Sci-Fi

This week Sam takes us back to Hyperion with the1996 Dan Simmons novel Endymion. Hyperion is back and Danielle is thrilled! Picking up around 274 years after the conclusion of the previous book, Endymion opens with some narration by a man named, wait for it, Raul Endymion. We learn that Raul grew up on Hyperion, did a bunch of odd jobs, and eventually ended up leading a duck hunting expedition that went disastrously wrong. Raul is blamed for the temporary deaths (remember those cruciform parasites? They’re back in a big way!) of the people he was leading on the hunt and is sentenced to death. However, just as he is about to be executed by just one of many overly complicated death machines to appear in this book, he is in fact only rendered unconscious. It’s also important to note that in the years since the “Fall” a new theocratic government has taken over lead by the Catholic Church and based around the gift of immortal life via the cruciform parasites which they now control. When Raul wakes up, he’s in the ruined city of Endymion (yup, it’s a city too!) and, notably, not executed. He is soon brought to see the nearly mummified, but still living, poet Martin Silenus who wants to give him a job. Brawne Lamia’s daughter, the One who Teaches, disappeared into the Sphinx Time Tomb when she was 12, over 260 years ago. Somehow, Martin knows she’s scheduled to emerge in just a few days and wants Raul to retrieve her and keep her safe from the Church and its military arm the Pax, who also somehow know this schedule and want to kill or capture her. Speaking of, Father-Captain Federico de Soya is pulled off his task-force hunting Ousters (still considered an enemy) to engage in some secret mission of the utmost importance. If you’re feeling lost in all of this, you should probably go back and listen to all the Hyperion episodes again; it won’t help, but they’re pretty fun!

Check out Sam and Danielle on the Mind Duck Books podcast episode about the Fall of Hyperion. Find Mind Duck Books on Twitter @mindduckbooks, Instagram @mindduckbooks, and listen wherever you get your podcasts.

This week Sam brings the culmination of six previous episodes with the final part of the 1990 Dan Simmons novel The Fall of Hyperion. Kassad is back and he’s ready to kick some Shrike butt! However, the Shrike is still a master of time so Kassad ends up in the distant future where he leads a band of humans against hordes of Shrike in a final battle that also determines how many Shrike get sent back in time. Also, Moneta is there and it’s her first time meeting Kassad due to time shenanigans. Back in the valley, Brawne sets off to the Time Tomb known as the Shrike Palace because her trip to the datumplane showed her that it has some connection to the Tree of Thorns. Sol goes back to the Sphinx to sit and wait for Rachel. Meanwhile, Keats/Severn has a not-very-helpful conversation with Ummon and then dies (kinda) and Leigh Hunt buries him under the watchful gaze of the Shrike (don’t ask how), and then finds himself stranded on Earth. Back with the Ousters, the Consul is informed that the Ousters are not, in fact, invading the Hegemony, it’s the TechnoCore, gasp! He’s also informed that at no point did his actions stem from freewill, but were manipulated by just everyone around him. He does not take that well. Also meanwhile, Meina Gladstone is struggling to find a path forward that doesn’t involve using the TechnoCore’s plan of a deathwand bomb that may or may not wipe out humanity (Spoiler: it probably will). that’s when the ghost consciousness of Severn/Keats decides to bop-around the datumplane/Metasphere a bit having shed his corporeal body. He takes this opportunity to get into the dreams of Meina and also His-Brand-New-As-Yet-Unnamed-Holiness Paul Duré, and give them some very cryptic information that really saves their butts. Will Meina be able to thwart the Core? Will humanity survive? How the heck does Brawne turn the Shrike to glass? Answers to two of those question, and definitely not all three, can be found in this action-packed, jumbo finale of the Fall of Hyperion! While you may be sad this is the end, Danielle could not be more stoked that it’s over.

Far into the future after humanity has spread through the stars to many planets, a group of seven people are tasked with undertaking a pilgrimage to the Shrike, the mysterious and deadly creature that guards the Time Tombs on the planet Hyperion. The Time Tombs are opening and there is also an Ouster migration cluster that is threatening to take the planet, and the secrets of the Tombs, away from the Hegemony. Thus Meina Gladstone, the CEO of the Hegemony, sends a message in a “fatline squirt” to the Consul, who is one of the pilgrims, and tells him to be on the lookout for an Ouster spy among the group. If none of that made sense to you, don’t worry, Danielle is convinced this story is perhaps the most incomprehensible one Sam has ever shared, and totally crazy to boot. Aboard a massive spaceship made from an actual, living tree, the pilgrims gather and agree to tell their stories so they can better understand why each of them was chosen for this journey. First up to share is the Catholic priest Lenar Hoyt, who tells the story of another priest, Paul Duré, who was exiled to Hyperion by the Church for falsifying data at an archaeological dig. Duré plans to study an isolated tribe on the planet, which is composed of people supposedly descended from the crew of a seedship which crashed there hundreds of years ago. To reach the village, Duré must traverse the deadly Fire Forests filled with tesla tress which both absorb and emit lightning, a phenomenon that greatly annoys Danielle since the trees don’t seem to burn themselves down in the resulting conflagration. When Duré finds the tribe, he notices they are dimwitted, physically bland, and seemingly bereft of humanity, and show a cult-like devotion to maintaining their population at seventy people. As he stays with them, he starts to uncover a horrifying secret that shakes his faith and leads him to extreme actions. Before all that, however, is the introduction of a word gross enough to challenge “khui” for the throne of uncomfortable words: Gymnosperm. So get ready for a deep dive into a massive space opera, full of stellar sci-fi words and technobabble, that only gets weirder and more incomprehensible the more it’s explained.

