Set in the 29th century Hyperion evokes a future in which explorers have set out to the stars and colonised many new worlds, humanity has split into two factions, and advanced artificial intelligences have legal rights as living beings.
The 'hegemony of man' inhabit the world-web, a group of colonised planets linked together by gates which allow instantaneous travel (gifts from the AI technocore which no humans can understand the workings of), and each one of which has it's own datasphere, an evolved version of the internet which people are connected to via neural implants. beyond the world-web in deep space are the ousters, an offshoot of humanity whose genetic engineering of their own bodies, and the fact that they spend their whole lives off planet in space, make them feared and loathed by ordinary humans.
The ousters and the hegemony are on a collision course for war, the powerful AI technocore are starteing to behave as if their long standing service to the hegemony may no longer serve their won unknown purposes, and the fate of the galaxy sems to rest on a kiling machine sent from the future called the Shrike, but nobody knows who sent it or whose side it is really on.
Seven specially chosen pilgrims are sent out from the hegemony to see if they can make contact with the Shrike without being killed, and a large part of the book is dedicated to the back story of each pilgrim, which they tell each other on the journey, giving a series of stories within a story whose connection to each other and to the wider narrative is not revealed until the end.
This is the first book in a series of 4, but it is a complete story in itself, so you don't have to worry about having to buy all of them if you don't want to. I think it is a great read, mainly because of the pilgrims tales, which would have made good short sotries on their own.
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