History of Human Space Exploitation

Chapter 33 Appreciation of Ancient Science Fiction "Hyperion" Tetralogy
As a science fiction novel that has been famous in the entire human society for hundreds of years since the end of the 20th century, the tetralogy of Hyperion written by Dan Simmons has always been insurmountable in the hearts of many readers for its unique literature and rich imagination. Sci-fi classic.Among them, the stories of the seven pilgrims from the first part are intertwined with their fate, which shows readers a future picture in the author's mind.Here the author tries to explore the stories behind the seven pilgrims with his own vision.

[-]. The Story of the Priest
Regarding the stories of Father Rainer Hoyt and Paul Durley, the author thinks the most worthy of exploration is when did the Church of Christ and Payson begin to collude with the core?And the author thinks that they may have colluded with the stable faction represented by Cloud Gate at the beginning, plus the ultimate faction who had more cooperation with the stable faction at that time.

From the first and second and third parts of Hyperion, we can see that the cross-shaped technology should come from the core or even the ultimate intelligence in the future, and the ultimate intelligence is communicating with the ultimate faction.During this process, the stable faction also agreed to retain human beings in the way of Bikura, and later the method of the Holy Spirit seemed to be accepted by the reversible faction.

The author's personal opinion is that Hoyt was chosen for a pilgrimage, then killed by Shrike and resurrected as Du Lei, and then Du Lei was elected as the new pope, and was reminded by Seven in his sleep to return to the time when Person led the ring network to collapse. church.This series of intentional operations is within the kernel plan.The purpose of these plans is that after Yueshi and Overlord are really determined to break with the kernel in some way, the kernel needs to have a backup plan.

Obviously, from the third and fourth parts, the core plan is basically very successful.It's just that their opponent is the protagonist and the female dragon Aotian, who is the ultimate intelligent entity after the combination of human and machine.

I seem to have seen a comment before saying that Martin is the only character who appears in all four films. I think Hoyt also appeared in the third film, so he should be counted as one.

[-]. The Story of a Soldier

The story of Colonel Feldman Kassad and the story of Rachel Winterberg are intertwined, while the author of Saul’s story is more of the author’s way of expressing some of his thoughts on religion in the outline of the story. reflect.In the end, the author used Rachel himself to tell Saul to sacrifice himself to save mankind. I personally feel that Simmons compromised to some extent after putting forward his insights on Abraham's problem.

The author's opinion on Shrike: According to the author's understanding, the Shrike should be a creation of the Kernel Ultimate faction according to the book, to solve the several variables mentioned by Cloud Gate and try to influence the outcome of the war between the ultimate kernel and the ultimate human intelligence.The Shrike was meant to perceive the empathy the core lacked, and try to beat humans on the condition of understanding empathy.This also explains why the Shrike does the "job" of granting the cruciform, harvesting human individuals and connecting the core.

The change in everything may be that Seven uses Heite Masteen's Erg to recapture Rachel and let Saul raise him, and let her guide Kassad and defeat the Shrike who is about to be put into use.In the future, humans will infuse the personality of Kassad, which is equivalent to a cyber body, into this creation, which is equivalent to a cyber body, and make it a guardian to a certain extent in the third and fourth parts to ensure the safety of the human-machine symbiosis.

Three, the poet's story

The author of the story of Martin Silinas feels that there is some self-projection of the author Dan Simmons in it. Although at the end of the fourth part, it seems that he and Paul Durey died first, but the story of traveling through 1000 years Martin is undoubtedly the longest-lived human being.

The poet, who was born as a surrogate by a robot mother, combines wisdom, insignificance, sensitivity, selfishness, persistence, worldliness and innocence.In the first half of his life, he fell from a life with a golden key in his hand to a mud digger with half cerebral palsy who was similar to a slave, and then became a well-known wealthy, luxurious and best-selling trash writer on the Internet by chance.

Because the source of his inspiration, the Shrike left him, he followed Sad King Billy to Hyperion.While his inspiration came back to him in this world close to the Shrike's lair, the Shrike started killing, and finally took away Billy the Sad King.

The author feels that Martin is a very typical human being that the Shrike was supposed to capture and impale on the thorn tree.Such emotional poets are bound to provide the core with more inspiration and material for human empathy.It’s just possible that the inner core underestimated Braun Lamia’s kindness like the Virgin, so that the rescued poet tried his best to protect and guide Braun’s daughter in the next two books.

