Just Finished Reading The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons

It took a little while, but I finally just finished reading The Fall of Hyperion, the second book in Dan Simmons' four-volume Hyperion Cantos series.  As is often the case with this genre of literature, the author has created his own universe of the future, complete with intricate details about how humankind left the Earth and settled other star systems.  With Hyperion, there are two waves of space settlement, one coming before the "Big Mistake" that eventually turned the Earth into a black hole (don't worry, folks...we all still have about twenty more years left)...and the other a more massive hegira from our doomed planet, done out of the necessity of survival.  AI, or artificial intelligence, has developed so much in the early 21st century (this novel came out in the early 1990s) that humanity has become totally dependent on it without being to control it any longer.  After the disaster, the AI's "Technocore" bestows a gift on humankind: the farcaster, a device that allows instantaneous travel between worlds of systems light years apart.  With this technology, the second wave of space settlers terraforms planet after planet, in the process destroying indigenous life forms and imposing their own images of "old" Earth wherever they go.  Meanwhile, the first wave has gone down a different path, choosing instead to adapt to the different environments of the worlds they settle by changing themselves through genetic manipulation.  These two groups of humanity eventually descend into war against each other...and the remote outpost planet of Hyperion...controlled by that second-wave called the Hegemony but sought by the Ousters...turns into the focus of attention as seven pilgrims are chosen to visit the enigmatic Time Tombs there to solve the mystery of their anti-entropic fields and seek out the monstrous Shrike.  I know, I know, there is way too much stuff here to digest and I haven't even gotten around to the characters...but Simmons is relentless with his detailed descriptions and explanations for everything, often using terminology that is nonexistent in our present "real" world.  Like I said, it took me a while to get through both books...and I'm only halfway through with the series...

What saved The Fall of Hyperion for me is how well Dan Simmons developed his characters...and what distinct personalities each of them has!  The poet, the professor, the warrior, the diplomat, the priest, the detective, and the ship's captain form complex relationships with one another...and each comes from his or her own special background that brings them together on the desolate landscape of the Tombs.  But there is more: one of the AI entities in the Technocore has created a resurrected persona of the famous 19th century poet John Keats in the form of a "cybrid", i.e. a fully human entity whose essence is nevertheless AI.  This character dreams the experiences of the pilgrims on Hyperion and reports it all to the Hegemony's leader, a striking personality who models herself on Winston Churchill... 

Even after reading The Fall of Hyperion, I'm left scratching my head over what it all means.  There is definitely here the kind of atmosphere reminiscent of the Terminator and Matrix movies, where humanity has foolishly relinquished its authority over its own developed technology and has to suffer the consequences.  But I'm still not quite sure what the heck the Time Tombs were all about, what the point was about one of the characters pulling a "Benjamin Button" and physically regressing from adulthood to infancy...and what exactly was this empathetic entity from the future that everybody seemed to be looking for?  Hey, I know...you can read it for yourself and then explain it all to me!