I think I must be the only person who doesn’t get the hype. I struggled through the first one, does it get better? Or should I not bother with the second?

See you later, alligator

I’ve read Hyperion a few times and some of the concepts it introduces still astounds me. The story where bodies affected by the cruciform stood affixed to steel lighting rods is striking.

Oh, I really enjoy this series, but dont think I could go back to it. Its sex scenes really were offputting for me.

I loved Hyperion. Also enjoyed reading the Terror.

I could be mistaken, but I recall an interview or essay he wrote years ago and he was shitting all over Tom Clancy saying he wrote books for sixth graders. I rather liked Clancy’s early stuff, but later on… yeah… kinda giggled at Simmon’s take.

I really love his Olympos duology. Way ahead of its time.

How does one person come up with so many ideas… while there’s great originality in Hyperion, there are also great examples of borrowing and imitation, for example there is a sequence where Braun Lamia gets a hacker friend to hack into the AI’s database (I can’t remember the proper terms sorry) which draws heavily on Neuromancer. Also in general Hyperion draws together different genres in a really great way. Btw for those who like Amazon Audible, I recommend the audiobook version.

I discovered Dan Simmons through “Illium” and “Olympos” before moving on to “Hyperion”. I found the two books based on the Iliad to be awesome - anyone else read/enjoyed them?

Great book for sure, but I don’t enjoy that style of story construction. To me its just annoying :-)

Over 30 years ago no less!

This made me smile. The implication that a) It’s a long time ago, and b) Some writers of yore could write well.

It’s just funny. Thanks for the recommendation!

The first book is amazing, one of the best scifi novels ever. The second book is ok, but is underwhelming.

Books 3 and 4 are not only awful, they revolve around the author’s self insert mary sue character starting to “fall in love” with his adoptive daughter character who he raised from childhood, who at the time is 13(?!).

That 4th book is truly heinous pedophilic apologia, a groomer fantasy.

added to my wish list

I LOVED the first two books. They are still likely my favorite books ever. I’ve heard very mixed things about the second half of the series, so haven’t gotten around to reading them yet

I’ve never read it but I have a tendency to read up on the lore from a lot of different series and get into them that way. I say this because even though I don’t know much as far as the story goes, the Shrike is easily the scariest and most badass “villain” I think I’ve ever read about. The whole concept of its victims being impaled and essentially kept alive and in the worst torment one can imagine for eternity is just metal as fuck.

This is third on my list of to-read books (first is this scifi anthology, then it’s Canticle for Leibowitz), I keep hearing about it, somehow wasn’t exposed to it before this year, I am excited!!