Simmons satisfies with The Hollow Man

After experiencing (and loving) Dan Simmons’ take on space opera as displayed in his Hyperion Cantos, I was looking forward to delving into some more of his work, and it didn’t take me long to find some. The Hollow Man (1992) recently caught my attention at a used bookstore, and reading it has only added to my growing admiration for Simmons. This novel is very different from the Hyperion stuff, and takes place much closer to home. It’s a mysterious SF suspense thriller (think Dean Koontz here for a general idea of the style), and Simmons seems just as comfortable with this type of story as he is with the grand arena of space opera.

Jeremy Bremen has an exceedingly rare gift: telepathy. Only it’s more of a curse, as the incessant noise of thoughts from other people can be maddening. However, he has been extraordinarily lucky in finding another telepath and gaining some relief. For the last several years he and his wife Gail, using their abilities together, have been able to shield each other from the “neurobabble” of the surrounding world. When his wife dies, though, that protective mindshield is gone, and Bremen is once again subjected to the torment of his accursed ability. As his life is turned upside down and he struggles with his affliction and loss, Bremen begins a downward spiral into emptiness and despair. As the darkness within him deepens, he burns his house and starts a cross-country journey that will bring him into confrontation with other sources of darkness and violence, including a serial killer, a rapist, and other criminals. During his long, dark night of the soul, Bremen himself sometimes engages in questionable or illegal behavior. Yet through it all, there are moments of kindness and glimmers of hope, and the feeling that Bremen has some greater destiny to fulfill.

Besides the theme of telepathic anguish, the book also revolves very much around a shocking discovery involving a new understanding of the nature of reality. This is based on some of the more fanciful implications of quantum mechanics, and Simmons also draws on chaos theory, fractals, strange attractors, and the like, tying all these together to come up with a suitably bizarre and mind-blowing explanation for the novel’s strange events. To be honest, I’m not sure I even completely understood the model of reality being put forth, or if it made any rigorous kind of sense; but I was relieved to see some kind of scientific explanation being attempted, rather than leaving it to the realm of the supernatural.

Simmons reuses here some of the elements and stylistic flourishes also used in his Hyperion books. For example, he likes to make reference in his fiction to real science fiction writers. In this case, two of the characters discuss Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination, using the “jaunting” concept as an analogy for another process. Simmons’ interest in poetry is also evident here. As with Hyperion, the title of this book is taken from a real poem; in this case it’s Eliot’s “The Hollow Men,” of course. It’s an appropriate title, for the novel shares that poem’s sense of gloominess. The chapter titles are taken from the poem as well. Also used is the very sad “Elegy for Jane” by Theodore Roethke.

While the strange discovery about reality that lies at the center of this novel may come across as a bit flaky, the book still succeeds very well on the strength of the characters and their emotional turmoil, and on the deep sense of urgent mystery that propels the story along. It’s an engaging tale of loss and redemption, of both the pain and the wonder of life, and of people just trying to make some sense out of it all. On that level The Hollow Man comes across as anything but hollow. And the more I read Dan Simmons, the more I like him.

Whole lotta Hyperion

It no longer matters who consider themselves the masters of events. Events no longer obey their masters.

And so it is with the complex skein of events in this hefty pair of books by Dan Simmons. Taken together, Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion (published 1989 and 1990) represent 900+ pages of high-quality space opera able to simultaneously satisfy both fans of action/adventure and those who appreciate philosophical depth and the presentation of Big Ideas. All of those ingredients are present in

abundance as Simmons weaves a vast tale of humanity a millennium from now, living in a far-flung empire of hundreds of worlds, as it faces threats to its existence in the form of war, betrayal, deception, and manipulation by adversaries both known and unknown wielding awesome powers beyond understanding. I’m reviewing these two books together because they really form one long continuous story, often referred to collectively as the Hyperion Cantos.

After the Earth was lost through an experiment gone wrong, humanity spread to the stars, and the Hegemony of Man now includes about two hundred worlds (the Web) connected by wormhole-based “farcasters” which allow instantaneous travel (the rich even have mansions with rooms on different planets!). Farcaster technology is beyond humanity’s understanding and was given to them by the TechnoCore, a population of AI’s who broke free from their human masters centuries ago and now live in their own separate society, but ostensibly on good terms with mankind, whose government they assist through the AI Advisory Council. Travel by spacecraft is of secondary importance, as it is quite time-consuming and complicated by relativistic effects, and is used mainly to worlds that don’t yet have farcasters.

Enter Hyperion, a frontier world outside the Web with a strange claim to fame: it’s the home of the Time Tombs, a valley full of mysterious artifacts that appear to be moving backwards in time. And the Tombs are the home of a terrifying creature known as the Shrike, a seemingly invincible 9-foot-tall 4-armed metallic being covered in sharp spikes and able to control time itself. No one knows the purpose of the Shrike and Tombs (well, not until the end of the story), but a tradition has formed over time: if a group of pilgrims travels there, one individual will have a wish granted, while all the others will face horrifying suffering at the hands (and spikes) of the Shrike.

