Hyperion (Hyperion Cantos, Book 1)

Martin Silenus had been writing notes on a pad but now he stood and paced the length of the room. “Jesus Christ, people. Look at us. 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

Tyrena Wingreen-Feif was my first editor at Transline. It was her idea to title the book The Dying Earth (a records search showed a novel by that name five hundred years earlier, but the copyright had lapsed and the book was out of print).

On Old Earth, it had long been accepted that if a species put mankind on its food-chain menu the species would be extinct before long. As the Web expanded, if a species attempted serious competition with humanity’s intellect, that species would be extinct before the first farcaster opened in-system.

The one I have tagged as Theta looks the same and acts the same, but now carries two cruciforms embedded in his flesh. I have no doubt that this is one Bikura who will tend toward corpulence in coming years, swelling and ripening like some obscene E. coli cell in a petri dish. When he/she/it dies, two will leave the tomb and the Three Score and Ten

“Before you go, can you think of anything else that could help us understand this thing?” I paused in the doorway, feeling my heart batting at my ribs to get out. “Yeah,” I said, my voice only marginally steady. “I can tell you who and what the Shrike really is.” “Oh?” “It’s my muse,” I said, and turned, and went back to my room to write.

The Ouster in front of him would close his eyes in a blink if Kassad had the patience to watch long enough. Meanwhile, Kassad and Moneta and the Shrike could kill all of them without the Ousters realizing that they were under attack. It was not fair, Kassad realized. It was wrong. It was the ultimate violation of the New Bushido, worse in its way t

Chronos Keep jutted from the easternmost rim of the great Bridle Range: a grim, baroque heap of sweating stones with three hundred rooms and halls, a maze of lightless corridors leading to deep halls, towers, turrets, balconies overlooking the northern moors, airshafts rising half a kilometer to light and rumored to drop to the world’s labyrinth it

“I understood then. Understood it all. Somehow … even before reading the journals. Understood he’d been hanging there … oh, dear God … seven years. Living. Dying. The cruciform … forcing him to live again. Electricity … surging through him every second of those … those seven years. Flames. Hunger. Pain. Death. But somehow the goddamned … cruciform 

A CAVALRY CHARGE was something beyond Kassad’s experience. Watching twelve hundred armored horses charging directly at him created internal sensations which Kassad found a bit unnerving. The charge took less than forty seconds but Kassad discovered that this was ample time for his mouth to go absolutely dry, his breathing to begin to have problems,