The Rise of Endymion

The Rise of Endymion

Cover of first edition (hardcover)
Author	Dan Simmons
Country	United States
Language	English
Series	Hyperion Cantos
Genre	Science fiction
Publisher	Bantam Books
Publication date	1997
Media type	Print (hardback & paperback)
Pages	579
Awards	Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel (1998)
ISBN	0-553-10652-X
OCLC	36316017
Dewey Decimal	813/.54 21
LC Class	PS3569.I47292 R5 1997
Preceded by	Endymion

The Rise of Endymion is a 1997 science fiction novel by American writer Dan Simmons. It is the fourth and final novel in his Hyperion Cantos fictional universe. It won the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, and was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1998.^[1]

Plot

The Rise of Endymion begins after the end of Endymion with Raul Endymion still imprisoned and writing his memoirs of his time with Aenea. On the planet Pacem in Vatican City the pope, Lenar Hoyt dies. With Father Paul Dure having previously borne Hoyt's cruciform, Hoyt resurrects as Dure. Dure is killed by Cardinal Lourdusamy, who also kills all witnesses to Dure's resurrection, as he has done for the last several hundred years whenever Hoyt has died to keep Dure's shared existence a secret. Hoyt is then reborn, and when elected Pope again, takes a new Papal name: in this case, Urban XVI. Urban announces a new Crusade upon his conception as Pope, and with the construction of the new "Archangel"-class warships, sends his fleets out to make war on the Ousters, still hiding along the edges of human-populated space. Father Captain de Soya, after near exile for failing, is recalled to captain one of the new ships. However, after attacking an Ouster breeding creche asteroid de Soya and several of his crew find the murder of children unconscionable and they rebel, absconding with the ship and putting the rest of the crew into suspended animation.

Raul Endymion and Aenea, still living on Earth (at Taliesin West) and learning architecture from the "Old Architect" (a cybrid Frank Lloyd Wright). Aenea, despite being barely in her teens quickly becomes a teacher to the other humans not only in leading the community but also about "the Void which Binds" and "the music of the spheres". The old architect dies when she is sixteen and Aenea tells Raul that he has to leave and travel via Farcaster portal along the River Tethys, but she will meet him at the end of his journey on the planet Tien Shan.

On God's Grove, three cyborgs similar to Radamanth Nemes retrieve her from the stone prison, the Technocore being aware of Aenea leaving the sanctuary of Earth. The four almost catch up with Raul, but are intercepted by Shrike, who destroys one of the siblings.

Upon reaching the end of his perilous kayak trip (8 standard days), Raul finds the starship they had abandoned in the previous book. The ship informs Raul that the travel to Ti'en Shan will create a 5-year time debt (due to time dilation inside Hawking Space) so when he arrives Aenea will be 21.

During their time on T'ien Shan, Aenea is working on a hanging temple for the Dalai Lama. Like all buildings on the planet it is built high in the mountains to keep it free of the phosgene clouds that rise several kilometers above the acid seas. Raul and Aenea's relationship shifts from protector and friend to lover and teacher, as Raul becomes a prominent member of Aenea's congregation. Raul becomes jealous of practically everyone Aenea has spent time with over the past five years while he was in spaceflight, including a twenty-something-year-old Rachel Weintraub (the infant from the Hyperion books now grown up). Aenea has spent her time teaching and also reveals that many people on the planets she has visited have taken "communion" from her. The communion is sharing her special DNA, which she claims was also possessed by Jesus, and she states that people misinterpreted the message of Jesus; they literally needed to imbibe his blood to take part in what he had to offer. People who take communion from Aenea by drinking wine infused with a drop of her blood undergo several changes due to the virus she carries: if they have a cruciform, it completely withers away within 24 hours, they are no longer able to be joined with a cruciform, they gain the ability to access "the Void which Binds" (though they must practice—most do not display much talent in the story), and their blood (and offspring's blood) can be used to pass on the same virus. Another side-effect of Aenea's communion revealed later is great empathy, the person who inflicts pains experiences that pain. Aenea repeatedly refuses to let Raul take communion from her, claiming that they cannot afford the distraction brought on by the new experiences.

