Hyperion

Highlights

The Consul thought about the sharp pleasure of the hunt and the equally sharp solace of solitude: solitude he had earned through the pain and nightmare he had already suffered on Hyperion.

Bound by obedience and schooled

Bound by obedience and schooled in discipline, Lenar Hoyt accepted without question.

the aging spinship HS Nadia Oleg,

Preventive health measures have spread the vitality of early middle age well into the late sixties—my age—but except for clonal transplants, bioengineering, and other perqs for the very rich, no one in the Worldweb can expect to begin planning a family when they are seventy or expect to dance at their hundred-and-tenth birthday party.

What about Martin?

Someone or something had used this path long before the Bikura colonists crashed here. Someone or something had used this path for millennia.

intricately carved portals with elaborate stone casements

The labyrinths were dug…tunneled…created more than three quarters of a million standard years ago. The details were inevitably the same, their origins inevitably unsolved.

It was vaguely man-shaped but in no way human. It stood at least three meters tall.

It was vaguely man-shaped but in no way human. It stood at least three meters tall. Even when it was at rest, the silvered surface of the thing seemed to shift and flow like mercury suspended in midair.

It must go into the darkness not willingly but well—bravely and firm of faith—like the millions who have gone before us, keeping faith with all those generations facing death in the isolated silence of death camps and nuclear fireballs and cancer wards and pogroms, going into the darkness, if not hopefully, then prayerfully that there is some reason for it all, something worth the price of all that pain, all those sacrifices.

“It still looked like Paul Duré. Important. I told Monsignor. No skin. Flesh raw or boiled away. Nerves and things visible…like gray and yellow roots. Christ, the smell. But it still looked like Paul Duré!

The second cruciform was where he had expected to find it, a slightly smaller, cross-shaped welt between the thin man’s shoulder blades. It stirred slightly as the Consul’s fingers brushed the fevered flesh.

random ticks and creaks of the cooling spaceship.

“They want out,” said Kassad.

deathbeam zone, or both. “What do they want?” repeated Lamia. “They want out,” said Kassad.

“What do they want?” repeated Lamia. “They want out,” said Kassad.

Trusting in Theo—quiet, efficient Theo—to get him through the morning. Trusting in luck to get him through the day. Trusting in the drinking at Cicero’s to get him through the night. Trusting in the unimportance of his posting to get him through life.

“The HTN stuff doesn’t simulate,” whined Cadet Radinski, the best AI expert Kassad could find and bribe to explain, “it dreams, dreams

historical accuracy in the Web—way beyond the sum of its parts ’cause it plugs in holistic insight as well as facts—and when it dreams, it lets us dream with it.”

Generative AI in 1989

After the obscenities of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries on Old Earth, when military leaders had committed their nations to strategies wherein entire civilian populations were legitimate targets while their uniformed executioners sat safe in self-contained bunkers fifty meters under the earth, the repugnance of the surviving civilians was so great that for more than a century the word “military” was an invitation to a lynching.

The New Bushido Code which governed Colonel Kassad’s life had evolved out of the necessity for the military class to survive. After the obscenities of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries on Old Earth, when military leaders had committed their nations to strategies wherein entire civilian populations were legitimate targets while their uniformed executioners sat safe in self-contained bunkers fifty meters under the earth, the repugnance of the surviving civilians was so great that for more than a century the word “military” was an invitation to a lynching.

As the New Bushido evolved it combined the age-old concepts of honor and individual courage with the need to spare civilians whenever possible.

it demanded a return to Old Earth medieval concepts of set battles between small, professional forces at a mutually agreed-upon time in a place where destruction of public and private property would be kept to a minimum. This Code worked well for the first

South Bressia received no bombardment except for the lancing of specific military targets, airports, and the large harbor at Solno.

The eighty thousand original FORCE troops were ground up, reinforced with a hundred thousand more, and were still being decimated when the call went out for two hundred thousand more. Only the grim resolve of Meina Gladstone and a dozen other determined senators kept the war alive and the troops dying while the billions of voices of the All Thing and the AI Advisory Council called for disengagement.

was trading men for time and calling for the release of fusion weapons to spearhead his own counterattack.

The Consul wiped sweat from his upper lip. “If the tree is traveling backward in time with the Time Tombs, then the victims are from our future.”

had been drinking steadily since before midday and now he felt the pleasant displacement—from reality, from the pain of memory—which allowed him to get through each day and night. Now

The Consul had been drinking steadily since before midday and now he felt the pleasant displacement—from reality, from the pain of memory—which allowed him to get through each day and night. Now

We had our Grendel, to be sure. We even had our Hrothgar if one squints a bit at Sad King Billy’s poor slouched profile. We lacked only our Geats; our great, broad-shouldered, small-brained Beowulf with

planet-wide spasms as the Kiev Team’s goddamn little black hole digested bits of the Earth’s center and waited for its next feast.

