Rise of Endymion by Dan Simmons

The Rise of Endymion by Dan Simmons
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

At the end of this epic adventure, I finally bid adieu to the following characters that have been my co-travellers these past two months

So long, farewell, Raul Endymion, Martin Silenus, A. Bettik, Colonel Kassadh, Brawne Lamia.
Ciao, Aenea.
Auf weidersehen, Counsel, never got to know your name.
Ta Ta, LLeeoonn, OOeeaall, AAllooee, NNeello, Cardinal Lourdusamy.
Namaste, Getswang Ngwang Lobsang Tengin Gyapo Sisunwangyur Tshungpa Mapai Dhepal Sangpo,Sgt Gregorious, Admiral Wu, Father Captain de Soya, Het Masteen, Ket Rosteen, Systenj Coredwell.
Rachel, see you later, alligator.
Hasta Manana, Navson Hamnim, Am Chipeta, Kent Quinkent, Sian Quintana Ka’an, Paul Uray, Morgan Bottoms, Driven Nicaagat, Palou Koror, Kenzo Isozaki, Councillor Albedo, Meina Gladstone, Father Glaucus, the Chitchatuks ….
A bientot, Siri.
Bye, Dorje Phamo, Son Weintraub, Theo, Lhomo, Cardinal Mustafa, Haruyuki, Kenshiro, Voytek Majer, Thunderbolt Sow, Kim Byung-Soon, Viki Groselj, Changchi Kenchung, Carl Linga William Eiheji, Commander Rhadamnth, Scylla, Briareus, Dem Loa, Dem Ria.
Tschüß, Shrike, Hawking Mat, Consul’s Ship.
Adios, John Keats/John Keats

… It was a memorable and rollicking voyage!!

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Endymion by Dan Simmons

 

Endymion by Dan Simmons
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The grand epic continues to thrill with its gripping trans-world adventure/quest and the consequent chase across the Universe. The escapades of Bettik, Raul and Aenea through the mysterious Farcaster network reminded me of Ozzy’s voyage of discovery across the equally mystical Silfen Paths in the The Commonwealth Saga by Peter F Hamilton. Some memorable bits

I was not surprised to wake up alive. I suppose one is surprised only when one awakens dead.
Love is a basic force of the universe, like gravity and electromagnetism, like strong and weak nuclear force… The old poet described love as “the subquantum impossibility that carried information/from photon to photon…”

The rollicking climatic battle is just the ideal icing on the cake. Jumping into the concluding part right away...

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Nilgai

 

Heron

The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons

The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A true genre-defining SF epic – a rollicking read.
Allegorical on many levels – the battle of Titans vs Olympians with Dis adding spice to the picture, the Human Hegemony vs Mutant Ousters with Shrike and the AI Technocore playing the role of Dis to muddy the waters, or Good vs Bad, or simply a Miltonesque pilgrim’s progressing quest. In the religious context there is talk of Holy trinity of Christianity – corresponding to that of Hinduism – Brahma, Vishnu, Mahadev.
I love this kind of pseudo-scientific gobbledegook

When I glanced back up, a holoed globe of Hyperion ceased spinning and unwound itself into a series of flattened projections: oblique equirectangular, Bonne, orthographic, rosette, Van der Grinten, Gores, interrupted Good homolosine, gnomic, sinusidol, azimuthal equidistant, polyconic, hypercorrected Kuwatsi, computer eschered, Briesemeister, Buckminster, Miller cylindrical, multicoligraphed, and satplot standard, before resolving into a standard Robinson-Baird map of Hyperion.

This is an extract from the song of Ummon from the Stable faction of the AI triumvirate

Your UI
seems to make its home
on the plane where Heisenberg and Schrodinger
first trespassed\
Your accidental intelligence
appears not to be the gluon
but the glue\
not a watchmaker
but a sort of Feynman gardener
tidying up a no-boundary universe
with his crude sum-over-histories rake\
idly keeping track of every sparrow fall
and electron spin
while allowing each particle
to follow every possible
track
in space-time
and each particle of humankind
to explore every possible
crack
of cosmic irony
[Kwatz!]
[Kwatz!]
[Kwatz!]

The last bit means Ha! Ha! Ha! In AI language.

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