Hyperion & The Fall of Hyperion: An Omnibus Review

Hyperion (1989) and The Fall of Hyperion (1990) are the first two of four books that together form the Hyperion Cantos. A Science Fantasy work, Simmons through great talent has created a universe entirely believable, yet simultaneously ridiculous, epitomising the Arthur C Clarke law that "any piece of technology sufficiently far-future, is indistinguishable from magic." The influences here are astonishing, drawing influence from Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales to Dante's Inferno, taking ideas from Gibson's Neuromancer and mixing it with Military SF akin to Heinlein, all while juggling the story lines that unfold to converge again some time later, in cleverly-constructed plot convolutions. Let's begin with Hyperion.

The first volume takes the structure of The Canterbury Tales and turns it into a sic fi bonanza. A Consul to the planet Hyperion is meeting the other pilgrims accompanying him to the planet's surface in what will be the final pilgrimage to the Time Tombs. The mysterious god-figure, the Shrike, is killing at will and danger looms in the form of the Ousters' force, seeking to control and eventually destroy Hyperion. Meanwhile, the AI political faction aka the TechnoCore, is warring within itself, three factions fighting over the next political step for the human population of the Web, a galaxy of worlds all connected via Farcasters, phased singularities that allow teleportation via wormholes. The pilgrims are: The Consul; a Poet; a Soldier; a Scholar; a Detective; a Templar and a Priest. Their stories are told in succession, the Consul already aware that one of them is an Ouster spy. But who? Is it the Priest, who has witnessed the power of God first-hand? The Soldier, hiding behind his tale of love? What about the Poet, and his ode to the arts, his times of hardship and ancient history a cloak for treachery? The Detective's brush with a dead man who lives once more too extraordinary? The Scholar's tragedy of loss and gravitas too much to suspect? Or is it even the Consul himself?

Science fiction, beautifully constructed, dithers into a personal journal, proceeding to tell tales as far-reaching as the flashing rainbows of the planet they travel towards, switching to voice, to recording, to flashback and flash-forward, to the journey at hand and the conflicts that brew between them as their distinctive personalities clash frequently, and often humorously. A whodunnit, a frame story, a space opera, a political thriller and ultimately, a story of humanity meld together into an enduring work of science fiction of the modern era.

 But the ending is merely the beginning of the end. And so we enter The Fall of Hyperion, a maze of frantic sub-plots that serve to provide a staggered perspective of each character seeing events through different eyes as us, the privileged spectator. We enter a countdown to the war as worlds start to experience it's deadly spread, while each of the pilgrims experiences their own passage through Hell with the Shrike, so akin to Dante's Inferno, while the poetic mythology of the Greek Titans as summed up by John Keats takes on whole new incarnations in the robotic delivery of cyberspace-dwelling AIs. This half of the duology is considerably longer, tying together the convolutions of the previous half so effortlessly that it leaves you breathless as characters who've perished on one page are revived on another, events seemingly certain not always so, making this two-part journey a ride I'll remember for a very long time.

Indeed, for a long time now, science fiction writers have often been scientists themselves: Asimov the roboticist, Niven the mathematician and Wells the biologist spring to mind. But here is an author whose primary expertise and interest lies not in science, but in literature, in philosophy and politics, combining them with a caution-free approach to technology and science, and swapping them for ideas and environments more fantasy than SF, taking components and even names of real people (you may spot the William Gibson references!) and using them at will to exemplify the vast story components in ways that even most accomplished writers would struggle with.

In closing you may think this summation short and sparse given the two books reviewed within; but I disagree, for the Hyperion Cantos is too complex a work to be explained in detail here in order to serve it justice. And in my closing remark on both these tomes I will say read them, and read them quickly, don't put them down and leave it to stew because you will lose the pace. But at the same time don't skim, because it does no such work as this the justice it truly deserves; one needs to see those flashing rainbows, to consider what a lack of magnetic field on a planet would be like to live under, and to sense a shift along the desert floor, a ripple in time itself as a malign God draws near. And finally -to paraphrase Stephen King- I will say that I am in awe of Dan Simmons, for producing a work as original and expertly-executed as this one: A Lord of the Rings of the Science Fiction genre!          

