Hyperion is as good as space opera gets, in a beautiful and lyrical story that teases at a much bigger issue. The planet Hyperion lies on the edge of the human Hegemony, an interstellar civilization bound together by teleportation gates and the guiding aegis of the independent AI TechnoCore. On Hyperion are the Time Tombs, mysterious temples guarded by an anti-entropic field, and a horrific killing machine called the Shrike. Seven pilgrims have been selected for one last pilgrimage, in the very teeth of an invasion by an opposing civilization of star-travelling barbarians, each of them seeking some blessing from the Shrike. As they travel from deep space to the Time Tombs, the pilgrims each tell their story of an encounter with the Shrike, and Simmons shifts to another genre, revealing more mysterious, and painting a picture of a deeply decadent civilization.

Father Lenar Hoyt is a Catholic priest who carries the heavy burden of the Cruciform, a cross-shaped parasite he picked in the immense labyrinths under Hyperion (as an aside, nine planets are labryinthine worlds, with massive tunnel complexes deep in the crust. No one knows who made the tunnels, or why). Fedmahn Kassad is a retired soldier, obsessed with a strange woman he met in his training simulations. Kassad once fought a battle on Hyperion, teaming up with the woman and the Shrike to defeat an Ouster landing force. The next time, he plans to kill them. Martin Silenus was born on Old Earth, before it was destroyed by an artificial Black Hole, and became a great poet. He lived in the artists' colony of Keats, writing an epic canto as the Shrike killed everyone else around him. Sol Weintraub's daughter was an archaeologist who has been afflicted by a strange disease from the Time Tombs and is aging backwards; in less than a week she'll be unborn. Jewish, he dreams of the God of Abraham demanding that he sacrifice his daughter at the Time Tombs. Het Masteen is a starship captain and Priest of Muir, and killed before he can tell his story. Brawne Lamia is the daughter of a senator and a private investigator. She's hired to investigate one Johnny Keats, a recreation of the poet (who wrote the original Hyperion cantos) made at immense cost by the AI technocore for their own mysterious purposes. And The Consul is the former governor of Hyperion, a grandchild of one of the greatest rebels in history, a participant in genocide, and now traitor to the Hegemony. Everybody carries and unburdens a terrible secret, building to a complete picture of an immanent Catastrophe, some unknown event which will pivot around these few people and the Time Tombs...

And that's where the book ends, with them singing a song from the Wizard of Oz and tramping towards their destiny. The sequel, Fall of Hyperion, has the proper conclusion, but Fall didn't win a Hugo, and I haven't read it recently. Hyperion is so good that it doesn't need a closure. Simmons' writing in this is perfect, a live wire that connects the biggest cosmological mysteries with the lives of more-or-less ordinary people. I know how it ends, how the pieces all fit together, but this story with it's deliberate gaps and constant revelations, is a true masterpiece.