, and I think he did a few “revisions”.
Lenar Hoyt. The Shrike removed the cruciform from Dure, and Dure knew it was his cruciforms, not Hoyt’s. Of course, the Consul told his story in book 1 - the cruciform removal happened in book 2.
I liked Hyperion okay, but it didn’t really stick with me. I enjoyed the Chaucer-esque nature of the book, but I wasn’t inspired to read the others in the series. It wasn’t a bad book, but it just didn’t grab me.
I tried hard for about 30 seconds not to hijack this thread
Whoops. Yep. I did read most of the books. All except part of the last; I think I started falling asleep and reached for something else.
I DID indicate that I couldn’t remember exactly what the books said. No, dear, that doesn’t mean my impressions are wrong. I was BORED. I’ve read dozens of more interesting recent sci-fi novels. What can I say? For me, Hyperion is forgettable.
As for “presenting my credentials”, I have been an Artificial Intelligence, full-time, professional with papers and etc. on and off for decades. What are your credentials for questioning, if you see what I mean… You thought the AI in Hyperion was really great, but you don’t know much about it, I’ll wager.
Why anybody thinks it’s cute or important to imitate “Canterbury Tales” is beyond me. That (as compared to weak-kneed sci-fi parroting) is a classic. Albeit one written for a culture whose people have been dead for 500 years. (No, I haven’t read all of it, I prefered reading the original, and Middle English is difficult for me. Alessan, you have strong opinions about Chaucer, too?)
Honestly, quite apart from the gibes about AI and Chaucer, the statement which caused me to respond in the first place was your “I’m not willing to debate this” about how wonderful the books were. I prefer discerning to idolotry.
Thirty seconds? Try “almost a month.”
Oooooh. I know this thread is decaying for lack of advocates of Dan Simmons, but I thought I’d fan the flames.
I just read a bit of “Endymion Upstarting” or the like in the used bookstore. I retract my statement in another chat that Simmons knows how to write. He’s a plodder. When a person leaves a room it’s “They left the room hurriedly”, and when a character isn’t on top of the situation it’s “they said uncomfortably”. Wow. Amazing command of the language. What lyrical quality.
I’m SOOOO pleased i was tempted to take another look.
Hey, I think that “God Emperor” is better than the first two Dune Sequels. And I’ll never read anything by Dan Simmons again after that awful political screed he did recently.
Obligatory “how d’you feel about zombie novels” question.
Hell yeah, my first decade+ zombie thread! 
Dan Simmons… has not aged well. You think his anti Muslim screed was something, check out Flashback. Ooh, boy!