Simmons opened new frontiers of thought for me with his Hyperion Cantos. A house with each room on a different planet. A heartbreaking tale of a daughter aging in reverse. A romance playing out over space and time. A grand piano on the pop-out balcony of a starship. The cruciform parasite. The Shrike.

Branches of humanity torn between decadent stagnation and radical evolution. The artificial intelligence civilization with its own agenda. The All Thing (Internet) as the third branch of government.

So much good stuff, published in 1989 no less.

Rest in Peace to a true legend.

Oh, boy. The Shrike. That thing still haunts me in a way that no other monster or alien across all of Sci-fi or fantasy really does. It's something about the inscrutability of it, especially in the first novel (still my favorite) where its purpose and backstory haven't been revealed. Sure, it's scary, but I think the mystery of its motives - and its ability to unpredictably act apparently benevolently sometimes - is where the real terror lies.

He predicted social media as well. So many themes in this work only mentioned in passing, too many to develop in full...