Pi in the Sky

Hyperion Cantos (and II)

Posted on April 24th, 2007 at 3:05am by Pi.
Categories: Books.

Six years after Simmons finished The Fall of Hyperion, he published the third volume in the saga, this time a true sequel. The next year he published the second part, finishing the formation of what is know today as a tetralogy; although I think, and many agree, that these four books are two stories, and not three or four.

Still, both Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion leave many unanswered questions, as examples, who is really the Shrike, what happened to the TecnoCore, and who are the lions and tigers and bears. The destiny of some of the main characters is somewhat blurry, and it’s incompletely described. And the appearance of some really contradictory elements, as the Earth and the John Keats cybrids, doesn’t help making things clear.

The third book is Endymion, and takes its name from yet another poem by John Keats, this time finished. In the original poem, published in the beginning of XIX century, Keats tells about the shepherd Endymion who falls in love to the lunar goddess Selene. As with the two previous books, Endymion is full of self-references and references to the original poem.

In this case, the new protagonist of the plot are Raúl Endymion, who refers to himself jokingly as “a shepher of only one sheep”, and Aenea, daughter of the detective Brawne Lamia who was pilgrim in the two first books. Aenea is the bearer of a message to humanity, and her arrival was prophetized in the second book; it’s a mesianic touch that she always rejects, because she’s not a messiah.

I’ll try to explain the plot without spoiling it too much for the ones who haven’t read the two first books yet. In the beginning of the story, the WorldWeb has fell, substituted by Pax, a religious organization which offers the miracle of physical resurrection to its followers, what gives them a kind of immortality. Almost 300 years after the fall of the WorldWeb, Raul Endymion is hired by the original Cantos poet, Martin Silenus, to protect the child Aenea, who has traveled thru time. Pax knows and fears of the arrival of Aenea, and tries to destroy her.

Endymion rescues Aenea, and together they start an escape which carries them through many worlds, always pursued by father captain Federico De Soya, and accompanied by the android A. Bettik (who briefly appears in the first book). It’s notable the intermitent presence of the Shrike, probably the most charismatic anti-villain (in oposition of anti-hero) of science fiction.

As with the first book, Endymion is a long introduction for the next book, who completes the story. But unlike Hyperion, Endymion does have a defined ending, and many things happen in the story to be able to read it independently and be satisfied.

But, not too much satisfied. If Hyperion was structurally complex, and rich in cultural and literary references, Endymion looks more like an adventure novel, more clearly framed in the space opera which so often was despised by critics (the same ones who later surrended to the first two books, which are also space opera). After the lyrical and phylosophical complexity of the first two books, Endymion seems (and I say, it only seems), light and with a lack of substance. Even you could establish some parallelism with other similar stories, for example, Star Wars: the story of a farmer who rescues a princess obeying his master, while they flee away from the powerful empire. Although Bettik is very far from being Solo.

This caused many critics to accuse Simmons of having wrote a mediocre sequel to exploit the commercial success of the first two novels. Something which is far from reality. Endymion is not as complex as one would expect from the Hyperion sequel, but it’s not a bad book. The characters are wonderfully developed, and the story is entertaining, with moments of action and drama, scenes of tension or meditation. And in a subtle way, it prepares the road for the next novel. Although Endymion is not as complex as its predecessors, it’s not simple either. In the surface it’s an action story, resues and pursuits, but it’s not necessary to dive too much to see that it’s a fertile and rich story in many senses.

Even despite the critics receivement, both specialized and unspecialized, the readers welcomed this sequel pleasantly, becoming quickly a popular book.

The fourth and last novel is The Rise Of Endymion, in which Raul and Aenea continue their particular trip. Raul is sent to a personal odyssey, which keeps him away from Aenea. When he comes back, Aenea is already a grown-up woman who has started her teachings, and opposes actively the empire of Pax.

And I’m not telling more. To my understanding, this last novel is the best of them, both due to what it tells and how it tells it. A descriptive and detailed style, a large amount of characters and experiences, philosophic dialogies, an apparently simple plot which develops slowly, until the inmensity of the whole impress us as few books can do. Of course, that’s just my opinion.

The end of the book leaves a slightly mesianic taste, although Aenea always rejects being any kind of messiah. That’s why it’s important to pay attention to the explanations in the book, and to some of the messages the book communicates. If one does so, there’s nothing mesianic in Aenea, and all the story acquires a meaning far beyond the shallow explanations, and which for me, is much more positive and deep than a pseudo-mistic vision of these messages.

For those who have read my explanation about how I chose the name of my domain, they’ll know that Aenea’s message can be summarized in two words: Choose again. And while trying to describe the messages from the book, I discovered that it’s true. Aenea, through Simmons (or the reverse, actually), advices us to not hold back, search variety, have an open mind for other options; she tells us that it’s better to adapt to the surrounding world than to try to adapt such world to us, that change is constant, but not for that it’s easy, and that stagnation is as negative as a long death. And all these concepts, and more, even being developed in the book, come out of the simple sentence choose again. Simmons explains the concept in a sublime way when Raul finally understands it.

Besides the philosophic-pseudo-mystical signification of the message of the book, the two Endymion books show off a huge imagination to describe different worlds, people and attitudes. And all that seasoned up with a vast amount of references, from XX century’s architecture, to the teachings of Buda and greek mitology (Aenea takes her name from a mitological heroe, and her life runs the same as Aeneas’). And to sum up, these two books continue and round off all the story which started in Hyperion, and I consider them inseparable from the story.

And the same critics who showed no mercy with Endymion, surrendered in front of the complexity, richness and quality of The Rise Of Endymion, and according to the prologue of my edition, some even retracted from their negative critic of the thrid book.

The four books altogether don’t make a series, although I use the word saga to refer to them. They aren’t four independent books with some common elements, in which, sequel after sequel, get further and further away from the original plot. It’s only one story, extended through time, which encompasses dozens of worlds and cultures, but mantains a narrative integrity which couldn’t be expected from its heterogeneous literarly styles.

The whole of the four books, the Hyperion Cantos, is one of the best science fiction sagas ever written, and it’s able of satisfying both a science fiction fan, and a casual lector who searches for something different, but with quality. From here I recommend these four books to everyone.

Ok, here I end my blurb about the Cantos; I hope the ones who haven’t read them felt impelled to do so, and the ones who already did, who discovered some information which completes their understanding of them, and forgive my vagueness at describing them (to not spoil it for the ones who haven’t read them) and my inexactitudes (i.e., actually the WorldWeb is commonly known as The Hegemony, and Pax is a catholic organization which serves a renewed catholic church, but I can’t give all the details!)

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