This week Sam brings the penultimate episode of the 1990 Dan Simmons book The Fall of Hyperion. Picking up where we left off last time, Severn takes a little meditation time to have visions of Meina Gladstone’s war room where the TechnoCore has just the best idea to defeat the ousters: Herd all the Hegemony people to safety in the labyrinths then use a novel WMD they just happen to have to wipe out the ousters. While many of the FORCE leaders love this idea, Meina, and also Danielle, are not on board. Severn also sees the consul being rescued from brigands by his friend Theo Lane, which is the most interesting Danielle has found the Consul to be in quite some time. Severn comes too and is joined by Leigh Hunt who has come to take him to talk to Gladstone while Father Duré goes to God’s Grove to talk to the Templars. Unfortunately, as Severn and Hunt step through the farcaster, they end up not in Government House, but in what Severn identifies as Earth, or its recreation, far from the web. Severn recognizes the area as Italy and he and Hunt are pushed towards Rome on the abandoned planet. Also, Severn develops an instant case of tuberculosis, because Keats. While Severn and Hunt conduct their slow trek to Rome, Meina and her generals observe the first invasion of Heaven’s Gate, which ends in the planet being destroyed from orbit, so not a great start. Meanwhile, the Consul makes it back to his ship with the help of Melio Arundez, but instead of returning to Sol and Rachel, he is requested by Meina to liaise with the Ouster swarm in the Hyperion system to negotiate a ceasefire. Also, Kassad is fighting the Shrike and while not doing too badly, is definitely not winning. Back on God’s Grove, Father Duré has a tête-à-tête with the True Voice of the Worldtree and the Bishop of the Church of Final Atonement. A lot of things are revealed in this conversation, and this is about the time where Danielle’s brain just gives up trying to understand everything. While this section is definitely jam-packed with intrigue and complications, we do at least get a new pope. Unfortunately, said pope is not our two hosts, but maybe next time.

This week Sam returns to his comfort zone with the 1990 Dan Simmons novel The Fall of Hyperion. The Time Tombs have opened and the Ousters are invading the WorldWeb, so things could be going better for the Hegemony. Severn is woken up just in time to take a little walk through the first-wave invasion worlds after filling in Meina Gladstone on the current goings-on of the pilgrims. Meina clues in Severn that his “dreams” of the pilgrims are extending beyond his supposed connection to the other Keats persona cybrid, and somehow this never occurred to Severn. Severn decides to meditate into a vision, and sees Martin Silenus stuck on the Tree of Pain, but through the power of reciting poetry he’s able to ease his pain, and that of those around him, enough to apologize to Sad King Billy who just happens to be impaled right near by. Convenient! Anyway, Severn then goes to Renaissance Vector and meditates again, this time getting a vision of Meina in her war room deciding on a plan to abandon the first-wave worlds so they can take the fight to the Ouster swarms to save the rest of the Web. Severn wakes up and is suddenly chased by a mob of Shrike Cult zealots before escaping into a library with a dedicated room full of Keats poems. Super convenient! Severn takes yet another nap and sees Brawne and Johnny traversing the Megaspehere to find Ummon, Johnny’s “father”, a megalith that loves to speak in koans, so that’s fun. It informs them about a war between a machine-created Ultimate Intelligence and a human-derived Ultimate Intelligence from far in the future, where part of the triune human Ultimate Intelligence fled back in time to the “present” to hide and keep from losing the war. Thus, the Shrike was sent back in time to track it down and finish the battle. That’s just such a brief summation of the lunacy contained in Ummon’s story. Also, Paul Duré is back in the web on Pacem. How did he get there? Two words: Corpse tunnels.

The Fall of Hyperion is back as Sam finishes up part two of the 1990 Dan Simmons novel. The Consul, Sol, and Paul Duré have been hiding out with the inconsistently conscious Het Masteen hiding from a storm of the Time Tides. Masteen informs them of his original plan: to use the erg he brought to turn the Shrike’s tree of pain into a spaceship and sail it through the stars possibly causing misery wherever he goes. The Shrike, apparently, is not on board with this plan, and after briefly abducting Masteen, he leaves Masteen to die, which he promptly and unceremoniously does, much to Danielle’s complete bafflement. They find Brawne, meanwhile, has had a weird metal tentacle plugged into her neural shunt, and though physically alive, appears completely brain dead. We soon learn that sysadmin Shrike has managed to plug Brawne, and also the persona of Johnny Keats she was carrying, directly into the datumplane, and the digital avatars of Brawne and Johnny decide to go on an adventure through the TechnoCore looking for information. Meanwhile, Kassad emerges from a portal with Moneta in what appears to be the distant future when the time tombs were first created. He sees the Shrike’s tree of pain with Martin stuck to it,and as he approaches to help, the Shrikes emerges. Soon, Kassad is surrounded by hundreds of Shrikes, but that doesn’t stop him from charging in head long to fight them. Back in the valley, the others decide to send the Consul off on the Hawking mat he brought to try and retrieve his ship. Not much happens on the several days he flies back, but he does end up falling into a river, so that’s fun. Meanwhile, Duré wanders off for some reason and is almost certainly taken by the Shrike. Now alone, Sol is approaching the moment of Rachel’s birth. He dreams again of the voice demanding the sacrifice, and in an extra dirty trick, a manifestation of his daughter appears in his dream, begging him to sacrifice her. As the time tombs pulse and glow preparing to open there are only two questions remaining: Will Sol sacrifice his daughter? And will DJ Shrike stick around for the encore? Find the answer to at least one of those questions in this week’s episode!