Endymion. The Hyperion Cantos

Zusatztext Praise for Dan Simmons "Extraordinary."-- Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine "A magnificently original blend of themes and styles."-- The Denver Post "Simmons masterfully employs SF's potential."-- Locus Informationen zum Autor Dan Simmons Klappentext The multiple-award-winning science fiction master returns to the universe that is his greatest triumph--the world of Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion --with a novel even more magnificent than its predecessors. Dan Simmons's Hyperion was an immediate sensation on its first publication in 1989. This staggering multifaceted tale of the far future heralded the conquest of the science fiction field by a man who had already won the World Fantasy Award for his first novel ( Song of Kali ) and had also published one of the most well-received horror novels in the field, Carrion Comfort . Hyperion went on to win the Hugo Award as Best Novel, and it and its companion volume, The Fall of Hyperion , took their rightful places in the science fiction pantheon of new classics. Now, six years later, Simmons returns to this richly imagined world of technological achievement, excitement, wonder and fear. Endymion is a story about love and memory, triumph and terror--an instant candidate for the field's highest honors. Leseprobe You are reading this for the wrong reason. If you are reading this to learn what it was like to make love to a messiah-- our messiah--then you should not read on because you are little more than a voyeur. If you are reading this because you are a fan of the old poet's Cantos and are obsessed with curiosity about what happened next in the lives of the Hyperion pilgrims, you will be disappointed. I do not know what happened to most of them. They lived and died almost three centuries before I was born. If you are reading this because you seek more insight into the message from the One Who Teaches, you may also be disappointed. I confess that I was more interested in her as a woman than as a teacher or messiah. Finally, if you are reading this to discover her fate or even my fate, you are reading the wrong document. Although both our fates seem as certain as anyone's could be, I was not with her when hers was played out, and my own awaits the final act even as I write these words. If you are reading this at all, I would be amazed. But this would not be the first time that events have amazed me. The past few years have been one improbability after another, each more marvelous and seemingly inevitable than the last. To share these memories is the reason that I am writing. Perhaps the motivation is not even to share--knowing that the document I am creating almost certainly will never be found--but just to put down the series of events so that I can structure them in my own mind. "How do I know what I think until I see what I say?" wrote some pre-Hegira writer. Precisely. I must see these things in order to know what to think of them. I must see the events turned to ink and the emotions in print to believe that they actually occurred and touched me. If you are reading this for the same reason that I am writing it--to bring some pattern out of the chaos of the last years, to impose some order on the essentially random series of events that have ruled our lives for the past standard decades--then you may be reading this for the right reason, after all. WHERE TO START? With a death sentence, perhaps. But whose--my death sentence or hers? And if mine, which of mine? There are several from which to choose. Perhaps this final one is appropriate. Begin at the ending. I am writing this in a Schrodinger cat box in high orbit around the quarantined world of Armaghast. The cat box is not much of a box, more of a smooth-hul...

Praise for Dan Simmons

"Extraordinary."--Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine

"A magnificently original blend of themes and styles."--The Denver Post

"Simmons masterfully employs SF's potential."--Locus

Auteur

Dan Simmons

Texte du rabat

The multiple-award-winning science fiction master returns to the universe that is his greatest triumph--the world of Hyperion and The Fall of
Hyperion --with a novel even more magnificent than its predecessors.

Dan Simmons's Hyperion was an immediate sensation on its first publication in 1989. This staggering multifaceted tale of the far future heralded the conquest of the science fiction field by a man who had already won the World Fantasy Award for his first novel (Song of Kali) and had also published one of the most well-received horror novels in the field, Carrion Comfort. Hyperion went on to win the Hugo Award as Best Novel, and it and its companion volume, The Fall of Hyperion, took their rightful places in the science fiction pantheon of new classics.

Now, six years later, Simmons returns to this richly imagined world of technological achievement, excitement, wonder and fear. Endymion is a story about love and memory, triumph and terror--an instant candidate for the field's highest honors.

Échantillon de lecture
You are reading this for the wrong reason.

If you are reading this to learn what it was like to make love to a messiah--our messiah--then you should not read on because you are little more than a voyeur.

If you are reading this because you are a fan of the old poet's Cantos and are obsessed with curiosity about what happened next in the lives of the Hyperion pilgrims, you will be disappointed.  I do not know what happened to most of them.  They lived and died almost three centuries before I was born.

If you are reading this because you seek more insight into the message from the One Who Teaches, you may also be disappointed.  I confess that I was more interested in her as a woman than as a teacher or messiah.

Finally, if you are reading this to discover her fate or even my fate, you are reading the wrong document.  Although both our fates seem as certain as anyone's could be, I was not with her when hers was played out, and my own awaits the final act even as I write these words.

If you are reading this at all, I would be amazed.  But this would not be the first time that events have amazed me.  The past few years have been one improbability after another, each more marvelous and seemingly inevitable than the last.  To share these memories is the reason that I am writing.  Perhaps the motivation is not even to share--knowing that the document I am creating almost certainly will never be found--but just to put down the series of events so that I can structure them in my own mind.

"How do I know what I think until I see what I say?" wrote some pre-Hegira writer.  Precisely.  I must see these things in order to know what to think of them.  I must see the events turned to ink and the emotions in print to believe that they actually occurred and touched me.  If you are reading this for the same reason that I am writing it--to bring some pattern out of the chaos of the last years, to impose some order on the essentially random series of events that have ruled our lives for the past standard decades--then you may be reading this for the right reason, after all.

WHERE TO START? With a death sentence, perhaps.  But whose--my death sentence or hers? And if mine, which of mine? There are several from which to choose. Perhaps this final one is appropriate.  Begin at the ending.

I am writing this in a Schrodinger cat box in high orbit around the quarantined world of Armaghast.  The cat box is not much of a box, more of a smooth-hulled ovoid a mere six meters by three meters.  It will be my entire world until the end of my life.  Most of the interior of my world is a spartan cell consisting of a black-box air-and-waste recycl…