I kinda swore that I'd never get into science-fiction novels. I'm a tedious enough geek as it is anyhow (same goes for multiplayer RPGs; that shit would be like CRACK for me, homes).

But yeah, a friend bought me Hyperion for my birthingday. How's this for offputting:

The version I'd seen previously had an airbrush-style cover (not mine though)

http://reading.kingrat.biz/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/hyperion.jpg

\m/

The blurb describes it in the first of 'The Hyperion Cantos'

The structure of the book has been described to me as loosely mirroring Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. fuck me.

A metal (I think) band has done a concept album based on it.

And to top it all off, the first few pages are in fact unintelligible. Is it a rule of science-fiction writing to weed out uncommitted readers from the off? The idea seems to be to throw in every unexplained piece of terminology, so's that it feels like I might as well be reading Klingon, or Welsh.

And then it's fucking awesome. There's a metal dude covered in thorns who impales people on his tree of pain. Creepy bald immortal retards. A sweary poet with satyr legs. The frame tale structure is brilliant; and permits a Matrix-y detective story to co-exist with a sad, reflective one about parenthood, among others.

Anyone else read it? Or (dare I say) recommend anythind else in a similar vein?