Hyperion Themes

Hyperion Themes

Religion

As a great Alaskan philosopher once said, "Who will save your soul?" The seven pilgrims of Hyperion are all trying to answer this question in their own way. Martin Silenus prays to as many differen...

Time

Wouldn't you love to stop time? Put off going to school or work for just a few more hours, or use it to get some more sleep? It's never going to happen. Even 700 years into the future, Hyperion tel...

Mortality

Some people believe that space is the final frontier. In Hyperion, space isn't so much issue. People can cross millions of miles of galaxy in a nanosecond with the aid of farcaster portals. Spacesh...

Sex

If great literature has taught us anything (and by great literature, we mean Fifty Shades of Grey), sex sells. Why? Because it's a part of everyday life. You can't go for very long without seeing,...

War

You'd think that with thousands and thousands of years of experience and history, humans would have figured out a way to settle their differences that didn't involve guns and giant honking bombs. N...

Literature and Writing

Books. You know what they are. They look like ice cream sandwiches (mmm... ice cream) with stories inside them (mmm... stories). Even if you're reading Hyperion on an e-reader, you've seen a book....

Identity

Your identity is not only how you see yourself, but also how other people see you. Finding your identity is complicated enough for a human, but if you're a human/robot/artificial intelligence hybri...

Old Age

When Joan Rivers gets to be 300 or so (and you know she will), she's going to love these Poulsen treatments depicted in Hyperion. Whatever these things are (Simmons isn't exactly clear what they en...

Betrayal

Many stories start with a betrayal. Even Genesis featured Adam and Eve betraying God's trust by dining on the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The story of Hyperion doesn't start...

Life, Consciousness, and Existence

700 years from now, humanity has expanded to over 200 worlds. It's unclear how many people there are, but the planet Hyperion, which is half the size of Earth, holds 5 billion. Multiply that by 200...