Hyperion Cantos

The whole series

Yet another scifi thriller? You’re going to be disappointed.

A science fiction series, one of the few that hasn’t really been adapted to the electronic media yet. And it can’t really be made compatible for TV or the cinema. The universe is too vast, the background elements and themes are so creative that to give them shape would be equivalent of undermining them. It is just too succulent to be even slightly altered. If you’re a science fiction reader, and you haven’t read this yet, what are you doing with your life?

There are four books, in the series; Hyperion, Fall of Hyperion, Endymion, Rise of Endymion. Hyperion and Endymion are characters from the Greek mythology. In this series, Hyperion is the name of the planet in the outback where the Time Tombs are present. Endymion is the surname of a character in the last two books. The series constantly pays homage to various people from history. And that is saying something, considering that the setting is many years into the future when Earth no longer exists (its not really destroyed, more of a misplaced). There are references to Churchill and Lincoln. John Keats is a major character. And apparently John Muir has a whole faction of followers who live on a giant Tree planet and fly Tree trunks as spaceships which are powered by little sentient beings called ergs.

To understand the enormity of the plot in this series, you need to understand that the story is not about good and bad. Good stories never are. There’s really no distinction. There are just groups which hold power in one way or another in the Hegemony of Man. The Hegemony is the government-esque system of ruling that humanity has adopted ever since migrating from a dying Earth. This migration is termed the ‘Hegira’ a quaint reference to the ‘Hijrat’ events predominant in Islam. Anyway, these power holders include:

1. The Senate, which is aided by the All-Thing (analogous to an amalgam of all sorts of media) Speaker. Headquarters at the planet Tau Ceti Center or TC²
2. The Christianity’s Church. Plays a very vital role in the last two books. They live on Barnard’s World, where they have built a new Vatican with original pieces of art brought from the Old Earth.
3. Brotherhood of Muir. The environmentalists who carry seeds for planting on planets they travel to, have large tree spaceships. They are the templars and live on God’s Grove

4. 

   Yggdrasil, captained by Het Masteen

   TechnoCore, the AIs that help the Hegemony by providing them with all the machines and the technology. They’ve gifted the Farcasters, a teleporter network to humanity. There is no hardware to these computers and no planet where they excluively live. They exist ‘somewhere’ and keep in touch with the Senate by the Council of AI, where some of them manifest as holographs, kind of. Later we learn that the AI’s like humans have graduations among them; the Ultimates, Stables and Volatiles
   5. Church of the Final Atonement, is a group of weird psychos who believe that the Shrike is the Lord of Pain. Their true motives and workings are unknown but they just seem to be at the center of everything and seem to be involved in everything.

   

   The red glare of it’s eyes is quite infamous

   6. The Shrike. Oof. The Shrike, to say too much about it would be a spoiler.Suffice it to say that the shrike is not the Lord of Pain as the Church of Final Atonement puts it. It is not the villain or the foe. It is not an ally. It is not a henchman or a servant. It is almost nature manifest. Perhaps it is a force of nature, doing what it was made to do, and doing it efficiently and without regard of anything or anyone else. If to do that, it has to mechanically kill millions of people ruthlessly, then so be it. To confuse Shrike for a machine, would be a fatal error. It is just an entity. A certain character says that the Shrike will just be a footnote in the pages of history. Really, now? A chromium armored, havoc wreaking entity, a machine (not literally) of destruction laced with spikes whose very thought sends shivers through the spine, cannot be just a footnote. The Shrike is an interesting character in the books. One of the few ones to prominently appear in all four books. It is the only character that appears in the cover of all four books. And to know who, what the Shrike is and what willed it into being, you’ll have to read the whole series.

   7. Ousters, who aren’t really a part of Hegemony of Man. In fact they are the Russia to the America that is the Hegemony. I almost typed in details about Ousters that are potentially vital to enjoying the story. Let me just say that they are creatures who do not inhabit on one planet. They live on marvellous space-ships, which are in fact entire mobile planets. This gives them agility and makes them a constant threat to the Hegemony
   
   
   You might ask what these massive groups do, or what they bring to the table. They bring politics, evolution, religion, environmental conservation, mystery, action and a power struggle or a status quo establishment to the plot.
   
   
   
   
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