What are the modules / pages / panels / or other features in Drupal which can be used to display an object which is made up of several content types? I know views can be used, I have a functioning view which displays the relationship between the content types, using a limited number of fields. 

Next I would like the hyperlink to resolve to a display of the contents of a "composite object" which includes a number of content types. What can I use?

Using: Views, Entity Reference, Panels, Page Manager

The first view is a LIST (alphabetical) of story titles, showing Relationships to other content types, as follows:
- Person (firstname, lastname, etc.)
- Story (field_story_title, orig copyright, description, etc.) Note: [content:title] is automatically generated and not used.
- Series (field_series_title, body)

and these content types which are join tables
- PersonStory (field_personstory_person_id, field_personstory_ story_id, relationship [e.g. author])
- StorySeries (field_storyseries_story_id, field_storyseries_series_id, field_storyseries_logical_order)

Person to Story is many to many, Story to Series is many to many.



I would like the hyperlink to resolve to a "page" which shows all of the fields from multiple content types which relate to that one story. This will be quite a lot of data: title, author, copyright, short blurb, synopsis (1K words) and a couple of images. So Views Megarow doesn't feel like an appropriate destination to me.

What are possible methods to show data from multiple content types?
what's the best way to...

That is subjective. Here is a way to do it, not necessarily the best:

Views Megarow


  This module allows you to display content coming from a menu callback
  between two items of a views result set as a modal-like. You can use
  it to display a preview of your node or to build an administrative
  form.
  
  Said otherwise, you can dynamically display content below a row of a
  table of results coming from a view. This content is shown when you
  click on a link, it means that you can display anything from a preview
  of your node for instance to a moderation form of an entity.