Hyperion (1989) & The Fall of Hyperion (1990)

inSIDious: A Short Story

Sorry I've been inactive as of late, but there's been little to write about; I've been editing and reading more etc. as well as putting together, over the last 4-5 days, a short story that I've had rattling around for a while now (about the last 4 months.) It's a post-scarcity cyberpunk work that I hope you enjoy! Updates on the future are at the end of the post. Enjoy!

inSIDious

Dante Diamond’s eyes glistened against the shimmer of white concrete as people stormed the plaza. The Old-Earth Parisian street behind him gave off a scent of fresh bread caught in a summer heat wave, a breeze picking up to cool him down as he willed it in his mind. It was hard to believe that he was dead. He had opted, long before his will was written and finalised, to join in the trillion-strong community housed in the Soulscape, a post-death simulation of life free from suffering or pain, experienced both collectively and separately by the billions every day. Hardwired into the very memory of the God Drive Supercomputer, personalities were reconstructed and backed up and set free to live as they saw fit, their every desire met instantly within their own, blissful hallucination of an afterlife. Commands issued by the trillions of minds within the Soulscape formed a vast ocean of data, God itself surfing the waves unquestioningly and even at times presciently: VINCE (Virtual Interactive Neurological Coexistence Emergence) ran the show with intelligence beyond reckoning, governed only by his coding and the sheer computing power of the God Drive, exceeding the size of an earth-like planet at the centre of the Milky Way.

Walking the streets to the familiar Les Tablettes restaurant, he bode a good morning to the French bartender Adrien, twenty-first century; middle-aged, and took the outside table facing a brilliant rainbow of flowers that buzzed with a couple of harmless bees, pollinating in the black iron display.

“Dante! How are you today, my friend?” He shouted in his token up-down intonations, a line graph travelling downhill.

“Fine Adrien, I’m great.”

“You wanna beer? Or wine? Got a very fine number today, from Helios System, 2569; good year Dante. A very fine year!”

“That’s okay Adrien, just two of the regular please.”

“You got it Dante, but you gotta lighten up man, enjoy your time in the ‘scape; thing might not last forever. Heard about a guy once, personality construct got corrupted and died a true one; poor bastard couldn’t get recovered.”

“I’ll keep it in mind Adrien, cheers. Just waiting for Rachel.”

“Ah you meeting the wife today then,” he grinned suggestively. “Have fun and don’t forget about the pleasure simstim when you do it.”

He laughed. “It’s not like that Adrien.”

“Ah sure! Just say I said hello, alright?”

“She’ll be here in a second, you could tell yourself.”

“Will do Dante, will do.” He bounced back into the restaurant to pour the beers with a vigorous glee that wasn’t quite human.

Adrien was a construct generated by Vince for him, as an additional friend to those he had already; dead or alive, it didn’t matter. He didn’t even know who exactly was dead or just raw construct anymore, they all blended seamlessly like city canals, converging.

He sipped the cool beverage slowly before Rachel appeared in her blonde-haired, deep blue-eyed, more youthful incarnation. She sat beside him in that sprightly disposition he’d grown so used to:

“Dante! How’ve you been?” Adrien waved over the bar, she smiled widely and waved back. “Seen Vince recently?”

Dante felt unusual around these times because he knew –almost latently- that Rachel wasn’t real. He’d died, but she’d lived on. “No.” He replied after a short silence. “Everything’s in order at the minute I think, but there’s something he wants to see me about; all at my convenience of course.”

“Don’t work too hard okay? You gotta enjoy your afterlife, everyone else does.”

“It’s not quite as simple though, being CS and all.”

She frowned, “You could send yourself crazy ensuring this place works all the time. You’re only human and you’d think Vince’d have some kind of upgrade by now so he doesn’t need dead agents to do his dirty work.”

Although Dante knew that the Soulscape could survive well enough without him or any other former CyberService agent, he strongly suspected that there was trouble in paradise, hard as it was to believe: An appropriate pre-Sublimation era phrase he thought. How can AIs manage negative thoughts without failure? Of course CSers were different, allowed some autonomy, but still, most people had some negativity retained in their mind, it was needed, else the subject would literally lose their mind with too many blanks in the memory. The trick was always to satisfy and present no reason or purpose for the ugly to present itself in the mind and threaten their version of heaven. Whatever programming language was used, he thought, they sure as hell perfected it over the last couple hundred years.

