Hyperion - some notes
Mark T. Shirey ([email protected]) 8 Nov 1995
The book "Hyperion" by Dan Simmons, 1989, won the 1990 Hugo Award (for SF).
Hein Hundal recommended it to me. This is stuff I wanted to remember.
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Table of Contents (does not appear in the book)
Prologue 3
Ch 1 9 The Priest's Tale: "The Man Who Cried God" 25
Ch 2 102 The Soldier's Tale: The War Lovers 120
Ch 3 176 The Poet's Tale: "Hyperion Cantos" 179
Ch 4 234 The Scholar's Tale: The River Lethe's Taste is Bitter 246
Ch 5 312 The Detective's Tale: The Long Goodbye 326
Ch 6 412 The Consul's Tale: Remembering Siri 423
Epilogue 478 (followed by preview of sequel "The Fall of Hyperion")
Hyperion (hi-PER-ee-en) - a Titan and the father by Thea of Aurora, Selene,
and Helios (Titan - one of a family of giants born of Uranus and Gaea and
ruling the Earth until overthrown by the Olympian gods.)
Hyperion is also the name of a great, unfinished poem by John Keats (1795-
1821), an English poet who died at 29 of tuberculosis (a highly variable
communicable disease of man and some other vertebrates caused by the
tubercle bacillus and characterized by toxic symptoms or allergic
manifestations which in man primarily affect the lungs.)
Hyperion - a moon of Saturn where planet Hyperion's colonists came from.
Sometimes called Poet's World, it is the key mystery of the age, for the
Web, the enemy Ousters, and for the TechnoCore of AIs.
"The Hegemony Consul sat on the balcony of his ebony spaceship and played
Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C-sharp Minor, on an ancient but well-maintained
Steinway while great, green, saurian things surged and bellowed in the swamp
below." ...
Shrike Pilgrim #1 - The Hegemony Consul - athiest, triple agent
grandson of Merin Aspic and Siri (Reunions on Maui-Covenant)
hegemony (heh-JEM-eh-nee) - preponderant influence or authority esp. of one
nation over others
consul (CON-sul) - 1. either of two annually elected chief magistrates of the
Roman republic, 2. an official appointedby a government to reside in a
foreign country to represent the commercial interests of the citizens of
the appointing country
saurian - relating to lizards, dinosaurs
fatline receiver, FTL squirt of tachyons (tachy = fast), interdiction field
Tau Ceti Center (TC^2), Meina Gladstone - Senate CEO, member of the All Thing
Church of the Shrike selects pilgrims for Shrike Pilgrimage
must be a prime # of people, myth is that one gets a wish and the rest die
Shrike - 3m-tall humanoid, 4 arms, metal spikes, many-faceted glowing red eyes
impales victims on 200m killing tree of metal thorns
Pain Lord and Angel of Final Atonement, Grendel?
Archangel Michael + Moroni + Satan + Masked Entropy + Frankenstein's monster
Wanders on Hyperion, near Time Tombs, Sphynx, south to Bridal Range
The Shrike appears to each of the pilgrims (in dreams/visions/etc.)
shrike - any of numerous gray or brownish oscine birds that have a
strong notched bill hooked at the tip, feed chiefly on insects and often
impale their prey on thorns (oscine = passerine = songbirds)
#5 Sol Weintraub - scholar, Wandering Jew, Sarai & daughter Rachel
Rachel wakes up 1 day younger every day
Was Judaism _started_ with the Story of Abraham and Isaac?
#3 Col. Fedmahn Kassad - Mystery woman Moneta/Mnemosyne
Battle of Agincourt simulation 1415 AD
New Bushido - honor
#7 Capt. Het Masteen - Templar, True Voice of the Tree,
treeship Yggdrasill, would have told story 5
Muir's Book of Life (John Muir - American naturalist)
100 seedlings of Eternal Tree on every new world, erg in a Mobius box
#2 Fr. Lenar Hoyt - young, in pain
"Sometimes there is a thin line separating orthodox zeal from apostasy."
apostasy - renunciation of faith, defection (by an apostate), vs. apostle
Fr. Paul Dure' from Villefranche-sur-Saone
almost excomm'ed after faking records at Armaghast to revive Catholic Church
exiled from Pacem on HS Nadia Oleg, Monsignor Edouard, St. Tielhard
sacristy - where clergy vests & stores sacraments
Bikura - Mamet Spedling said they were stupid
"And if you did it again, we would have to kill you again."
"of the cross" vs. "of the cruciform", guide named Tuk
#4 Martin Silenus - poet, helped start Zen Gnosticisim, Shrike = muse
tutor Balthazar, Cantos pg 230, Sad King Billy (Windsor-in-exile?)
#6 Brawne Lamia - detective, beauty
Johnny Keats, the AI cybrid, hires her to solve his 1-minute murder
FORCE:space task force vs. Ouster migration cluster
time debt incurred when traveling in cryogenic fugue with Hawking drive
Keats Interstellar spaceport
Worldweb farcasters soon between Maui-Covenant & 16 worlds despite Separatists
The Hegira, pre-Hegira, post-Hegira - leaving Old Earth
hegira/hejira (hih-JY-reh, HEJ-eh-reh) [flight of Muhammad from Mecca in
622 AD] - a journey esp. when undertaken to escape from a dangerous or
undesirable situatation, exodus
indigenies, use comlog implant to access datashpere, datumplane
People from Lusus are muscled like a jaguar
antediluvian (anteh-dill-OO-vian) - before the flood, ancient
pg 16 "There is no death in all the Universe!", Silenus toasts the stars with:
"No smell of death - there shall be no death, moan, moan;
Moan, Cyblele, moan; for thy pernicious Babes
Have changed a god into a shaking palsy.