As Hyperion opens, the Hegemony is on the verge of war with the Ousters, a branch of humanity that went into self-imposed exile long ago, choosing to roam space in their vessels and asteroids rather than being bound to planets. The Ousters have evolved away from the human norm and are seen as almost alien now. And they have an intense interest in the Time Tombs and Hyperion, an invasion of which seems imminent. Against this backdrop, with chaos looming on the horizon, a final Shrike pilgrimage is arranged, with seven unique individuals carefully chosen for reasons unknown to them. But then, they have their own reasons, which we learn about during their journey as they each share their story with the others, in the style of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. This structure works well, and each story is fascinating in its own right — and much more so when you try to figure out the mystifying puzzle for which each character’s story provides some of the pieces. The characters themselves — soldier, detective, diplomat, priest, scholar, poet, and others — do what any good character should, drawing the reader in, making us try to figure out what makes them tick, and causing us to become emotionally invested in what happens to them. The novel closes with our pilgrims, having told their stories throughout the journey, just entering the valley of the Time Tombs.

The Fall of Hyperion picks up there, and takes a more straightforward narrative structure as all the individual stories blend together into one hugely complex story. As the pilgrims prepare to face the Shrike, Hyperion comes under attack, only one part of a wider war which threatens the entire Web itself, a war in which it is hard to tell who the enemy really is, and which brings long-held assumptions into question. The action is thick and fast, ranging over many planets (and the space battles between and around them), and the viewpoint switches frequently from character to character. Twists and revelations abound; it’s difficult to say more about the second book without giving too much away, so I’ll leave it at that.

The Hyperion Cantos is built from a rich array of themes and concepts, any one of which would have been a worthy subject for a novel in its own right. There is the theme of man vs. machine and what happens when we create artificial intelligence and it goes its separate way. There’s also the theme of stagnation vs. change. The Web has endured for many centuries virtually unchanged, indeed resisting change, while the Ousters have wholeheartedly embraced the inevitability of evolution and welcome it as the way forward. Related to the stagnation issue is the matter of over-reliance on technology that is not understood, and the possible disastrous consequences.

Another major idea used here is that of an evolved God (taking inspiration from Teilhard’s Omega Point) — in short, an Ultimate Intelligence as the endpoint of evolution far in the future, projecting its effects back in time. Would such a being be distinguishable from a “real” (i.e. supernatural) God? If not, what might that mean for religions based on such an Intelligence, mistaking its actual nature? Simmons draws fairly heavily on the concepts of Christianity, putting it in just this context. The Cantos involves religion in other ways as well. There is a constant thread of sin, atonement, and punishment running through the novels, as well as sacrifice. One of the pilgrims, Sol Weintraub, engages in an ongoing theological debate about obedience and sacrifice and whether or not God is owed them; this debate is largely centered on the story of God’s call to Abraham to sacrifice his son. Weintraub comes to believe that mankind has matured past the point of blind obedience, and, in his dream conversations with a being he takes to be God, he boldly lays out his position:

“Listen! There will be no more offerings, neither child nor parent. There will be no more sacrifices for anyone other than our fellow human. The time of obedience and atonement is past. That’s all! Now either leave us alone or join us as a father rather than a receiver of sacrifices. You have the choice of Abraham!”

One final thing worth mentioning is Simmons’ extensive use of poetry; and by that I don’t mean simply quoting poetry (though there is some of that), but also the use of poets as very important central characters. For starters, one of the pilgrims, Martin Silenus, is a poet whose lifelong masterpiece-in-progress is called, fittingly enough, “Hyperion Cantos.” This epic work haunts and obsesses Silenus, and is the reason he agreed to join the pilgrimage. But even more fascinating is the crucial role played by another poet, namely John Keats, brought back to life, in a way, as a “cybrid” — an AI mind with an amazingly accurate reconstruction of Keats’ memories, placed in a body genetically identical to the original Keats. This “reborn” Keats is one of the most important characters of the entire story. In fact, the very title “Hyperion” is from a Keats poem. William Butler Yeats also gets some recognition; more than once his poem “The Second Coming” is referenced. You know, all that about the center not holding….. anarchy loosed upon the world…. some beast slouching to Bethlehem to be born. I’ve always loved that poem, and its use here seems very appropriate.

This has definitely been one of my more satisfying reads lately. There is also another pair of books forming a sequel to this pair: Endymion and The Rise of Endymion. They are on my reading list for the coming year, no doubt about that. I will also be looking at other work by Simmons, since Hyperion Cantos easily establishes his credentials as a writer of the first rank.ef