Maru Dubshinki wrote: >I never thought of putting it in per-character terms. I always broke >it down into factions- ie. you had the first timeline, in which >TechnoCore and humand warred, which sent back Mnemosyne; you had the >other timeline with the twin UIs, which dispatched one of the >shrikes, and you had a third faction which sent back yet *another* >shrike t fetch Weintraub's daughter (which I suspect to have been >the Reaper faction). At least, three timelines made the most sense >to me. I'd be interested to hear your thinking on it.
Hrm. I think after reading the Endymion books I'd have to add a fourth line, wherein the Shrike is there to protect Aenea, possibly sent by those in the Void. Though it could be an intercepted and altered Shrike from the UIs, or sent by the human UI to defend its third part. The other three you listed make reasonable sense; however, I will admit that I never considered the various Shrikes to be separate timelines as much as they were foci in the war to establish one future. That is, they were developed by one faction then co-opted by the various factions in their struggles. What I found interesting about the first two books was not the SF portions of it nearly as much as the *human* portions. The stories of the pilgrims were all gripping, and that's what I liked about Hyperion more than the future conflicts and all. It was the people in the books, not the events surrounding them, that really spoke to me. In fact, to some extent Simmons' insistent EYKIW's (everything you know is wrong) in Endymion irked me, and I felt cheapened the first two a little bit. I still liked them, but for different reasons and certainly not as much as the Cantos. Jim Listening to the living Maru _______________________________________________ Join Excite! - http://www.excite.com The most personalized portal on the Web! _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
