Hyperion - Part 3

Book Retorts

It’s Hyperion week again as Sam brings us back to the 1989 Dan Simmons novel! We’re back on the river as the pilgrims continue their journey and Martin Silenus, the poet, takes his turn to tell his story. Martin claims to have been born on Old Earth after the Big Mistake but before the planet was entirely destroyed some five-hundreds years ago. He lead an idle and wealthy life, but always knew he wanted to be a poet. Danielle doesn’t care about that, she’s just excited they brought dinosaurs back just for fun. As Earth succumbed to the Big Mistake, Martin’s mother sent him off on a multi-century space journey in cryogenic stasis, hoping the money she set aside in a savings account would accrue enough interest during his travel to set him up comfortably when he arrived. It didn’t, and Martin, after suffering a stroke and losing his language abilities, was left working in the mud pits of Heaven’s Gate in indentured servitude. This turned out to be the perfect environment to inspire Martin’s poetry, as he wrote his cantos on toilet paper and regained his language skills. By pure happenstance, his work was noticed and published to great success making him instantly, and stupidly, wealthy. Martin buys a truly amazing house with rooms on thirty-six planets connected by farcaster portals that cost a truly ridiculous amount of money to maintain. After gadding about with friends doing drugs, he writes another book of poetry that’s a massive flop and leaves him deep in debt. He starts churning out hack sequels that, while popular enough, leave him unfulfilled and still in debt. Martin decides to liquidate his assets and accept the artistic patronage Sad King Billy of the Kingdom of Windsor in Exile. Sad King Billy decides to relocate his kingdom to, where else, Hyperion, and create the City of Poets. There, Martin is unable to find a muse, and so has surgery to transform himself into a satyr and devotes himself to partying. Right at the point where he’s about to kill himself nine-years later, people in the city start being brutally murdered and Martin finds himself with a new muse: the Shrike. How could this possibly go wrong?

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Theme: Earning Happiness by John Bartmann.

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