25 Years of Spectra: HYPERION (1990) by Dan Simmons

Twenty years ago, we got introduced to one of the coolest characters of all-time: The Shrike in the now-classic novel Hyperion by Dan Simmons. And while I could go on-and-on about this book, my colleague, Del Rey editor Kaitlin Heller, does a much better job of talking about what she loves about this book. The art director for this cover, Jamie Warren, also chimes in.

A few nights ago, while out at dinner, my date and I were discussing great science fiction novels we’d read. As often happens between exceptionally geeky people who want to impress one another, it quickly became a bidding war to see who could name the more illustrious book. His opening salvo had been Ender’s Game; feeling proud of myself, I asked if he’d ever read Hyperion, one of my Favorite Books Evar.
“I dunno,” he said, giving me the eyebrow. “It kinda went over my head.”
I was surprised. “But it’s so rich!” I said.
“Well, exactly,” he replied. “I mean, I never read the Canterbury Tales, and that’s what it’s based on, isn’t it?”
“You don’t need to have read the Canterbury Tales to love this book,” I insisted. “Dan Simmons makes a totally new world out of the framing device Chaucer used. It’s clever. And anyway,” I added, “it’s not like the Wife of Bath was running around the Time Tombs with a trenchcoat and pistol, falling in love with robots.”
My date just stared at me.
“I guess I never got that far,” he said.
“You will next time,” I said.

But then, I shouldn’t throw stones. I didn’t read Hyperion when it was first given to me, either. A very dear friend from college made me a gift of it back when I was an undergrad, pressing it in my hands urgently and telling me I, of all people, needed to read this book. I paid little attention. Onto the shelves it went, underneath stacks of Neal Stephenson and Neil Gaiman and probably also some people who weren’t named Neal, and months went by, and then years, and I lost that copy.
And then, one day, wedged between rows of forgettable thrillers, I found a copy on my shelf–the same copy? A different copy? I may never know–and I thought I’d just read a few pages. This is how it begins:

This is the prelude to a finely tuned literary symphony, in which Simmons never loses the intricate rhythms of prose and story, even to the very last page. My God, I thought, as I raised my head hours later, the sky gone dark. This is what I was missing? What else is out there?

And so began the excavations into my own Time Tombs–whole boxes of books I’d simply never gotten around to, but which, unearthed, held wonders. I discovered Nancy Kress’s Beggars in Spain, about which I did not shut up for a week; I finally opened Larry Niven’s Ringworld, after years of reading only his short fiction. (As a result of this, the Del Rey editor-in-chief and I have developed a peculiar hand signal, involving holding your arms straight up either side of your head and wobbling your hands around; this is hilarious to those in the know, and otherwise a bit daft-looking.) I uncovered vast arrays of brilliantly written books, most, like the Simmons book, written long before I had begun to read novels.
None of which I would ever have found, I think, had Hyperion not reminded me of my first, youthful incursions into the genre of science fiction, those days spent curled up with the furious imaginings of a burning brain. Like that other Hyperion, which inspired this one, it led me to repossess a heaven I lost erewhile; and there, as the poet says, were beautiful things made new.

–Kaitlin Heller

Hyperion was written by Dan Simmons and was placed in the Foundation line of books, which was a limited print run hardcover put out by Doubleday and Bantam. I hired an illustrator with a loose painterly style for this cover, which needed the main creature on the cover but without any real detail…just enough of a glimpse without totally giving it away. I didn’t want a horror cover, and I needed a literary feel to the art. Gary Ruddell did a fantastic piece of art that addressed all my concerns. The novel received the Hugo and Locus Awards in 1990, and quickly became a collector’s item because of the limited press run. I recently heard that a movie is being made based on this novel.

–Jamie S. Warren