- The Hyperion Cantos | Dan Simmons

The central metaphor of the Cantos is the life and work of Romantic poet . The poet-pilgrim, Martin Silenus, is a cynical, boorish genius writing an endless apocalyptic poem. The cybrid of Keats (named Joseph Severn after Keats’s friend) is a major figure in The Fall of Hyperion . Keats’s unfinished epic Hyperion (about the overthrow of the Titans by the Olympian gods) and his transcendent ode "To Autumn" are used as thematic blueprints. Simmons argues, brilliantly, that Keats’s concept of "negative capability"—the ability to remain in uncertainties, mysteries, and doubts without reaching for fact or reason—is the only sane response to a universe of the Shrike and the Time Tombs.

Simmons makes a bold choice: he moves from "hard" metaphysical horror to "soft" metaphysical grace. The secret of the universe, he suggests, is not a superweapon, but a shared human ability that even the gods cannot replicate: the empathy of shared suffering. Dan Simmons - The Hyperion Cantos