For the record, here is my entire vocabulary of manageable words: fuck, shit,

For the record, here is my entire vocabulary of manageable words: fuck, shit, piss, cunt, goddamn, motherfucker, asshole, peepee, and poopoo.

THE LIFE OF a poet lies not merely in the finite language-dance of expression but in the nearly infinite combinations of perception and memory combined with the sensitivity to what is perceived and remembered.

Besides, history viewed from the inside is always a dark, digestive mess, far different from the easily recognizable cow viewed from afar by historians.

My shack was oddly comfortable: a table for eating, a cot for sleeping and fucking, a hole for pissing and shitting, and a window for silent staring.

Thus, on Heaven’s Gate, as I dredged bottom scum from the slop canals under the red gaze of Vega Primo or crawled on hands and knees through stalactites and stalagmites of rebreather bacteria in the station’s labyrinthine lungpipes, I became a poet.

But where has the universe hidden a word under its outer layer of biology, geometry, or insensate rock?) Even the traces of other intelligent life we have found—the blimps on Jove II, the Labyrinth Builders, the Seneschai empaths on Hebron, the Stick People of Durulis, the architects of the Time Tombs, the Shrike itself—have left us mysteries and obscure artifacts but no language. No words.

The poet John Keats once wrote to a friend of his named Bailey: “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.”

About art for kids

To be a true poet is to become God. — I TRIED TO explain this to my friends on Heaven’s Gate. “Piss, shit,” I said. “Asshole motherfucker, goddamn shit goddamn. Cunt. Pee-pee cunt. Goddamn!”

A person constantly busy accessing on his implants makes a pitiful sight in public and it didn’t take Helenda’s derision to make me realize that if I stayed home I would turn into an All Thing sponge like so many millions of other slugs around the Web. So I gave up politics. But by then I had found a new passion: religion.

“Who was Hitler?” I said. Tyrena smiled slightly. “An Old Earth politician who did some writing. Mein Kampf is still in print…Transline renews the copyright every hundred and thirty-eight years.”

“The AI loved it,” said Tyrena. “That’s when we knew for sure that people were going to hate it.” I sat up. “Couldn’t we have sold copies to the TechnoCore?” “We did,” said Tyrena. “One. The millions of AIs there probably real-time-shared it the minute it came in over fatline. Interstellar copyright doesn’t mean shit when you’re

IT ISN’T HARD being a hack writer. Between Dying Earth II and Dying Earth IX, six standard years had passed relatively painlessly.

More than eight thousand of Art’s pilgrims seeking escape from the tyranny of mediocrity and searching for a renewal of vision on this rough-hewn world.

It was fucking wonderful. It was fucking hell. And then on the night I had set aside to blow my brains out, Grendel appeared.

The machines arrived sans passengers. It

The machines arrived sans passengers.

I waited then. I wait still. The poem must be finished. It will be finished. In the beginning was

I waited then. I wait still. The poem must be finished. It will be finished. In the beginning was the Word. In the end…past honor, past life, past caring… In the end will be the Word.

a young person: structured curiosity, empathy for others, compassion, and a fierce sense of fair play. One day in his office, studying ancient files from

a young person: structured curiosity, empathy for

It was almost five years after Rachel left on her expedition that Sol had a dream which would change his

The physicists were fascinated with the anti-entropic fields and spent much of their time setting small flags of different colors to mark the limits of the so-called time tides.

With only three weeks to go of her year of research on Hyperion, Rachel awoke one night, left her sleeping lover, and took a ground effect jeep from the camp to the Tombs.

Shrike was supposed to be “…the Angel of Retribution from Beyond Time”

the human race when Old Earth died and that the four centuries since had been “false time.”

Isaac. A mere show of obedience without inner commitment would not have appeased the God of Genesis. What would have happened if Abraham had loved his son more than he loved God?”

What a stupid story

Every time she cleaned and folded and put away a set of Rachel’s outgrown baby clothes, she had shed secret tears that Sol somehow knew about.

Nice ffamily life

any allegiance to a deity or concept or universal principle which put obedience above decent behavior toward an innocent human being was evil. —So define “innocent”?

Ten thousand times in the past twenty years he had wished that he could take Rachel’s illness; that if anyone had to suffer it should be the father, not the child. Any parent would feel that way—did feel that way every time his child lay injured or racked with fever. Surely it could

News traveled almost instantaneously through the megadatasphere of a hundred and sixty Web worlds.

Megadatasphere

It’s a wonder that this family can stand one another, we’ve been

It’s a wonder that this family can stand one another, we’ve been cooped up together so long.”

On the first day he had not known if a four-year-old could truly comprehend the concept of death. He knew now that Rachel could.

He let the pain come. It filled him with the sharp-edged agony of resolve. Sol stood on the ridge line and wept as darkness fell.

On the day she could no longer walk, Sol put her down in her crib early and then went into his study to get thoroughly and quietly drunk. Language was the hardest for him. Her vocabulary

Language was the hardest for him. Her vocabulary loss was like the burning of a bridge between them, the severing of a final line of hope.

