This trope is played much straighter in The Fall of Hyperion. This stalemate of 'spare,' 'kill,' and 'don't kill right now,' is what leads to the Core's nominally symbiotic relationship with the Hegemony. Of the three, one wants to continue peaceful coexistence with humanity, one wants to wipe humanity out, and the third wants to keep humanity around-at least until it finishes its goal of creating the Ultimate Intelligence, of which humanity could be a useful component, and then they can let the Ultimate Intelligence decide what to do with humanity. This looks like a subversion until we learn the inner politics of the core, with the AIs falling into three political factions.

Is a Crapshoot: The TechnoCore is composed of artifical intelligences who seceded from human control several centuries ago and peacefully coexist with humanity.

Agri World: Renaissance Minor is an agricultural world that provides food to the City Planet Renaissance Vector.

The first book is modeled after The Canterbury Tales, especially in how each of the pilgrims has an opportunity to tell an individual story. Overall, the series is inspired by the unfinished epic poem Hyperion by John Keats. During the journey, the pilgrims, each of whom has a personal link to Hyperion, begin to tell each other their stories, and realize that things are much more complicated than they thought. They hope their desperate appeal to the Shrike will persuade it to give them some of its alien technology that can save humanity.

With the help of its allies in the TechnoCore (a group of A.I.s), mankind lives in peace.until the mysterious 'Ousters', a splinter race of humanity adapted to living in deep space, attack.Īs the war becomes desperate, a group of seven pilgrims are sent to the planet Hyperion, a colony world guarded by the inscrutable killing machine known as the Shrike.

There is also a short story called 'Orphans of the Helix', serving as kind of a Distant Finale.Įight hundred years into the future, humanity has fled the Earth's accidental destruction at the hands of an artificial black hole and has established the WorldWeb, a society of many planets connected through the Farcaster network. In order, they are: Hyperion, The Fall of Hyperion, Endymion, and The Rise of Endymion. Anyone want a hug?The Hyperion Cantos is a series of four science fiction novels written by Dan Simmons.

Muse of Fire by Dan Simmons