When Raul counts up the months she mentions in the story of her travels across space he determines there is a substantial gap unaccounted for and on questioning her Raul becomes especially jealous of an unknown man with whom Aenea spent just under two years whom she married and to whom she bore a child.

An envoy of the Pax led by Cardinal Mustafa discover them. Radamanth Nemes and her two siblings attack Aenea and Raul with intent to kill. The Shrike appears, forcing Mustafa to call off the attack (earlier, Mustafa had visited Mars, where he witnessed people killed by Shrike. All had their cruciforms ripped out by the construct, killing them permanently). Later, Nemes reveals herself as an agent of the TechnoCore, not a loyal servant of the Pax, and for his presumption at giving her orders, Nemes kills all of the envoys except for the cardinal whom she maims and blinds. A large Pax fleet manages to intercept de Soya's ship inside the system (after five years of it conducting successful raids against the Pax), but Aenea rescues the Captain and his surviving crewmembers. The cyborgs catch up with the heroes, but Shrike takes out the two remaining siblings, while Nemes herself is defeated by Raul as once powerful entities from The Void Which Binds block her phasing abilities. Having picked up many people from T'ien Shan in the consul's spaceship, the spaceship is nearly destroyed by Pax ships but instead it farcasts, without a farcast portal, to an Ouster Dyson Sphere made from trees provided by the Templars. On this "biosphere" Raul awakens after the injuries from his battle against Nemes are healed, to find there Het Masteen, the Templar who was one of the Hyperion pilgrims (he disappeared, returned, then died on Hyperion over 240 years ago), and Fedmahn Kassad (another of the pilgrims who also died in the past and who travelled through time fighting the Shrike). Finally Raul is allowed to take her communion. Raul learns from her that the cruciform is not natural, it is a construct of the TechnoCore, that while the farcaster portals were believed to be used to allow the TechnoCore to use human brains as processors the cruciform now fulfill this role. The resurrection uses energy from The Void Which Binds, causing irrepairable damage. Since the Core needs not just human brains, but creative human brains, they increase their potential by killing them. Crime and disease are steadily rising in the Pax space for that exact reason.

Trying to divert a Pax attack Aenea sends a hand written message to Pacem via a captured Pax courier ship but the attack cannot be called off. The key characters, several hundred other humans who have taken her communion, and a motionless Shrike, escape on a Templar tree-ship captained by Het Masteen who nicknames it the Tree of Pain (alluding to Shrike's torture device on Hyperion). Aenea causes the ship to farcast and drops the passengers off at many planets where they will continue teaching her message that the Void that Binds is Love and Love is a fundamental force of the universe like gravity or electroweak.

Aenea, Raul and de Soya cast to Pacem and de Soya leads them through unused underground train lines and catacombs to St Peter's Basilica where Hoyt (as pope) is celebrating High Mass on Holy Thursday. Aenea sends de Soya away and then interrupts the mass. Raul and Aenea are arrested. Raul is sentenced to death but not wishing to sully their hands by murder he is placed in his far away Schrodinger cell with cyanide that will be triggered by radioactive decay. In this sealed cell he spends what is to him an indeterminate amount of time and he confesses as narrator of the story to having lied about not knowing her fate (as announced at the start of the previous book).

After capture Aenea is tortured by Nemes at the order of the TechnoCore ambassador. The torture chamber is surrounded by TechnoCore sensors. Aenea realises that they seek to force her to cast away and use the gathered data to replicate her abilities. She reveals to the present Pax officials the physical location of the Technocore; inside the cruciforms. Cardinal Lourdusamy, who is among the officials, convinces the Core to allow him to try to get her to reveal her secrets, but, rebelling against the Core, instead kills her by burning her to death.

