Hyperion

Lore! So, so much lore! That's what I enjoyed most about Hyperion: the 700 years of lore that Simmons thought up. It's extremely entertaining, creative, and thought-provoking. The dangers of entertainment-focused content industry, with the most talented writers writing trashy romances rather than exploring what it means to be human; the horrible injustice of Rachel's time curse, aging backwards while forgetting everything from the day before; human reliance on the Delphic and seemingly infallible AI TechnoCore, bestowing unto humanity incomprehensible technologies that society relies on, such as wormholes. Simmons creates the richest sci-fi universe in any book that I've read so far.

That being said, I raised an eyebrow many times while reading the book. I have three main complaints: the long passages of hard-to-imagine scenery, how crude the story was, and the historical eyerolls. “The Third Sino-Japanese War?” “The Second Holocaust?” Really? I don't know if Simmons was trying to make a reasonable prediction of the future or if he was just trying to be edgy. In any case, a fascinating vision of the future that warrants a read!