Hyperion - Part 2

Book Retorts

This week Sam takes us back on the pilgrimage with the continuation of the 1989 Dan Simmons book Hyperion. The pilgrims touch down on Hyperion but find that in the three years they have been traveling, chaos has overtaken the planet. The mysterious Shrike has been wandering around murdering at will, and the citizenry of the planet—and the WorldWeb—have turned against the Shrike church. Still, with the help of some presumably no-longer-enslaved androids from the Shrike church, the pilgrims resume their journey upriver on a barge pulled by giant mantas. On the river, Fedmahn Kassad shares the story of what led him to this pilgrimage. It starts with Kassad at the Olympus Command School Historical Tactical Network on Mars in a simulation of the battle of Agincourt. How this simulation of medieval warfare helps with space combat is unclear, but nevertheless, Kassad is there and eventually meets a girl in the woods and they immediately have sex. This happens numerous times over the course of many simulations with Kassad and this mysterious woman hooking-up during battles throughout history. He becomes obsessed with her even though she never once speaks to him and he never sees her outside the simulations, or at all after he graduates. There is a boat-load of explanation of the FORCE forces and the New Bushido code, as well as more of Kassad’s backstory, but the exciting stuff happens when the space dwelling people known as the Ousters attack the Hegemony. Kassad saves the day by employing brutal tactics that turn many of the citizenry in the Hegemony against him—much to Danielle’s frustration—so the Hegemony CEO packs him on an eighteen-month time debt trip back to the Web to let things cool off. However, on the way they run into another Ouster warship and Kassad is forced to crash land on, you guessed it, Hyperion, where the mysterious woman finds him. Who is this mysterious woman? How is she connected to Kassad? How did she infiltrate the simulations? How did she know to find him here? But instead of taking her up on her invitation to ask literally any of these questions, Kassad decides they should have sex again. Sam is enraged by his priorities. Meanwhile, Danielle learns some fun new vocabulary words, so she’s the real winner here.

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Theme: Earning Happiness by John Bartmann.

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