The Hyperion Psalms are written by Silenus as the keynote of the whole book, and his stories also show the most of life in the Ring Web. It is my personal favorite pilgrim story.

[-]. Stories of Scholars
In Saul Winterberg's story, his daughter Rachel, who travels backwards in time, only appears as a background board, and Rachel's own story is used in Kassad's story, the second part, and the end of the fourth part. Sketch it out.

This story, told in a plain but persuasive tone by scholars, is another direct discussion of the topic of religion by the author Simmons after the story of the priest.Unlike Paul Dooley, who was unyielding to the crucifixion because of his own purity of faith, Saul's story confronts the problem at the origin of the religious system: the problem of Abraham.

I don’t know how others explain Abraham’s determination to kill and sacrifice his son Isaac in front of God, but the author is still convinced by the explanation of Sol’s own theory in the novel.Human beings in the ignorant period need to use absolute true belief to kill their most beloved and important son. God's prevention of this will allow Abraham to fully trust the gods that this future group will entrust to their beliefs.

The author personally doesn't know much about the teachings of the Abrahamic religions, and the use of religious concepts in "Hyperion" is too numerous to enumerate, until the imitation of Christ's crucifixion at the end of the fourth book.

V. A Detective Story

If there's a Madonna in Hyperion, it's Braun Lamia, of course.In addition to the fact that she is the mother of the savior who finally led mankind into the condensed void, her character and behavior also show her compassion as the Holy Mother at all times.

The author thinks that, unlike Cheng Xin’s repeated use of motherhood as the basis for judgment in another masterpiece of science fiction, “The Three-Body Problem”, which resulted in objectively wrong consequences, Lamia’s motherhood did not burden her with the burden similar to Cheng Xin’s when she needed to choose. Responsibility.On the basis of these settings, the overall setting and behavior of Lamia do not appear to have so many unresolvable contradictions.

Lamia's story essentially shows and explains part of the core setting to the reader.From the assassination of her father, Byron Lamia, who offended the kernel for trying to let the variable Hyperion join the ring network, to her encounter with Johnny, the Keats personality that the kernel claimed to be incomprehensible, to the two entering the kernel to listen to the The story of the door mixed with lies, and finally died quietly after becoming the first mother of the common offspring of humans and the core.Braun’s story is to some extent the de facto main plot of the first two novels, and she and Jonny’s daughter is the heroine in the third and fourth books, making Braun’s story and the plot about her The revealed information occupies an extremely important position in the overall setting of the novel.

Six, the story of the consul

If it is necessary to find a sole protagonist for the first part of "Hyperion", it may only be the consul who did not leave his name.

Of course, the Consul's surname is naturally Asbik, like his grandfather Meron and father Daniel, but this is not important. Judging from the Consul's story, it should be the author's intention to hide his name.It's hard for me to guess the author's original intention, but I think Simmons may want to point out Keats's phrase "Here sleeps here, fame on the water"?

Whether it was the Hyperion Consul when Paul Durley contacted Bikura, or the death of his wife and daughter in Brescia, where Colonel Kassad was famous (the first battle Kassad participated in after graduation was the Mauiyo rebellion) , or the connection between the superficial activation of the Destroyer device and Rachel's attack (although the Destroyer said that device was useless), or the implementation of the plan of Yueshi and Lamia Councilor, or wandering in the The similarity of the identities of multiple parties makes the role of the consul play a role of threading the needle in the entire first part.

In the second part, the consul becomes the last slender bridge between the Overlord and the Ouster.

The author sometimes thinks, if the consul failed to wait for Theo who rescued him to appear and was murdered by two thugs first, if Theo rescued him and they were shot down and reimbursed on the way back, if there was no one like Arondez in the car afterwards They go back to the ship, if the Consul commits suicide in front of the Ousters out of guilt...

If one of these is true, Yueshi lacks the direct statement information of the Ouster, only the video of Marshal William Ajunta Lee and the information in Seven's dream, can Yueshi still make such a decisive judgment?
The author thinks this worry is superfluous, because Yueshi should have made her final determination after following Byron Lamia, and all the subsequent developments only strengthened her belief.

