The novel “The Fall of Hyperion” by Dan Simmons was published for the first time in 1990. It’s the second book of the Hyperion Cantos and is the sequel to “Hyperion“. It won the Locus Award and the BSFA.

A group of pilgrims has reached the planet Hyperion, where the opening of the Time Tombs is causing one of the elements of a crisis that threatens to destroy the Hegemony. The pilgrims will face the Shrike, the mysterious creature who lives close to the Time Tombs, with the perspective that only one of them will survive.

The entire Hegemony is in danger because of the attack by Ouster on the the planet Hyperion, a strategic place where the future of humanity is decide. The artificial intelligence of the TechnoCore are allied to the Hegemony yet their behavior is ambiguous. A new John Keats cybrid is a link between the pilgrims and the leaders of the Hegemony and what he starts discovering, also about the TechnoCore, is disturbing.

“The Fall of Hyperion” begins where “Hyperion” ended because in fact this is the second part of a single big novel and therefore they should be read together. However, this second part is different from the first in its narrative structure. The first book is in some ways a huge prologue that through the stories of pilgrims traveling to the planet Hyperion allow us to get to know that fictional universe. The second book has a more conventional structure in which the story Dan Simmons had laid the foundations of in “Hyperion” is developed.

The abrupt end of the first book left the story in a moment of crisis. The pilgrims reached the planet Hyperion but their story is part of a much bigger picture that will determine the future of humanity. The Ousters, the descendants of colonists who developed their civilization separate from the Hegemony, are in fact coming to attack the planet.

The war between the Hegemony and the Ousters determines a considerable importance in “The Fall of Hyperion” of the political and military leaders of the Hegemony with the Chief Executive Officer of the Senate of the Hegemony of Man Meina Gladstone becomeing one of the protagonists of the novel.

Another protagonist is a new John Keats cybrid, who uses the name Joseph Severn, after a British artist friend of the real Keats. Part of “The Fall of Hyperion” is narrated in the first person from his point of view but Severn also tells the stories of the pilgrims in the third person seeing them through his dreams.

The story is developed mainly between Tau Ceti Center, the planet hosting the government of the Hegemony, and Hyperion with increasing complexity because the strategy in the war against the Ousters shows increasingly ambiguities by the TechnoCore. The artificial intelligences provide information and advice but their position becomes less and less clear.

In the course of the novel, the various factions within the TechnoCore emerges and that’s used by Dan Simmons to develop some of the most important themes of the Cantos. The Hegemony relies significantly on the TechnoCore to work and the topic of the relationship between humans and artificial intelligences has become explicit compared to the first book. Since the beginning of the Cantos the religious theme has been widely developed and that continues in the second book also in the involvement of TechnoCore.

All those elements lead to the development of a story on several fronts in which secrets of the various factions at work are slowly revealed. If I have to find a flaw in “The Fall of Hyperion” it’s the fact that rarely it reaches the intensity of the characters’ stories in “Hyperion”. In the second book the characters’ stories are part of a much bigger picture but that means that sometimes it becomes impersonal.

Some characters remain at the center of key developments for the future of humanity but the intertwinement between the various stories become more complex and less linear compared to the first book. Sometimes the pace slows down with conversations and the searches for some truth behind the deceptions that arise during the course of the novel. However, there are still many twists and at the end of the novel the dramatic level is very high.

As in the first book, in “The Fall of Hyperion” the characters are crucial. The pilgrims were developed in “Hyperion” through their personal stories, in the second book Dan Simmons focuses heavily on the development of other characters such as the new cybrid and Meina Gladstone.

“The Fall of Hyperion” gives an end to the novel began with “Hyperion”, with which it forms a science fiction masterpiece. I think they are two books that are absolutely a must-have for fans but their value goes far beyond this genre because this is great literature regardless of its label.