Pretty much. To be honest, I haven’t read most of his modern stuff for fear of it being Flashback-ish. That and I’m really not comfortable supporting him anymore, given what a broadly awful person he’s become.
He’s one of those (inevitably non-New-Yorker) people who watched too much Fox News in the wake of 9/11 and started having visions of brown people coming for him in the night. It’s a weird phenomenon, and it wrecked a number of previously engaging and likable creators.
I found the poet’s story to be…well a bit boring to be honest.
I also liked the Maui story, although parts of it did come across as eco sermonising.
The detective story was pretty cool, made me think of Blade Runner.
I like the Colonel’s story, mostly because I remembered where he ends up, but it seems a bit straightforward in Hyperion.
Spoiler: Kassad becomes the Shrike, iirc.
Sol’s story was the only one that was genuinely non-enjoyable, but gripping (so enjoyable and not, at the same time). It was…heartbreaking really, disturbing, and I think it was the best written.
In the later books, there is a flashback to, iirc, one of the Einsatzgruppen squads rounding people up and gassing them en masse in a forest in Russia somewhere.
That is one of the few scenes where I felt very emotionally affected. That there are 2 in the same series…well, wow.
You mis-remember where the Colonel ends up.
Yeah I was going to say, the second book has a different outcome for him. But then I remembered that his story has some funny timeline gimmicks so I guess it’s not out of the question.
Also: The cover image here reminds me how annoyed I was that the cover artist (who is otherwise doing excellent work) totally failed to realize the Shrike has four arms up until the last book.
Hyperion/Fall of Hyperion: 10/10
Endymion: 7/10
Rise of Endymion: 2/10 (worst shark jump in sf since Asimov’s robots in Foundation, uh, 5?)
Children of the Night: 7/10 (Dracula, brah)
Song of Kali: 6/10 (India’s awful!)
I’ve heard good things about Carrion Comfort.
No one who’s read Terror tries to get me to read it; they seem annoyed.
Ilium took me a while to get into, but it was really great by the end. Regarding posterior writing by Simmons, in that book there’s a glimpse of that future “War of Civilizations” discourse.
That story (and storyline) is by far my favourite one. I quite liked the poet’s one too: it was a very welcomed change of tack. I quite like it when science fiction explores the possibilities of using an ironic, humorous tone - I actually I think it is quite hard to keep it unless you go full Adams/Pratchett and then becomes something more like Swift’s Gulliver.
I am very much on the same wavelength than Tom’s calling out Brawne’s story as perhaps the weakest tea in a quite intense tea box :)
Simmons is so very hit or miss for me. Summer of Night I couldn’t put down, actually read it while walking! Better and scarier than any Stephen King or Peter Straub book I’ve read. Carrion Comfort was so unpleasant (in a very good way for a horror novel) that I couldn’t finish it. Maybe someday. Ilium and Olympos, on the other hand, I got 50 pages from the end (having read something like 1500 pages) and decided I didn’t give a rat’s ass how it ended. Utter trash, in retrospect. Hyperion I read some 18 years ago and don’t remember really at all.
I read it in 1991, and then I read it again around 2008, and in the intervening years, I had forgotten most of the stories, but I remembered Sol’s (the father’s) story very vividly even after all those years. It’s the one that really sticks with you.
Hyperion:
Book 1: This is amazing.
Book 2: This is still pretty good.
Book 3: Who the fuck wrote this stupid shit?
That’s a reaction I never had to any part of Hyperion. Confusion, yes.
I never really liked Hyperion. I just didn’t care for the characters much, and they didn’t really draw me in at all as I recall (it’s been a couple of decades), so it felt like a slog to me.
I greatly preferred Summer of Night.
For me it was:
Book 1: Amazing.
Book 2: Wraps things up, but not amazing. It described a messiah briefly. Luckily he doesn’t have to write that book.
Book 3: (Many years later): The book about the messiah. Fascinating travelog of some of the worlds, I loved it.
Book 4: Continuation of Book 3, finishes the story of the messiah. I enjoyed it.
Book 3 and 4 scratch an itch for me about imagining big extravagant worlds that are filled with beauty. The first book does this as well. Book 2 was the most disappointing to me because I just had a really tough time imagining the cyberworld he describes.
I mean to each his own, but the underlying premise of reality itself introduced in Book 3 was beyond stupid to me.
This is a good summary of my journey through the Hyperion novels as well. In fact, take any series of novels from Simmons and you can use a very similar chart.
A couple of wee corrections:
“Princess Leia['s] hairdo”
“Simmons love[s]”
Hey man, spoilers!
Kidding, but I just bought a used copy with that cover art. It seemed fine to me, but then I haven’t read it yet!
Sorry to reply to an old thread, but this was such a good review of one of my favorite science fiction books. I never considered the idea of the priest’s tale being a rebuttal to the noble savage romanticization of native peoples. This is a pre-9/11 Dan Simmons, so I’m hoping it came from a better place than some of his later ideas.
I’m surprised you dislike the ending though. It’s one of my favorites because of the deliberate lack of resolution. It emphasizes the idea that what matters is the journey rather than the destination.
I thought the first book was great. It reminded me of Canterbury Tales. The lack of resolution was fine because the book came off as literature rather than a potboiler SF book.
The second book felt a bit tortured, like the author really didn’t want to write it. It put me off. Never read the third and never will, I’m sure.
I’ve brushed up against Simmons’ weird ideas briefly. I can’t even remember them now, but they were off-putting enough to make me look for someone else to read. I’m probably short-changing him, but I only have so many books in me that I will still read before I’m gone.
Hooray, a first post necro that isn’t either bot spam or someone angry about one of Tom’s reviews. Welcome to the site, I hope you enjoy your time here and stick around.