Dan Simmons and Hyperion tech?

Sir Sirius · Post by **Sir Sirius** » 2002-12-24 05:14pm

I was wondering, how does the technology of Dan Simmons's Hyperion series compare to the tech of other sci-fi universes?

It's been a while since I've read them, but the Catholic Church seems quite powerful and then there is of course the AI Core.

Sriad · Post by **Sriad** » 2002-12-25 05:50pm

It's pretty damn good. The Techno Core -might- not be able to take down the Empire (at the time of the books. If it's the machine UI it'd be a curbstomp), but they'd sure feel it. Most of the Church's tech was given to them by the Techno Core. I'm starting on a re-reading of Fall of Hyperion now, and I'll probably read the other books too. Here's some things I do remember though:

Farcasters and Fatline: instant travel and communication
Arch Angel ship technology: instantanious travel over interstellar distances without need of a Farcaster Portal. The trip is too rough for humans to survive
Hawking Drive hyperspace: I don't remember how much FTL it is, but it is.
Nemes and family: Androids able to step outside time's regular flow. Nemes survived an orbital laser bombardment from one of the Church's warships and being buried in magma which cooled to rock for some time.
The Cross: an organism which will revive dead humans who were wearing it at the time of their death. Will even revive those whose bodies were reduced to "rapberry jelly," ie by ArchAngel travel or multi-hundred G acceleration.
Dyson spheres: the Outsters were, over hundreds of years, growing biological Dyson Spheres around suns. They had also adapted some of themselves to survive and move in hard vacuum.

More later.

beyond hope · Post by **beyond hope** » 2002-12-25 07:36pm

I couldn't find anything pinning down the speed of the Hawking drive, but journeys of any real distance are said to take "years." The Archangel drive is *much* faster, allowing the same travel within days.

Dahak · Post by **Dahak** » 2002-12-27 08:29am

beyond hope wrote:I couldn't find anything pinning down the speed of the Hawking drive, but journeys of any real distance are said to take "years." The Archangel drive is *much* faster, allowing the same travel within days.

Archangel drive is instantaneous from A to B.
But it takes 3 days, 2 with accelerated Resurection, to revive the crew.

Sriad · Post by **Sriad** » 2002-12-27 04:33pm

Yea, that's why the AA probes that came later were so nasty, and why the Church was owning the Ousters so bad. They could strike where ever they needed to more or less instantly.

I read in Fall of Hyperion the other day that during the Hegemony, their navy consisted of about 100 capital ships and a much larger number of fighters. This is far below the millitary they were capable of sustaining; at that point they had been at peace for about 150 years.

Not directly tech related, but the Hegemony consisted of about 130 billion people in the Web Worlds proper, and some more on the outer rim.

Dahak · Post by **Dahak** » 2002-12-27 05:03pm

Sriad wrote:Yea, that's why the AA probes that came later were so nasty, and why the Church was owning the Ousters so bad. They could strike where ever they needed to more or less instantly.

I read in Fall of Hyperion the other day that during the Hegemony, their navy consisted of about 100 capital ships and a much larger number of fighters. This is far below the millitary they were capable of sustaining; at that point they had been at peace for about 150 years.

Not directly tech related, but the Hegemony consisted of about 130 billion people in the Web Worlds proper, and some more on the outer rim.

the hegemony didn't need all that many ships. They had the Farcatsers, and could see Ouster fleets long before they reached a target due to the Hawking drive they were using.
They could easily concentrate their ships, thus multiplying their effectiveness.
Only through the treachery of the TechnoCore they were ultimately doomed.

Sriad · Post by **Sriad** » 2002-12-27 10:37pm

Also true. But my what I meant was that if they'd wanted or needed to, the Hegemony would have been capeable of supporting far more ships than the hundred or so that they had.