Facing up to this and having subconsciously thought about things while writing Raul realises that Aenea told him he has the ability to cast as she did, as others could too if they practised, and he casts himself to Pacem. There he meets survivors of an attack and retreat by loyalist Pax forces (who are now held up on a single planet with only a few million people as opposed to the hundreds of billions before Aenea), including Father de Soya. Raul learns that he has been incarcerated for 13 months. Everyone who had taken Aenea's communion shared in her experience, including her pain, and also acted as broadcasters sending the same sensations to everyone else on their planets, even those who had not taken communion, and revealing the machinations of the TechnoCore to enslave humanity. He casts them to Hyperion where they meet Martin Silenus with whom they cast to Mars and learn from Fedmahn that Earth has returned. All of them then travel to Earth. On Earth the Shrike appears, having traveled through time and bringing with it a younger Aenea who, using her powers, has forced it to bring her there and then. Raul discovers he is the man with whom she had a child in the missing time she wouldn't explain about on T'ien Shan and that she will have to leave after just under two years. Silenus dies and is buried. Bettik is discovered to be the representative of the unknown culture, the "lions and tigers and bears", who has been observing humans and the TechnoCore for centuries and de Soya marries the couple. Aenea tells Raul that she hasn't looked into the future for the coming two years, tells the others not to travel to Earth for two years, that this time it is just for her and Raul and their yet to be conceived child.

Background

The Rise of Endymion, like the preceding novel Endymion, is set more than 275 years after the fall of the Hegemony of Man, an interstellar participatory democracy that relied on interplanetary connections, called farcaster portals. These portals secretly contained the artificial intelligences of the TechnoCore, which, after failing in their attempt to attack the Hegemony, were forced into apparent seclusion. At the time of this novel, the Roman Catholic Church has formed the Pax, an administrative entity that formalizes the Church's control and implements a kind of theocracy.

The Church and the Pax have secretly been collaborating with representatives of the TechnoCore, who provide Pax-administered society with the cruciform, a parasite that causes a human to be resurrected three days after the body's death. However, the TechnoCore fears that a type of virus can weaken their unseen hold on 31st-century civilization, and is aware that the virus can be spread by Aenea, daughter of a human being and a TechnoCore intelligence residing in a human body.

The world Hyperion, central in the first three novels of the series, is by this point entirely assimilated into the Pax. However, other worlds resist Pax control, with independence movements using various tactics to achieve their goal of eventual independence. This type of resistance takes place on worlds such as Mars and Vitus-Gray-Balianus B, home to a rebellious, Druze-like society known as the Amoite Spectrum Helix.

Characters

• Aenea, often described as a messiah, is a young female who is the daughter of a human, Brawne Lamia, and an artificial intelligence combined with a human body (cybrid). As a child she travels two hundred years through time by entering the Time Tomb called the Sphinx, becoming a teacher (the one who teaches) and a semi-religious figure. She becomes a Martyr and catalyst for the destruction of the current form of Catholicism and the widespread rebellion again the parasite cruciform.
• Raul Endymion. Previously a nomadic shepherd on Hyperion, Endymion was wrongly sentenced to death by Pax authorities for killing a wealthy Catholic tourist who had attempted to murder him. He was not executed due to the intervention of Martin Silenus, who enlisted him into Aenea's service as a bodyguard and protector. By the time of the novel, Endymion has become Aenea's romantic interest, and eventually becomes her lover. His story completes the Silenus Cantos.
• Father Captain Federico de Soya. Born on the desert planet of MadredeDios, de Soya is a Pax Fleet officer and a Catholic priest who had tracked Aenea and attempted to capture her in the novel Endymion. After saving her life, de Soya was exiled to MadredeDios and stripped of his command, but is called back into service at the beginning of this novel. He mutinies again after witnessing atrocities committed by Pax Fleet units, and renounces the cruciform, becoming an Aenean.
• A. Bettik, an android. Born several hundred years before the Fall of the Farcasters in the 29th century, Bettik was a laborer on Hyperion and an employee of the Shrike Cult for centuries before the arrival of the last Hyperion pilgrims, and worked for Martin Silenus in the years between that pilgrimage and Aenea's arrival. Befriended by Raul, he has accompanied Aenea on their journey. At the conclusion he is revealed to be an observer from an otherwise undescribed advanced alien race which also utilizes the void which binds.

References

External links

• The Rise of Endymion at Worlds Without End