The consul's story itself, of course, reflects the author Dan Simmons' dislike of the colonial economy and colonial politics in the Western Age of Discovery.From the stories of the consuls, the author has seen a lot of individuals as human beings, even those individuals who are in high positions and even seem to be very good-sleeved, have a sad sense of powerlessness in such an era.

This feeling of powerlessness, from Xili’s powerless feelings for Mei Run, and the uprising that Mei Run devoted herself to because of this feeling, and the vague impression that the consul’s wife and children are gradually fading away because of the unjust war in Brescia, all make me feel like this. It is always with a heavy heart that I read Consul's story over and over again.

Seven, kernel
Regarding the core, the author's understanding is this: After gaining self-awareness, the core tries to create a higher intelligence ultimate intelligence, and the information from the distant future also proves the feasibility of their plan and will become a reality in the distant future.

The three factions of the core, the ultimate faction only cares about creating the ultimate intelligence itself, the stable faction hopes to continue to coexist with human beings in the process, the recurrent faction believes that the existence of human beings itself is a hidden danger to the development of the core and hopes to exterminate human beings, and the ultimate faction often fights with the other two Cooperating with one of the factions, the core's attitude towards humans has repeatedly wavered. The big mistake of trying to destroy the earth in 38 years is the common expectation of the three factions, because it can make all human beings rely on the remote transmission system parasitic in the inner core to become their computing power.But maybe it was the move of the liger, tiger and bear to remove the earth at the last moment that caused the inner core to generally fear this unknown and powerful alien force, and made the attitude of the stable party to human beings prevail in the following hundreds of years.

The author understands that, according to Cloud Gate, the inevitable price for the generation of the next level of ultimate intelligence is the complete annihilation and swallowing of their generation of intelligence, while the stable faction seems to have been inspired by long-term friendly exchanges with human beings, and feels that it is necessary to avoid their own demise The way is to live in symbiosis with humans and fully understand human empathy, so as to achieve physical immortality on the spiritual level.This idea gave rise to Keats' reconstruction of personality and later Lamia as the daughter of the savior who made human beings generally understand the condensed void, but the stable faction represented by Cloud Gate may have been almost wiped out by the end of the second part because of the inner civil war Exhausted, so that the core that appears in the third and fourth parts is almost the face of the repeat faction and the ultimate faction.

Eight, Overlord, Meina Gladstone, Byron Lamia's plans

When the overlord sees the technological core, the plan to deal with it should start with Braun Lamia's father, Byron Lamia.And after Yue Shi became the CEO, all the preparations and plans of the overlord at that point in time were executed around Yue Shi's will.Therefore, it is also possible to regard the overlord's plan as Yue Shi's plan.

1. As early as when the stable faction represented by Cloud Gate and the ultimate faction were allies, the stable faction began to contact humans.On the one hand, this kind of contact inducement may be to use the power of human beings to gain more advantages in the struggles of the inner core factions. More importantly, it should be like what Cloud Gate said, after hearing the information from the future, the ultimate The fear that artificial intelligence will consume their old intelligence when it emerges.

The author conjectures that the vision of the stable school and the ultimate school for human beings is originally the "initial" version of the cross.The time when the seventy Bikura-type ships fell into Hyperion can basically coincide with the time when Cloud Gate and Byron Lamia first came into contact.However, human beings are always difficult to figure out. In order to prevent human beings from being controlled by the technological core in the future, Byron Lamia pushed Hyperion to join the protection body in the government.The purpose of this may be to hope that the unknown Shrike will be closer to the ring network, closer to the overlord, so as to increase the predictive variables for the future, thereby increasing the difficulty of the kernel's control over human beings, and then gaining more bargaining chips and negotiation space for human beings.Of course, because of this, Byron Lamia was "suicided" by core design including Cloud Gate.

2. After the death of Byron Lamia, Yueshi became the chief executive officer of the overlord government, and the overlord's plan entered the second stage.On the first aspect, Yueshi and the military department provoked the war in Brescia by provoking the Destroyer wandering group with a virus.The most important result of this tug-of-war comparable to Verdun in space, in my understanding, is to induce a long-term confrontation between the Overlord and the Destroyer.Because before this, after the "Big Mistake" Overlord and Destroyer went to space respectively, the two sides did not have too much contact and conflict.

