The Fall of Hyperion

What is the author's style in The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons?

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The Hyperion Cantos are told in third person Omniscient, with the exception of the waking experiences of Joseph Severn, during which it switches to first person. The story is told largely through the eyes of Joseph Severn, both what he experiences while alive and what he dreams while asleep. In this manner, the narrator can be considered as somewhat unreliable in that experiencing events through dream might result in some distortion. Whether or not this is true is never revealed in the book.

Conceptually, the book is broad in scope and content. There is plenty to confuse even the most careful reader, and readers who do not have a solid grasp of elementary physics might be lost in some of the technical details. There are particularly complex passages, the most prominent of which is the dialogue between Brawne Lamia, Keats, and the AI Ummon. This conversation, which is pivotal to the book and is where the reader learns much of the facts central to the action, concerns poetics, history, theology, psychology, and advanced physics, makes numerous references to the works of modern physicists such as Schrödinger, Planck, and Feynman, and quotes from the bible, Homer, Keats, and Yates.

Source(s)

The Fall of Hyperion, BookRags