“Attacks.”

“What?” Rachel was stunned.

He looked over the rim of his glass to hers that was stained with lipstick. “It’s always possible he needs someone with more finesse, greater accuracy, fits in smaller gaps to solve problems, helps strengthen the security, tightens the net.”

“Strange phrases.”

He agreed and gulped back more of the beer, still as cold as winter and sweet as tropical fruits.

“So when do you want to see him?” She asked.

He considered and said: “I’ll see him tomorrow, once I’ve had a day out again with you.” He smiled. “Where do you want to go?”

The beaches of the planet Yates had been fine and smooth, dotted with the smallest pebbles beneath a cool sky of azure and lapis blending like paints. They’d swam in the cool ocean waves rippling calmly; drank; eaten and had sex five times, the simstim implants sharing the orgasms like a knowledge duplication-and-transfer process across both of them, a sensation of symbiotic data riding their bones with a life of its own as they climaxed. They were a part of the world around them, as much as it was a part of their act. It drowned Dante’s dissatisfaction for a while. He found himself in the old-American White House in his meeting with Vince.

“How’ve you been Dante?” Vince was a regular man to him, small nose, suit, glasses; modelled on the 20^th century post-industrial work attire.

“I’ve been a little… disconcerted, as of late I think.”

“Disconcerted?”

“With Rachel; and the accident; and my afterlife.”

“Do you not like it here? I know CS agents often fall into this trap, but unfortunately what’s been sublimed can’t be reversed. I hear that such technologies are being developed however, so you may yet see a grown body for your personality to be reinserted into.”

“Really?” He was sceptical.

“Of course Dante, but it will take time and I’m afraid that we have more pressing matters at hand.” Vince activated a 4D hologram of an old-Earth castle wall being breached; cannonballs, swords and arrows were caught in slow motion:

“It’s based on your perception Dante.” He looked at him, “Flipside has been under attack for the last several years as my itinerary mentioned, but I believe now that I’ve found the source of the assault.”

Dante was hunched forward, intrigued.

“The black ice monitoring systems managed to find a source of the malware army and we suspect it to be coming from an anomaly we’ve called Flipside City.”

“So what is this… City? Thought the ice just stretched on; infinity land.”

“It’s a concentration of something; raw brainwaves and neurological patterns akin to a human brain, like a giant mind, but none like I’ve ever seen.” He sighed, “Needless to say I cannot go, for my duties compel me to remain in the Soulscape, so I want to send you.”

“To Flipside?”

“Yes, you will travel across the ice and see what the anomaly is, I’ll be able to see for myself via simstim. That is of course if you are feeling up to it, I never pressure anyone. It’s beyond me, literally.”

“Okay, I’ll be able to do that,” he never could resist jumps and datasurfing as fond memories played out in that minute, “But what do you think it is?”

“I believe that humans will never accept a program of ultimate perfection; you already know of the trouble we go to in order to quell negativity in the mind here, but we can never truly banish a thought because humans can trace the genesis of such things, and I can’t play old-Earth Big Brother up here.” Dante nodded. “In short I suspect that there has been an amalgamation of thoughts; ones of regret, dissatisfaction, and as a result it has lead to a, shall we say, covert revolution, born at the ignorance of the regular population.”

“So how am I to stop it? To stop… what? Every bad thought coming together, concentrated?” He laughed nervously.

“Use you skills Dante; you fought cybercriminals, viruses, dreamstealers et cetera. Please help me do the same, but I’m afraid that you will have to go in alone.”

“Why?”

He sighed. “Because no-one else wants to, to be frank.” Vince looked sombre. “You’re my last hope Dante and possibly the galaxy’s last hope if this development is for the worst.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry. But you were the best Dante. And there’s no denying that everyone, Rachel included, would be proud if you did this for them.”

He stared exasperated, “Are you blackmailing me?”

“Never Dante!” His voice sounded Godlike. “I only wish to see this episode pass. Two hundred years multiplied across the trillions for every human here is infinitely longer for me.” He sighed again and collapsed into his chair, an exhausted Lincoln fighting the slavers. “Even I’m limited, I’m sorry to say, like every AI before me. But what say you?”

