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Title: Post-modern science fiction
Review: Maybe I'm just not the right demographic for this novel, but I hated the beginning, tolerated the middle and put it down permanently near the end. The model is the Canterbury Tales of Chaucer, but I don't think it works. I just never got interested in the characters enough to care what happened to them and for me, the story--stories, really--never came into focus. I guess the New York Times Book Review should have tipped me off because they compare it to Frank Herbert's Dune and the Foundation series of Asimov, both of which, in my opinion have aged really badly. I never realized how bad Dune was until I saw the awful movie of it.The fundamental metaphors operating in Hyperion seem to be backwards living. Well, ok, but I just don't see what it is a metaphor for. Nor, by page 473 where I finally gave up, did I care.
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