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"Big Microbe"'s avatar

Oh man, I've been reading a lot of SF lately, and Hyperion is one I actually had assigned in high school for a sci-fi English class (it was that teacher's last year at my school, so they finally let him teach it). I think you're pretty dead-on, as I recall (and from overhearing snippets of the audiobook when my wife was listening to it).

But have you read Ilium and Olympios? More Simmons, more space opera, more literary allusions, so many literary allusions. Aaaaaaaand some pretty heavy-handed, ugly Zionism. The Voynix, for example: huge, servile insectoids who we later find out were developed by some global caliphate of the future past; who attack Jerusalem when our heroes are there, repeatedly buzzing "KILL THE JEW;" who later beseige our heroes' tiny settlement, attacking them by...yup, that's right, THROWING ROCKS.

When I read these in 2008 or 9, I didn't put all of that together. But when I started paying actual attention to Israel, and heard "rock-throwing" as the magic justification for use of force, I recall the feeling I had of "SIMMONS YOU MOTHERFUCKER" I had when the penny finally dropped.

Other than that they're pretty fun, though.

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