Tsaiberspace

Dan Simmon’s Hyperion marks the first book I’ve completed completely on public-transit time, about 1½ work-weeks of commuting, about 50 minutes each way (total 1½ hours per day). It is the kind of science-fantasy space opera I like to read when I want to kill time.

On its own, the Hyperion has everything: romance, sci-fi military action, spaceships, alien races, and time travel. It is nominally a book about a group of seven people traveling together on a pilgrimage.

However, in the context of all the other books I’ve read (probably an unreasonable judgment to make), the book’s story uses the very clichéd device of having the travelers tell their stories to all the others, the series of stories punctuated by brief intermissions of travel incidents. By the time everyone has told their story, the book is over, and no forward progress has been made towards the end of the originally-offered plotline (you have to buy the sequel to get that).

Each of the stories is interesting to read, but I finished the book feeling more like I had read a bunch of novellas or short stories (The Bachman Books), instead of the expected epic space opera (The Stand).

But I do have the sequel (The Fall of Hyperion), and many bus rides ahead of me.