Just Finished Reading The Rise of Endymion by Dan Simmons

Having read Robert Jordan's nearly interminable fourteen-volume Wheel of Time fantasy series, twelve volumes of the actually interminable Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind (now ongoing with seventeen books already out), and the apocalyptic monstrosity called Left Behind by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, I've pretty much had my fill of protracted series in literature.  The exceptions are those series, many of them mysteries written by folks like Sue Grafton, Janet Evanovich, Ruth Rendell, and James Patterson, in which each book contains a complete story...making it possible to read them out of order.  The way I see it now, if you can't get your point and the story across in four volumes max (well, maybe five if the books are short), then you just might want to consider breaking it all up and instead write completely separate stories.  And this ridiculous situation with George R.R. Martin's series A Song of Ice and Fire ("Game of Thrones") and his refusal to get on with his writing, coupled with his lack of vision as to how to eventually end it all, is beyond the pale.  So when I came across the Hyperion Cantos science fiction series by Dan Simmons, I was gratified to have in front of me a complete set contained in four volumes.  And I just finished reading the final one, titled The Rise of Endymion...

It is a thousand years into the future and the human race has long settled among the vastness of our galaxy, with the fate of our own mother planet Earth a great mystery.  The strange pilgrimage of the Seven to the remote planet of Hyperion back in the first book is still of paramount importance three hundred years later as Raul Endymion, who grew up there, finds himself on a seemingly impossible quest to escort a hunted young woman through the known populated universe as she changes the course of history...while at the same time fighting an AI (artificial intelligence) presence that has manipulated and threatened humanity for those thousand years. Now if you're thinking that this is all some kind of ripoff of The Matrix, keep in mind that Neo's movie debut happened in 1997, the same year that the Hyperion Cantos series ended...if anything, The Matrix was guilty of ripping off Dan Simmons...

There's no way I can further describe the characters and situation of The Rise of Endymion...at least in specifics...without giving away the series, which I strongly recommend as a great science fiction work.  I will say this much: the Hyperion Cantos series...and especially this final volume...delves pretty deeply into religion and philosophy.  This is not literature that you will want to rush through, although at times the author's detailed descriptions of the nearly impossible-to-fathom technology he has envisioned can be a bit difficult to endure.  But especially as you approach the end of the last book, I think you'll appreciate the extra time and attention you spent trying to understand it all...

So yes, I liked Dan Simmons' Hyperion Cantos a lot and consider it now to be one of my favorite sci-fi book series...but not my all-time favorite, which still happens to be the relatively unknown Otherland series (also four volumes) by Tad Williams.  And of course no list of favorite science fiction series would be complete without Isaac Asimov's Foundation and Arthur C. Clarke's Space Odyssey...