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/lit/ - Literature

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12528369 No.12528369 [Reply] [Original]

Does this have some literary merit or is it just another piece of subpar genre fiction?

>> No.12528395
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12528395

Its moot to ask this on /lit/ since autists here chimp out at the sight on anything that isn't western canon. Anyways, Hyperion is great and one of my favourite books, the sequels are great too. Good day m8.

>> No.12528398

>>12528395

Why, though?

Elaborate.

>> No.12528402

>>12528395
Any particular thing that stands out? The premise sounds pretty cool (Canterbury Tales in space), but I don't know.

>> No.12528509

>>12528402
It has some of the failings common to most genre fiction; passages of purple or clunky prose and B movie dialogue, but it also feels much more humanistic and emotionally led than other Scifi epics. Some of the imagery is incredibly imaginative too, and the whole book has a strange, uncanny atmosphere that feels earned rather than forced.

>> No.12528529

>>12528369
dude is into that poet. of course it's lit.

>> No.12528530

>>12528509
you bastards are impossible to please. if it apes lit styles you say it's unreadable, and if it's readable you piss on it saying genre fiction is crap.

this is why "literary" fiction is a fucking microcosm.

>> No.12528556

>>12528509

Humanistic is not a word & that is not what Humanism means.

>> No.12528558

>>12528530

Grow up.

>> No.12528559

Consul had the most /lit/ story, prove me wrong.
>inb4 faggots with their Priest diary

>> No.12528650

>Open thread
>See anime girl pictures
>Close thread

>> No.12528654

>>12528650
There seems to be a discrepancy in your testimony. First of all, there's only one anime girl picture posted so far, secondly, how did you manage to produce your post after leaving the thread?

>> No.12528795

>>12528559
He was my favourite character but his story wasn't that good overall.

>> No.12528820

>>12528559
Nobody had as hard a life as Sol.

>> No.12528823

>>12528395
>anime picture
>"autists here chimp out"
t. adolescent
Get off my board

>> No.12528835

>>12528654
based high iq poster putting the plebs in their place

>> No.12528894

I just finished reading Hyperion like last week.
I really liked the first book a lot with the focus on the pilgrimage and the pilgrim's stories and all the weird stuff. I thought the second book was ok but very, very different from the first one. Generally enjoyed it less.

I'm like 50 pages into Endymion, I think it's ok but the main character feels like kind of an asshole. Think I'll enjoy it?

>> No.12529021

>>12528559
I was thinking about Rachel and her father...

>> No.12529472

>>12529021
Sol definitely had the best story.

>> No.12529475

>>12528369
It's great. Simmons is by far best in scifi in drawing fantastic vistas with words. It's not that incredible as a story, but one of those scifis where journey is most important.

>> No.12529501

>>12529472
>>12529021
Too sappy for my taste. Consuls tale is more sublime and carries a theme of intergenerational sorrow and bitterness. Sols is just very manipulative by comparison, and does little besides
>look it's a girl who suffers
>she forgets herself every day isnt it tragic
>her father is a sad old man
>please cry
Note how both tales involve the element of time travel, only in Consuls case it's an elegent, classic sci-fi idea of twin paradox, while Sol's daughter suffers from an entirely fictional Merlin's sickness. This is why Hyperion is often not taken seriously as science fiction.

>> No.12529504

>>12528894
You will enjoy Endymion.

>> No.12529510

>>12528530
I gave it a positive review, I don't see what's wrong? Also, most genre fiction is ideas over prose, sorry if that offends you. Doesn't mean they aren't worth reading.

>> No.12529517

>>12529501
As much as I enjoyed the book, Sol's story felt like a Lifetime movie version of 50 First Dates.

The Consul's story is Scifi kino. Also before some poseur disregards my use of the term kino, I'm not using it as unadulterated praise.

>> No.12529532

>>12529501
Yeah I can understand that, but I have two young daughters so Sol's story touched me in a way that you probably can't understand. Same goes for Interstellar.

>> No.12529542
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12529542

My favourite part
>The left side of my brain had been shut down like a damaged section of a spinship being sealed off, airtight doors leaving the doomed compartments open to vacuum. I could still think. Control of the right side of my body soon returned. Only the language centers had been damaged beyond simple repair. The marvelous organic computer wedged in my skull had dumped its language content like a flawed program. The right hemisphere was not without some language - but only the most emotionally charged units of communication could lodge in that affective hemisphere; my vocabulary was now down to nine words. (This, I learned later, was exceptional, many victims of CVAs retain only two or three.) For the record, here is my entire vocabulary of manageable words: fuck, shit, piss, cunt, goddamn, motherfucker, asshole, peepee, and poopoo.
>A quick analysis will show some redundancy here. I had at my disposal eight nouns, which stood for six things; five of the eight nouns could double as verbs. I retained one indisputable noun and a single adjective which also could be used as a verb or expletive. My new language universe was comprised of four monosyllables, three compound words, and two baby-talk repetitions.
>My arena of literal expression offered four avenues to the topic of elimination, two references to human anatomy, one request for divine imprecation, one standard description of or request for coitus, and a coital variation which was no longer an option for me since my mother was deceased.
>All in all, it was enough.
>I will not say that I remember my three years in the mud pits and slime slums of Heaven's Gate with fondness, but it is true that these years were at least as formative as - and probably more so than - my previous two decades on Old Earth.
>I soon found that among my intimate acquaintances - Old Sludge, the scoop-shovel foreman; Unk, the slum-yard bully to whom I paid my protection bribes; Kiti, the lice-ridden crib doxy whom I slept with when I could afford it - my vocabulary served me well. 'Shit-fuck,' I would grunt, gesticulating. >'Asshole cunt peepee fuck."
>'Ah,' grinned Old Sludge, showing his one tooth, 'going to the company store to get some algae chewies, huh?"
>'Goddamn poopoo,' I would grin back at him.

People often fault Simmons for fellating old literature too much, Keats in particular, forgetting that he made a braindamaged satyr the most significant writer of the far future.

>> No.12529554

>>12528369
I liked it up until all the mysteries got explained at the end of the second book. It just seemed unsatisfying and I didn't continue on to the third.

>> No.12529568

>>12529517
>Also before some poseur disregards my use of the term kino
Why are people in this thread so fucking defensive?

>> No.12529601

the poet was great, suck a colorful guy

>> No.12529624

Jew > Consul > Soldier > Priest > Poet >>> Detective.
That is all.

>> No.12529628

>>12528369
The first two are good, the last two are trash.

>> No.12529673

>>12528395
...masaka!?

>> No.12529730

>>12529624
I have no choice but to agree with this excellent opinion.