This adult science fiction series is set in a far-future interstellar civilization on the eve of catastrophic war, and follows a group of pilgrims traveling to a mysterious and deadly shrine as each tells the story of why they have come. The series is structurally ambitious and thematically vast, drawing on literary allusion, artificial intelligence, religion, and the philosophy of time in a story that expands across four novels of increasing scope and complexity.
Seven pilgrims traveling to the mysterious Time Tombs on the planet Hyperion where the monstrous Shrike awaits each tell their story in the structure of a Canterbury Tales homage, revealing how each came to be on this final journey as the galaxy stands on the brink of catastrophe. The individual tales range from horror to tragedy to hard science fiction, forming an intricate and emotionally devastating mosaic. One of science fiction's great novels.
Continuing directly from Hyperion, the second Cantos novel resolves the pilgrims' fates as interstellar war erupts and the true nature of the TechnoCore the artificial intelligences secretly governing human civilization is revealed. Told partly through the dreams of a John Keats cybrid, the novel is simultaneously a war epic, a philosophical meditation, and an emotionally crushing conclusion to the tales begun in the first book. Astonishing in scope and ambition.