The Fall of Hyperion
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- The novel should not be confused with John Keats's epic poem fragment, The Fall of Hyperion: A Dream.
| Author | Dan Simmons |
|---|---|
| Cover Artist | Gary Ruddell (Bantam editions) |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Hyperion Cantos |
| Genre(s) | Science fiction novel |
| Publisher | Doubleday & Bantam Books (Spectra imprint) |
| Released | March 1990 (Doubleday); March 1991 & December 1995 (Bantam) |
| Media Type | Print (Hardcover, paperback) |
| Pages | 517 pages (Bantam) |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-553-28820-2 ('95 Bantam) |
| Preceded by | Hyperion |
| Followed by | Endymion |
The Fall of Hyperion is the second science fiction novel by Dan Simmons in his Hyperion Cantos fictional universe; in 45 chapters and an epilogue, it records the fall of the Hegemony of Man. Like the previous novel Hyperion, it follows a frame structure of sorts, although it is far less explicit: instead of a number of pilgrims telling each other their tales a la The Canterbury Tales, the perspective is that of the reactivated cybrid of John Keats (the poet to whom the novel is dedicated "To John Keats, Whose Name Was Writ in Eternity"), who somehow dreams the adventures of the pilgrims via his twin.
[edit] Plot summary
Meina Gladstone has committed to reinforcing the FORCE:Space picket at Hyperion and pushing the Ousters out. Parties all over the Hegemony break out on the day the armada is dispatched; it is at the party at Government House on the capital of the Hegemony, Tau Ceti Center, that one Joseph Severn, the technological reincarnation of John Keats. fully of neither the human world nor the TechnoCore where his AI consciousness resides, is invited. He meets with Gladstone and her council of war, to "offer an artist's perspective". His official excuse for being there is that he has been commissioned to do a series of sketches of Gladstone during these historic events. He does do these sketches, but the real reason is that Gladstone needs to stay informed about the crucial events surrounding the pilgrims and the Time Tombs, and Severn's dreams appear to correspond to the events.
His dreams are of an uneventful first day exploring the Time Tombs. The Shrike does not appear and nor does Captain Het Masteen. That night a sandstorm begins. Lenar Hoyt staffers off to the Jade Tomb, driven thence by the pain of the cruciform. Brawne Lamia follows him, and Fedmahn Kassad trails behind both: the two shall serve as bait, he hopes, to draw out either the Shrike or Moneta. In the Jade Tomb, Hoyt discovers a shaft that drops kilometers to a veritable inferno. It would surely kill him permanently and destroy the cruciform. Before he can hurl himself over the precipice, the Shrike appears. It ignores the bullets that Lamia fires at it, and slices Hoyt's throat open. Hoyt dies, but the cruciforms he carries might still resurrect him in three days.
Before Severn's meeting with Gladstone, he attends a military briefing. The defense of Hyperion is not going well; the Ousters have several times the number of combat units FORCE predicted, and each unit is more effective than believed. The two space fleets are deadlocked in a bloody stalemate.
The Consul tries to retrieve his ship so its medical facilities can be used on Father Hoyt, and if need be, the ever-younger Rachel, but FORCE grounds the ship on Gladstone's orders. Carrying the corpse of the now-dead Hoyt, they all head up to the Sphinx for shelter.
Severn confronts Gladstone about her callous abandonment of the pilgrims. She is surprised that anyone else knew about it, since she had just given the order, and is convinced that Severn's dreams are true. She defends her action, saying that it is absolutely crucial that the pilgrims stay at the Time Tombs to work out whatever their destinies may be. She then asks Severn to visit Hyperion for a short time with her close aide, Leigh Hunt - to get a closer view of things. On his trip, he meets Governor Theo Lane and Dr. Melio Arundez; from the former he learns that Hyperion is breaking down as everyone crowds around the spaceport, and from the latter that the Time Tombs are preparing to open at any time.
In Severn's next dreams, Kassad is attacked by Moneta. Their long-distance sniper duel devastates the Crystal Monolith. Kassad catches up with her at the top. After she defeats him in hand-to-hand combat, they make love. She gives him a suit of armor/weapon from the future, to which the Shrike takes Moneta and Kassad.
The "Ousters" reveal their master plan when a dozen fleets' fusion drive tails are spotted so close to crucial Web Worlds that when they activate their Hawking drives, they are scant dozens or hundreds of hours travel-time from their target. Simultaneously, the swarm in the Hyperion system presses the FORCE even harder: Gladstone has just committed the strategic reserve to reinforce them, but to little avail.
By this point, Father Duré has been reborn by the cruciform attached by Father Hoyt's remains. Lamia and Silenus leave for Chronos Keep, to resupply. The pilgrims had not brought many supplies with them, as they did not expect to live long enough to exhaust them. Silenus peels off when they pass the Poet's City; he is sick of Lamia, and wants to finish his Cantos, and he had always done his best work in the Poet's City. Lamia leaves him to meet what may come. During the two's absence, they (the Consul, Sol Weintraub, and Duré) find Captain Het Masteen collapsed in the sands, badly burned and dehydrated. He too eventually dies, never telling his tale aside from some confused babbling about the Shrike's Tree of Pain and Masteen's failure to pilot it through the galaxy.
Silenus finds the silence of the city extremely conducive to writing. He makes extraordinary progress - his muse has returned. Silenus's Hyperion Cantos is a retread of Keats's two previous failures, attempts to write the great epic of the Titanomachia - the overthrow of the Titans by their more beautiful upstart offspring, the more familiar Olympians of Greek myth, and the Titans' counter-attack: Hyperion & The Fall of Hyperion: A Dream. Silenus's poem is not merely poetic myth, but an obvious allegory for events wracking the stars, the long-running conflict between humanity and its creations, the AIs of the TechnoCore. As the wan light fails, Saturn and Jupiter have concluded their grand debates at the treaty table by expressing fear of some third hostile other force. Unable to see the manuscript, Silenus pauses to find some source of illumination. The Shrike silently appears and commandeers Silenus's arm, writing that "IT IS TIME, MARTIN." Silenus of course refuses to go: the poem is almost done, after all. The Shrike takes him and impales Silenus on his Tree of Pain anyway.
Lamia's mission to retrieve supplies from the Keep is perturbed by odd moving noises and abruptly cut off screams of pain. On her way down, she is nearly killed by dislodged falling rocks. When she returns to the Sphinx agonizing hours and kilometers later, she finds no one except the Shrike. Her bullet are for naught against the metal body, and it stabs a finger into her head behind her ear, knocking her out. Sol and the Consul discover her prone and unconscious - apparently brain-dead - and her head seamlessly connected to the bare rock of the Sphinx by an odd almost-living techno-organic cable. The Consul departs on a Hawking mat (the same one used by Merin and Siri) back to the capital of Hyperion, Keats, to try to free his ship; it has a cryogenic freezing unit that Rachel could be put in before her last birth-day arrives, and tools to help in cutting the cable off Lamia.
Lamia is still alive, but her consciousness has been transferred to the datumplane. She is joined there by Johnny, apparently freed from the Schrön loop by the Shrike. Johnny mentions that he had been dreaming Severn's reality, much as Severn had been dreaming Johnny's reality. The two head into the heart of the TechnoCore to find some answers.
