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 novel “Starmind” by Spider and Jeanne Robinson was published for the first time in 1994 in the magazine “Analog Science Fiction” and in 1995 as a book. It’s the sequel to “Starseed” and the third novel in the Stardance trilogy.

Rand Porter is a composer who is offered his dream job in the artistic direction of the Shimizu Hotel, the luxurious hotel in the Earth’s orbit. The problem is that his wife, the writer Rhea Paixao, is very attached to her hometown so to say the least has some hesitation to leave it to move so far as to the Earth’s orbit.

Eventually, the couple agrees to try to live a period at the Shimizu Hotel so they move with their daughter. Soon the situation becomes much more complex than expected with assassination attempts that initially appear to target some billionaires. Soon the target appear to be those who want to participate in the Stardance and join with a symbiotic life form or who have already achieved the symbiosis.