Teaser Tuesday 8/29/2017: “Hyperion”

This week I’m reading Hyperion, the Hugo award-winning novel by Dan Simmons, in which … uh … well I’m not really sure I can explain what’s going on, because it seems really complicated. Suffice to say there’s a planet named Hyperion that seems to be about to become ground zero in an interplanetary war between a couple of different human factions (one planetary, one space-based), and which is also haunted by a possibly shapeshifting, definitely fearsome creature, called the Shrike, which essentially teleports around impaling people and hanging them as ornaments from its gigantic backwards-in-time-traveling aluminum Christmas tree, and which is worshiped as a god throughout inhabited space, and which our small band of protagonists is currently traveling upriver, Heart of Darkness-style, to visit. Oh and also there’s a huge planetary labyrinth (one of at least nine such labyrinths on different planets) full of cruciform parasites whose significance I don’t yet know.

But other than that nothing is happening.

There was no sign of intact human habitation. The ferry at Betty’s Ford was totally gone, with not even a towrope or warming shack left to show where it had stood for almost two centuries.

Betty’s Ford. I see what you did there.

Meanwhile, editing continues on Father’s Books, where the overhaul of the final section continues!

She closed the book and slid it to the side. “Have you ever gotten murdered, Richard?”

This was probably a trick question. After a moment, he said: “No.”

Yeah, there’s pretty much only one correct way to answer that. Or two, if you count not answering at all …