"Hyperion" by Dan Simmons, 10/10 [H]

 Another 10? Am I just hot-cold on things or was it really that good? It was totally that good, and you don't have to just take it from me, because the Hugo and Nebula voters agreed, which is something they don't often do. Others accorded this level of recognition include the previously reviewed "Ender's Game," "The Forever War,"and "Neuromancer."

If you have had the misfortune to read this entire blog (my deepest sympathies) you've seen me refer to this book already a couple of times. Like "Lord of Light," I was impressed enough by it to get several friends to read it. The same people actually...

Anyways, this book is a series of numerous ingenious premises, held together by a narrative structure deliberately and brilliantly patterned after Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales." So you are presented with the reason why the group of pilgrims are traveling together, given some background info, and then they tell their stories. Each story (I won't tell you how many, because it'd be a bit of a spoiler) carries a number of original sci-fi concepts in it, almost all of which were just tip-top.

One of the best things about the format from the point of view of having read it is that discussions of the book's quality can break down around the characters and their stories, which are very different. My two favorites were "The Scholar's Tale" and "The Detective's Tale," the latter of which contained a cool homage to William Gibson, and was like, totally freaking epic. In fact I think we can go ahead and apply that last bit to the whole book. It was stellar, and just kept getting better.

A bit of warning: know going in that there is a second book, and a third, and a fourth. That is an important thing to keep in mind when one gets to the ending, which I'll say no more about. But just as a foretaste, the second book is going to get rated in the 8-9 range. I just got the third book for Xmas, so whoopee! I get to keep going.

"Hyperion" is an absolute must for a science fiction fan, and I'd say by far the best book I've read yet for the aspiring futurist. It's scope and ambition have few peers in genre fiction that I am aware of, and it is one of my favorites.