Humanity has spread around the stars. Not only faster than light space travel has been invented, but instantaneous travel through “farcaster” network is commonplace. The same network is used for information exchange, and super intelligent AI:s with partly unknown motives also use that network for their own purposes. A group of pilgrims is on way the meet shrike, a vicious alien who lives around the “time tombs” on a remote planet, Hyperion. The time itself seems to behave strangely in that area. No space ship can approach, as every member of all crew has always vanished without a trace. A war is coming, and “Ousters”, humans who live in deep space are attacking. This expedition might be last for a long time if not ever. The pilgrims start to tell stories of why they a taking the hard and dangerous journey which most likely will kill them. The stories all involve Hyperion and time tombs in some way, mostly very disturbed (and fascinating) way. Those involve immortality (with a cost) and accident which causes a young woman to grow younger day by day until she is an infant.
This is just the first half of the book and it ends when the group arrives at their destination. Practically everything is just setup and shrike and timetombs are left largely as a mystery. The writing was good and the stories itself were very engaging and interesting. The combining parts them were luckily short and a struggle to get through at least in comparison. One of the better Hugo winners.
I have now read 93% of all Hugo award winning novels. Four to go.
482 pp.
No comments:
Post a Comment