Moan, bretheren, moan, for I have no strength left;
Weak as the reed - weeak - feeble as my voice -
Oh, oh, the pain, the pain of feebleness.
Moan, moan, for still I thaw..."
pg 21 When they decide to share their stories, Silenus says:
"Straddling each a dolphin's back
And steadied by a fin,
Those Innocents re-live their death,
Their wounds open again."
Hoyt: That's Lenista, isn't it? I studied her in seminary.
Silenus: Close. It's Yeats. Bugger lived five hundred years before
Lenista tugged at her mother's metal teat.
More Yeats on pg 309
"M." - used as a title like Mr./Mrs./Ms., pronounced "Em"?
Hyperion's continents: Equus, Ursa, Aquila (southern continent, go to the
Cleft from Port Romance through Pinion Plateau (flame forests/tesla trees))
Hyperion is one of 9 labyrinthine worlds of 176 Web worlds, 200+ colonies, 8K
worlds explored since Hegira - pointless, empty, smooth tunnels
Another labyrinthine world is Svoboda (means "mercy" in Czech?)
Hyperion's sky is green, white, and lapis (azure blue)
verdant?, prosaic?, weirwood?, offal?, sacrament of Extreme Unction? detritus?
overgrown with gissen? and womangrove root?, priapic?
sees a murder - victim assumes prize fighter posture of burn victims
Emporotic Girandole boat, Kans river, simulacrum of lodging, aureate foliage
Thomasmonth, Matthewmonth, Secondmonth
Zen Gnosticism - emptiness, Merde?
Perecebo plantation, Christ-on-a-stick (exclamation)
Jesus wept. - (shortest verse in bible, used as a comment)
Cicero's Bar (Stan Leweski named it after part of Chicago or Calcutta)
Cammon (woman from Sea of Grass) blew up the Shrike Temple
A. Bettik - android guide on the Benares boat
Buckminster - capital of Bressia
Jennet - read pgs 179, 185, 188-193, 214, 223, 338-9
Keats and Lamb in Haydon's studio pg 185
Keats life/death pg 370, letter to brother George pg 371, poetry pg 384, 409
There arises from a bad and unapt formation of words a wonderful obstruction to
the mind. - Francis Bacon
I love being a writer. It's the paperwork I can't stand. - anonymous
The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the
difference between lightning and the lightning bug. - Mark Twain
Poet's house has 38 rooms on 36 worlds
In 20th century Old Earth, a fast food chain took dead cow meat, fried it in
grease, added carcinogens, wrapped it in petroleum-based foam, and sold nine
hundred billion units. Human beings. Go figure.
I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the Heart's affection and the truth
of Imagination - What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth -
whether it existed before or not. - John Keats
Escher references (like "shadows playing Escher games" - pg 182)
Poulson treatments - younger, bluer
lecherous verse by Ovid, Senesh, Wu
Words are the supreme objects. They are _minded_ things.
- William Gass - "the twentieth century's most honored writer"
Ding an Sich, Little Nell Disease, sphere of dishabille?
Thomas hawk - haunting cry, moonlight on its wings
Endymion - city, another poem by Keats
When Sol talks to Mort the Rabbi, he says "Mort, Sol." (joke on Mort Saul?)
Hebron?, new Diaspora?
Sol's solution to "The Abraham Problem":
Listen! There will be no more offerings, neither child nor parent. There
will be no more sacrifices for anyone other than our fellow human. The
time of obediance and atonement is past. That's all! Now either leave us
alone or join us as a father rather than a receiver of sacrifices. You
have the choice of Abraham!
TechnoCore of AIs have seceded from the Web, Johnny is a cybrid of an AI
The AIs have built a complete "analog" of Old Earth
Lamia: Why, for God's sake?
Johnny: That may indeed be the case.
queue = pony-tail, cubby = apartment, hive = apartment complex, klick = km
Fanny - Keat's fiance, he was buried with unopened letters, hair, pg 346
"[I'm no more Keats] than having the name Lamia makes you a monster" pg 347
Old Earth analog = Ultimate Intelligence = God?
North American littoral?
Schron loop, Hawking mat
Dolphin's ululations
Hello.
distance/no-fluke/hello-tone?/current pulse/circle me/funny?
How are you?
no-fluke/no-feed/no-swim/no-play/no-fun
How does it benefit you to stay [in] the isles?
sounding now/old songs/deep water/no-Great Voices/no-Shark/old songs/
new songs [Great Voices are whales]
What do you miss most of Old Earth's oceans?
miss Shark/miss Shark/miss Shark/miss Shark/Shark/Shark/Shark
Big Mistake of '38 - "accidentally" causing a black hole in center of Earth
satori? vermillion dust? Shrike's carapace?
Time Tombs with anti-entropic fields
antientropic is 1 word on pg 571, hyphenated elsewhere (e.g., pg 214)
Hoyt's 3-finger sign and "Ego te absolvo"
Ends with group singing
"We're off to see the Wizard, the wonderful Wizard of Oz" to Rachel
Rachel in "swaddling clothes"
TBD
Order pilgrims are mentioned, seating order, numbers they drew
Outline of story devices:
3rd person centered on Hegemony Consul
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