Hyperion

There's nothing more fun (for an English teacher) than reading the same book at the same time as someone else, especially if it's obscure-- and so it was with some regret that I finished Hyperion, Dan Simmon's 1989 Hugo Award winning science-fiction novel, which in Canterbury Tales fashion (each character tells a story) recounts the pilgrimage of a soldier, a detective, a priest, a scholar, a poet, and a diplomat to the remote planet Hyperion, home of the Lord of Pain, otherwise known as the Shrike, a three meter tale robotic many bladed creature which lives outside of time and may have been created in the future by humans or AI computers, and comes back into the past where it has spawned religious cults, inter-galactic mythology and speculation, and, of course, fear . . . and I'm sure there was nothing worse than being trapped in the English office listening to me and Mike talk about the intricacies of the plot . . . it reminds me of the old days when Celine and I would discuss Battle Star Galactica until people started screaming bloody murder.