Date: Mon, 17 Nov 1997 04:34:08 -0500
From: Brygg Ullmer
Subject: Hyperion and the River Tethys
...I wanted to send along two bits of text from Simmons' "Hyperion"
and "The Fall of Hyperion." I mentioned two specific structures
which fell out of his farcaster portals notion: distributed building
architecture, and the River Tethys. Re the first, here's from
Hyperion (c1989), pp. 196-197:
Notes for a sketch of life in the Hegemony:
My home has thirty-eight rooms on thirty-six worlds. No doors: the arched
entrances are farcaster portals, a few opaqued with privacy curtains, most open
to observation and entry. Each room has windows everywhere and at least two
walls with portals. From the grand dining hall on Renaissance Vector, I can see
the bronze skies and the verdigris towers of Keep Enable in the valley below my
volcanic peak, and by turning my head I can look through the farcaster portal
and across the expanse of white carpet in the formal living area to see the
Edgar Allan Sea crash against the spires of Point Prospero on Nevermore. My
library looks out on the glaciers and green skies of Nordholm while a walk of
ten paces allows me to _descend_ a short stairway to my tower study, a
comfortable, open room encircled by polarized glass which offers a
three-hundred-sixty-degree view of the highest peaks of the Kushpat Karakoram, a
mountain range two thousand kilometers from the nearest settlement in the
easternmost reaches of the Jamnu Republic on Deneb Drei.
The huge sleeping room Helenda and I share rocks gently in the boughs of a
three-hundred-meter Worldtree on the Templar world of God's Grove and connects
to a solarium which sits alone on the arid saltflats of Hebron. Not all of our
views are of wilderness: the media room opens to a skimmer pad on the hundred
and thirty eighth floor of a Tau Ceti Center arctower and our patio lies on a
terrace overlooking the market in the Old Section of bustling New Jerusalem.
The architect, a student of the legendary Millon De Ha Vre, has incorporated
several small jokes into the house's design: the steps go down to the tower
room, of course, but equally droll is the exit from the eyrier which leads to
the exercise room on the lowest level of Lusus's deepest Hive, or perhaps the
guest bathroom which consists of a toilet, bidet, sink and shower stall on an
open, wall-less raft afloat on the violet seaworld of Mare Infinitus.
At first the shifts in gravity from room to room were disturbing, but I soon
adapted, subconsciously bracing myself for the drag of Lusus and Hebron and Sol
Draconi Septem, unconsciously anticipating the less than 1-standard-g freedom of
the majority of the rooms....
End quote. Re the River Tethys, I don't think I've been
able to relocate the main reference I had in mind, but here
is from page 4 of _The Fall of Hyperion_ (c1990):
I wandered down the long, gradual slope to the River Tethys, past the dock where
an incredible assortment of river craft disgorged their passengers. The Tethys
was the only webwide river, flowing past its permanent farcaster portals through
sections of more than two hundred worlds and moons, and the folk who lived along
its banks were some of the wealthiest in the Hegemony. The vehicles on the
river showed this: great, crenelated cruisers, canvas-laden barks, and
five-tiered barges, many showing signs of being equipped with levitation gear;
elaborate houseboats, obviously fitted with their own farcasters; small, mobile
isles imported from the oceans of Maui-Covenant; sporty pre-Hegira speedboats
and submersibles; and assortment of hand-carved nautical EMVs from Renaissance
Vector; and a few contemporary go-everywhere yachts, their outline hidden by the
seamless reflective ovoid surfaces of containment fields.
End quote. I've loved these passages for many years, as of course aspects of
both concepts are indeed realizable to amazing effect. Slow glass is a related
notion; ask me if you're not familiar. I have an amazing poster print on my
bedroom wall called "Entre les Trous de la Memoire," c1975 which puts bits of
both ideas beautifully into pictorial form; maybe Simmons was inspired by this,
or maybe the idea is far older still. Also, Andy and Scott's MILO
(multi-location object) concept makes for some great science fiction (and
not-so-fiction) of its own; I've not encountered science fact or fiction
elsewhere which approximates their idea, but I've played with it in various fun
ways.
...