Endymion (Simmons novel)

Did You Know?

• The novel was shortlisted for the 1997 Locus Award.
• Kirkus Reviews praised its intriguing ideas and characters while criticizing an overly detailed and complex plot.
• Other reviewers enjoyed the detailed worldbuilding and eagerly awaited the sequel.

Plot

Two hundred seventy-four years before the story begins, Hegemony CEO Meina Gladstone had every farcaster portal destroyed. She did this to stop the TechnoCore, which was hiding inside the network, from wiping out humanity. That event, called the Fall, caused civilization to break apart on countless worlds. Brawne Lamia was pregnant by the first John Keats cybrid—a body that looked human but was run by a computer mind from the TechnoCore.

She gave birth to a daughter named Aenea. Lamia died while Aenea was still a child. When Aenea turned twelve, she walked into the Time Tombs and vanished into the future. Before the Fall, Father Paul Duré had been elected Pope, taking the name Teilhard.

After he died without warning, Lenar Hoyt was brought back from the body they had shared and became Pope. The Church claimed it had invented a way to bring people back to life if they accepted a cruciform attached to their body, making them nearly immortal. With its own military, the Catholic Church stepped into the power gap the Hegemony left behind. On Hyperion, a hunting guide named Raul Endymion gets a job from Martin Silenus.

He must rescue Aenea, who is about to come out of the Time Tombs, find Old Earth, destroy the Pax, and stop the TechnoCore. The android A. Bettik and the Consul's starship help him. The Pax teaches that Aenea is a terrible threat, and they know she is coming. Father-Captain Federico de Soya is told to capture her.

The Shrike and Aenea show up at the same time. The Shrike kills most of the Pax soldiers. In the chaos, Endymion gets Aenea away. De Soya chases them in the Archangel-class ship Raphael.

This ship can travel faster than light without losing time, but each trip requires a painful death and resurrection. Aenea talks de Soya into letting her ship land on Renaissance Vector. She then flies through an old farcaster portal that has been dead since the Fall. De Soya tries to stop her ship but fails.

The damaged ship ends up on an unknown world. Aenea and Raul build a raft to travel the River Tethys without the ship. De Soya begins a long journey of repeated deaths and resurrections through every known star system to find her.