| | Comment from (2004-12-11) |
| The Hyperion Cantos started off very promising. The first book is like a sci-fi version of The Canterbury Tales, with detailed personal looks at each individual character, each with different tones. Some of the stories were better than others, but all were good - the Sol Weintraub / Rachel story in particular was very haunting. The story is a creative look at 700 years in the future with very detailed worlds and cultures, mostly touched on in passing in the characters' tales. I found it to be an interesting look at old themes - man vs machine, time and aging, love, religion, ecology and man's abuse of the environment and destiny.
It's too bad the remaining three books didn't live up to the potential of the first one (which leaves off on a big cliff-hanger)! The rest of the series was a lot more mundane, kind of a sci-fi mystery with lots of exposition used to advance the plot. They are more of exciting, but shallow, adventure / chase tales. The characterization is much worse. You never care for characters like you do in the first book. There are lots of good ideas, but very poor execution in terms of characterization, plotting and depth / themes. 6/10 for series, 9/10 for the first book. |
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| | Comment from (2003-03-11) |
| This is one of the best science fiction series. This author is really something. He has great imagination, he is tech-literate, and he has great writing skills. Put these 3 things together and you have an unbeatable mix.
Although the first book started out a little slow and confusing, the rest of the series just got better and better. I was really impressed by a more or less unknown author coming up with such a plausible human future.
There are several major 'groups' here that follow our diverging technological tree: those that modify their own genes to adapt to other habitats or 'grow' their own worlds in space; those that hook themselves up to computers and 'live' in cyberspace; the 'normal' humans who do all the weird things they do now; and the technocore, or a new society of artificial intelligent beings (AIs).
You have super-advanced robots, wormholes, time travel, gods... yet all these things make sense, they're well thought-out and linked to one another.
This is an amazing series. I have never read books by another author with such realistic vision of the future. Maybe it's just me, or just the fact that I agree with most of Mr. Simmons' predictions, but I think this series truely is something remarkable and will be remembered for many generations of sci-fi fans.
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