From the author's understanding of the text, after Brescia, Pleasant Stone's use of the consul, coupled with the Ouster's own interest in Hyperion (three years before the final pilgrimage, the whereabouts of the Ouster's invasion of Hyperion had already Controlled by the Overlord) These factors all contributed to the determination of Hyperion to join the Protectorate and the overlord's unanimous agreement to fight the Ousters in the Hyperion star field.

In general, the author feels that the Overlord is in a weak position in the entire multi-party struggle.However, Braun Lamia, somehow supposed to be Byron Lamia's daughter, changed the ending.According to my understanding, if Saul directly gave Rachel to the Shrike, the Moneta who grew up in this way should only appear as a factor for the Shrike to detect human empathy, although she may still be the Shrike's administrator.However, due to the efforts of Braun, No. 2 Keats personality, Kassad, and the ergoid role that the saint may have left behind by accident, Saul can raise Rachel again.This may directly affect the later humanity of Moneta and her guidance to Kassad, and then it is directly related to whether the Shrike will have part of Kassad's personality when he is cast in the future.

The overall plan of Yueshi may be as follows:

Brescia introduced the clash with the Ousters into what was recognized as the main conflict;

Add the Hyperion Autonomous Council to the Ring;

Use Consuls to speed up the plans and pace of the Ouster invasion of Hyperion;
When the Ousters invaded Hyperion, they resisted on the surface but actually gave Hyperion to the Ousters, so that the Ousters could fully control the Time Tomb and the Shrike;

Because the Ouster controls the Shrike, it may have an unknown major impact on the future direction, in order to coerce the core to weaken the control of the Overlord, or sell the core technology of the teleporter; or because the Ouster controls the Shrike , and the Destroyer may invade the ring network through the remote transmission network, and blow up all the singularity balls, thus liberating the human beings from the control of the core.

[-]. The Brotherhood of Saints, the Church of Doomsday Redemption, and the Plan of the Ousters
The author first explains why the three of them are put together: From the perspective of the fourth part, I think it is not too much to describe the saints and the overlords as "subordination in form" and "divorce in appearance".However, there is a great consistency between Shenlin and Destroyer, whether it is in terms of goals, beliefs, or the depth of research on Ergo.The author even believes that the Brotherhood of Saints is in a sense an agent of the Destroyer in the overlord system, which may be why the core will take the Shenlin as the first object to be cleared.

Judging from the author's first two descriptions of the Shrike Church, that is, the church of redemption at the end of the day, most of them are negative, money-worshipping, and selfish.However, judging from the fact that Luthers’ church remnants were selected as retweeters at the end of the fourth part, the author still gave this group a more positive ending to some extent.Judging from the cooperation and collusion of many Shrike churches and saints, plus the appearance characteristics of one red and one green robe, one thin and one fat, one short and one tall, I think the author is implying that these two are the attributes of each other. .

If you look at the three who are closely related together, their plans for the future are very interesting.

From what the Ousters knew about the Time Tombs before, plus the more in-depth research on the Time Tombs by the Ousters during the period between the fall and the Holy God's occupation of Hyperion, it is possible that the Ousters have mastered a certain way of communicating with the future and the past.Perhaps this is the origin of the "prophecy" spoken by the Saints and the Shrike Church, and this may also be the source of the Shrike Church's recognition and assistance for the identity and role of Jonny, Lamia, and even Rachel.

While the Overlord and the Kernel are at odds, the Ouster's goal is clear, to control Hyperion and the Shrike, in this way they can communicate with the future and the past, and help humanity win the final war.On the one hand, the saints need to send Masteen and the Yggdrasil to the future in the prophecy, and on the other hand, they hope that they can continue to cooperate with the Ouster after the overlord is destroyed.The goal of the Shrike Church is also relatively simple. It should hope that after the fall of the overlord, it can establish its own rule with some superior resources and believers.

Only, it's clear that the plans of the Saints and the Church of the Shrike have largely fallen through.On the one hand, they did not realize that the core at this time may be due to the success of the cyber virtual personality project, which caused the stability faction to be liquidated, resulting in the dominant repeat faction and ultimate faction trying to destroy human beings at this moment.On the other hand, Pleasant Stone's decision to destroy the long-distance transmission network is also a major variable that no one expected, but this variable is closely related to the stable faction and the Keats personality they created.

(End of this chapter)