Dan Simmons, Hyperion (1989)

'We're not six fucking pilgrims, we're a mob. Hoyt there with his cruciform carrying the ghost of Paul Duré. Our "semisentient" erg in the box there. Colonel Kassad with his memory of Moneta. M. Brawne there, if we are to believe, carrying not only an unborn child but a dead Romantic poet. Our scholar with the child his daughter used to be. Me with my muse. The Consul with whatever fucking baggage he's brought to this insane trek.' (p. 405)

Winner of the 1990 Hugo, Dan Simmons' Hyperion shamelessly cribs the structure of The Canterbury Tales. The pilgrims draw lots to tell their tales in order to diffuse the tension (rather than break the tedium, as in the original) of their seemingly doomed journey to appease the destructive, chrome and blade-encrusted diety the Shrike, and in so doing influence the outcome of the incipient war between the Hegemony and the renegade Ousters.

The cumulative thematic significance of 'The Priest's Tale: the man who cried god' (p. 23), 'The Soldier's Tale: the war lovers' (p. 114), 'The Poet's Tale: Hyperion cantos' (p. 172), The Scholar's Tale: the River Lethe's taste is bitter' (p. 237), 'The Detective's Tale: the long good-bye' (p. 315) and 'The Consul's Tale: remembering Siri' (p. 410) imbues the work with a wonderful poise and balance. It is a tremendously satisfying read, and as the protagonists dance hand in hand down the yellow brick road towards their doom (I am being entirely literal rather than figurative here), the reader will be grabbing their coat to scamper off to the bookshop to buy the sequel, The Fall of Hyperion

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Dan Simmons, Song Of Kali (1985) FMW 44

The Indian poet M. Das has been dead for seven years when news of a new epic poem in honour of Kali, the Hindu goddess of destruction, seemingly written by him, reaches Robert Luczak in New Hampshire.

Dan Simmons first novel, Song Of Kali won the 1986 World Fantasy Award. The kindest thing that can probably be said in this regard is that it was not up against very stiff opposition. Song Of Kali does not work on a number of levels. Simmons' invocation of the miasmic life of Calcutta may be accused of demonstrating a residual racism, but on another level his rendering of Indian street life is pungent and striking. The enduring existence and shadowy presence in the novel of an evil goddess reincarnated by her peers to assist them in former struggles is not unduly troubling in light of the genre expectations one brings to the novel, and the coincidental reanimation of the poet M. Das by her followers and Luczak's encounters with him are its highlights.

The problem resides in the way in which the protagonist's east coast American lifestyle orbits around rather than interpolates itself within the plot. He is an unconvincing as an expert on the literature of the Subcontinent, and the reader is left with little clue as to how he met his Indian wife Amrita, making her appear simply as a means of reinforcing the character's credentials in the eyes of the reader. Luczak is an unwieldy hybrid character, part urbane academic, part 'hard boiled' pulp fiction hero, and seems to be acting both parts. In addition, the fact that you know that something unpleasant is going to happen to the Luczaks' gurgling, bouncing baby Victoria from the instant she is described casts a pall over the entire experience of reading the book.

An unsatisfyingly indeterminate read, and a weak entry in the Fantasy Masterworks series.

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