SOL LOVED CARRYING his daughter. There were times when the curve of her head against his cheek, her warmth against his chest, the smell of her skin—all worked to allow him to forget the fierce injustice of it all.

Sol grinned, his teeth white against the gray of his beard. “It had better be,” he said. “Sometimes it is all we’re given.”

Kassad shook his head. “A waste,” he said and went below.

His consciousness or ego or whatever you want to call it floated somewhere in the megadatasphere datumplane of the TechnoCore

and works backward from the creative products.

Ezra Pound.

He nodded. “Keats,” he said. “Born in A.D. 1795. Died of tuberculosis in 1821. John Keats.”

IF OUR SOCIETY ever opted for Orwell’s Big Brother approach, the instrument of choice for oppression would have to be the credit wake. In a totally noncash economy with only a vestigial barter black market, a person’s activities could be tracked in real time by monitoring the credit wake of his or her universal card. There were strict laws protecting

card privacy but laws had a bad habit of being ignored or abrogated when societal push came to totalitarian shove.

Keats had asked that unopened letters from Fanny

Keats had asked that unopened letters from Fanny and a lock of her hair be buried with him.

“It’s called Hyperion. It’s difficult to describe what it’s…about. Artistic failure, I suppose. Keats never finished it.”

The hawking mats were illegal on most Web worlds but still a tradition on Maui-Covenant because of the Siri legend; less than two meters long and a meter wide, the ancient playthings lay waiting to carry tourists out over the sea and back again to the wandering isle.

Siri Rebellion had killed off most of the aquatic mammals

Siri Rebellion had killed off most of the aquatic mammals and

Siri Rebellion

The house did not respond when I spoke to it at the door and again in the apartment upstairs.

“The Ultimate Intelligence,” I said, exhaling smoke. “Uh-huh. So the TechnoCore is trying to…what?…to build God.”

“Don’t you see, Brawne? There is some connection here. It may well be that Keats’s dreams of Hyperion were some sort of transtemporal communication between his then persona and his now persona. If nothing else, Hyperion is the key mystery of our age—physical and poetic—and it is quite probable that he…that I was born, died, and was born again to explore it.”

“But the AIs didn’t secede.” “No, Brawne, it appears that, for whatever reason, they need us almost as badly as we need them.”

“We believe that the Core is embarked on a truly incredible project which would allow them to predict…everything.

I felt the inevitable nausea of transition as we came up out of the matrix.

THE TECHNOCORE HAS been divided into three groups for as long as the Core has existed,”

It was immediately obvious that the so-called Time Tombs were artifacts launched backward in time from a point at least ten thousand years in the galaxy’s future.

Time tombs. 10k years in future

The day is gone, and all its sweets are gone! Sweet voice, sweet lips, soft hand, and softer breast,

“St. Peter’s in the New Vatican is nothing like this.” Martin Silenus laughed. Thick light outlined his cheekbones and satyr’s brows. “This was built for a living deity,” he said.

“You have to live to really know things, my love. Having Alón has helped me to understand that. There is something about raising a child that helps to sharpen one’s sense of what is real.”

smoked a cannabis stick,

Siri sipped at her coffee. “I would have thought your Hegemony was far beyond a petroleum economy.”

If you could have seen your face at the beginning of each Reunion! The least you could have done was to hide your shock…that, at least, you could have done for me.

Hegemony skimmers lighting the sea with their depth charges. In the morning, the waves were gray with the bodies of the dead dolphins.

Suffice it to say that I believe the Ousters have done what Web humanity has not in the past millennia: evolved.

The Big Mistake of ’38 had been no mistake. The death of Old Earth had been deliberate, planned by elements of the TechnoCore and their human counterparts in the fledgling government of the Hegemony.

And the Ousters, the only other tribe of humanity

And the Ousters, the only other tribe of humanity free to wander between the stars and the only group not dominated by the TechnoCore, was next on our list of extinction.

did not tell her that they had promised to give me a device which would open the Time Tombs and allow the Shrike free rein.

I did not tell her that they had promised to give me a device which would open the Time Tombs and allow the Shrike free rein.

“An interstellar war will cause the deaths of millions, perhaps billions. Releasing the Shrike into the Web will have unforeseen consequences. As much as we need to strike at the Core, there are debates as to which is the best way.”

But when the time comes to judge, to understand a betrayal which will spread like flame across the Web, which will end worlds, I ask you not to think of me—my name was not even writ on water as your lost poet’s soul said—but to think of Old Earth dying for no reason, to think of the dolphins, their gray flesh drying and rotting in the sun, to see—as I have seen—the motile isles with no place to wander, their feeding grounds destroyed, the Equatorial Shallows scabbed with drilling platforms, the islands themselves burdened with shouting, trammeling tourists smelling of UV lotion and cannabis.

“That may be correct,” said Colonel Fedmahn Kassad, “but however they may try to use all of us as pawns,

“And what is Oz?” asked Lamia. “And just who is off to see this wizard?”