Hyperion

by Dan Simmons

On the eve of galactic war, seven pilgrims journey to the Time Tombs on the world of Hyperion, each hoping the Shrike — a godlike creature of pain — will grant their wish. Through a Canterbury Tales structure, each pilgrim tells their story: a soldier, a poet, a scholar, a detective, a consul, a priest, and a templar. Their stories are the story of humanity itself.

41 characters, locations, and items in this world codex.

Characters

• Colonel Fedmahn Kassad — The Soldier — a Palestinian warrior from Mars who fell in love with a woman made of time during combat simulations, and journeyed to Hyperion to find
• Sol Weintraub — The Scholar — a Jewish professor carrying his reverse-aging daughter to the Time Tombs, hoping the Shrike will cure her before she ages backward past
• Martin Silenus — The Poet — an obscene, brilliant, centuries-old writer whose masterwork summons the Shrike with each canto, and who has been impaled on the Tree of Pa
• Father Lenar Hoyt — The Priest — a Jesuit carrying two cruciforms and the burden of another priest's suffering, who would later be resurrected repeatedly as Pope to serve
• Brawne Lamia — The Detective — a private investigator from high-gravity Lusus who fell in love with a dead poet's AI ghost, got pregnant with a messiah, and punched
• Het Masteen — The Templar — the True Voice of the Tree who captained the treeship Yggdrasill and disappeared before telling his tale, carrying a secret about time a
• The Consul — The Diplomat — a man whose grandmother loved a spacefarer across time dilation, who governed Hyperion for eleven years, and who betrayed the Hegemony
• The Shrike — A three-meter killing machine made of chrome steel and temporal paradox — it travels through time, impales victims on a tree of thorns, and may be hum
• Aenea — The One Who Teaches — daughter of a cybrid poet and a detective, messiah of a new evolution, who gave humanity access to the Void through her blood an
• Raul Endymion — The narrator of the Cantos' second half — a hunting guide falsely convicted of murder, recruited by a dying poet to protect a twelve-year-old messiah
• Meina Gladstone — The CEO who destroyed the WorldWeb — the Hegemony's leader who ordered every farcaster obliterated when she discovered the TechnoCore was eating human
• Moneta — Rachel Weintraub grown backward through time — the woman who fought beside Kassad in temporal battle simulations and walked among the Time Tombs weari
• Johnny — The first Keats cybrid — an AI consciousness in a human body modeled on the poet John Keats, who hired Brawne Lamia to investigate his own murder and
• Rhadamanth Nemes — The TechnoCore's phase-shifting assassin — a cybernetic construct disguised as a young woman who hunts Aenea across the galaxy and can fight the Shrik
• Father Captain Federico de Soya — A Pax military priest who was ordered to capture Aenea and slowly realized he was serving the wrong side — the soldier whose conscience cost him every
• A. Bettik — An android companion who traveled with Raul and Aenea — quiet, loyal, and secretly an observer for the Lions and Tigers and Bears, the cosmic entities
• Sad King Billy — King William XXIII — a patron of the arts who founded the City of Poets near the Time Tombs, hoping beauty could survive proximity to a god of pain. T
• Ummon — A TechnoCore AI who speaks in koans and created the Keats cybrids — named after a Zen master, possibly destroyed in the Core civil war that preceded t
• Councilor Albedo — The TechnoCore's liaison to human governments — a cybrid who advised the Hegemony and the Pax while secretly advancing the Core's plan to consume huma
• Lions and Tigers and Bears — Cosmic empathic entities dwelling in the Void Which Binds — they orchestrated Aenea's creation, moved Old Earth across galaxies, and represent the uni
• Rachel Weintraub — Sol's daughter who aged backward — an archaeologist who touched the wrong tomb and spent years forgetting everything she'd learned, one day at a time,
• Father Paul Duré — The Jesuit who discovered the cruciforms among the Bikura — crucified himself to a Tesla tree for seven years to escape the parasite, then was resurre
• Siri — The Consul's grandmother — a Mauian woman who loved a spacefarer across time dilation, aged decades between his visits, and died in a revolution spark
• TechnoCore — A civilization of self-sentient AIs that gave humanity farcasters, immortality, and convenience — while secretly eating their brains for computational
• Church of the Final Atonement — A religion built around worshipping a monster — the Shrike Church venerates the Lord of Pain and correctly prophesied that Brawne Lamia's child would
• The Pax — A Catholic theocracy built on parasitic immortality — the government that rose after the Fall by offering resurrection through cruciforms, not knowing

Locations

• Hyperion — An Outback world of Flame Forests, Tesla trees, and a valley of Time Tombs moving backward through time — where pilgrims come to meet a god of blades
• The Time Tombs — Six structures moving backward through time — the Sphinx, the Jade Tomb, the Crystal Monolith, the Obelisk, the Shrike Palace, and the Cave Tombs — wh
• The WorldWeb — An interstellar civilization connected by instant farcaster travel — 200+ worlds linked so seamlessly you could walk from your kitchen on one planet t
• Old Earth — Humanity's birthplace — supposedly destroyed by the TechnoCore's black hole experiment, actually spirited across galaxies by the Lions and Tigers and
• Pacem — The capital of the Pax — a world where the Catholic Church rebuilt interstellar civilization on the promise of resurrection and the hidden foundation
• God's Grove — The Templar homeworld — a planet of ancient forests where treeships grow and the Shrike fought Rhadamanth Nemes among the roots of something older tha
• Tau Ceti Center — The capital of the Hegemony — the political center of human civilization where Gladstone ruled and Albedo whispered, until the farcasters fell and the
• The Tree of Pain — A vast chrome tree with three-meter thorns on which the Shrike impales its victims — alive, conscious, their suffering broadcast into the Void Which B
• Keats — The main city on Hyperion — named after the poet, home to the Shrike Church's towering temple, and the departure point for pilgrims heading to the Tim
• River Tethys — A river that flowed through farcaster portals across dozens of worlds — you could kayak through a portal on one planet and emerge on another, the ulti

Items

• The Cruciform — A cross-shaped parasite that resurrects the dead — soft coral texture, bioluminescent pink glow, roots that grow through the host's body, and a secret
• Farcasters — Instant travel portals given to humanity by the TechnoCore — step through a door and arrive anywhere in the galaxy, while the AIs use the transit to e
• The Void Which Binds — The substrate of reality itself — an invisible dimension connecting all consciousness across space and time, accessed through empathy rather than tech
• The Hyperion Cantos — Martin Silenus's epic poem that summons the Shrike with each completed canto — and Raul Endymion's narrative that completes it — the work of art that
• Erg — Templar energy creatures that make treeships spaceworthy — living containment fields that wrap kilometer-long trees in force that lets them sail betwe

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