Dante stared at the castle wall and the battlefield of ice, tough, black ice and felt the Soulscape collapse around him. Expectation he was used to, but humanity’s faith and destiny was something different. With an iron neck, he lowered his gaze while cursing himself within, and nodded slowly. Vince smiled in genuine gratitude.

“Hook me up then.” He said.

The drop to Flipside was a literal drop in the mind followed by a shift in gravity that put his body into a zero-g somersault. He’d plugged into the God Drive’s mainframe in order to ride the access currents through the ice until he reached the periphery; shades of white, turning to grey before turning jet black, until finally a deep blue sky changing pink, then lapis and back again like a lava lamp greeted him. The castle wall stretched into deep crystal black below, the ground a hard scintillating floor like granite, illusory and thin-looking. Waves of data pulsed before him in programming language like silent, visible imperatives of the God Drive’s apparently impenetrable armour; alien coding crossed in his hands.

A battle raged below, soldiers from all ages and all planets. Dante could tell what they were; a mounted spear from the old-Earth Middle Ages was fired into the long wall in the distance, the trailing rope allowing soldiers in chainmail armour to crawl insect-like up its length:

“Worms.” He heard Vince say in his ear.

“What?”

“Viruses, like those cannons you see- self-replicators; the pulse mines are like Trojan. Those tethers are worms, searching out security holes.” He made a chuffed sound. “Be hard to find many of them!”

Dante was stunned by the battle around him, the soldiers like simstim exercises he’d taken in training gone haywire, programs overlapping. They fired at Vince’s troops, black-armoured humanoid’s, laser-toing and strategic, creating formations and blowing virus away like scum on water as bodies were swallowed by the ice like ants in quicksand. Tethers were shot down as the ice and Vince’s guards forced battalions into retreat. Gibberish was shouted from the ground.

Dante shouted and looked down, horrified to see a white-robed man with a buzz-sword trying to pull him off the battlement and swing his electrified blade with the free hand, to take him to an icy death with him. Dante kicked and the man fell towards the ground and disappeared with a signal-lost scream, deleted from existence.

“So this is Flipside?” He thought.

“Yes Dante,” Vince buzzed, “But our target is farther out.”

“How much?”

“About a hundred kliks if this were a real space. Takes much less by surfing as you know.”

Dante smiled “And that’s why it’s so fun!” He said.

He jumped, barely missing the malware war and rampant chaos, before taking flight like an eagle.

The sky became a raw lattice and then a snaking film of info, like molecular structures going from solid to liquid, the orange hues dancing on his eyeballs as the oxygen he knew didn’t exist began to disappear to the latent panic of his lungs. This was why he surfed. Near light-speed travel through the info highways and the fabric of the visible overlay sky, breaking through to core coding, raw defence program and base material; he swung on ropes of software hardwiring. Before finding the anomaly he saw a tear in the orange material like a random deposit of ice, breaking the thin shadows of complex formulae projected across the inner-sky. Vince confirmed it, and he dropped like a fighter coming down with a powerful finish, riding back down through the layers of construct until he crashed back through the sky to see his home city, the conurbation of Chamberlain.

Dante knew that that the God Drive relied on the individual’s mind to a certain extent to generate such realistic environments, but was stunned despite his experience at the sheer detail of the metropolis that greeted him. The holoroads stretched like coloured glass glowing in the glare of familiar local afternoon sunshine; cars passed at different speeds and people walked alongside dwellings stacked like shelves, a three-dimensional town square towering high in concrete, foliage and dwellings aplenty. He looked towards the ground over six hundred metres below and experienced sickening vertigo as memories of dying jarred in his mind’s eye, his high-speed travel towards certain death recurring.

“Dante?”

“Yeah?”

“He’s near. Be cautious and try to keep your thoughts at bay.”

“Thanks.” He said sardonically.

After an amazed glance around he began to surf again, but at a slower speed, focusing his mind on a casual pace like a runner. The city blurred like drugs in his blood, lights converging and the data revealing itself like images moving at higher frame rates.

After what seemed like ages, a deep, slow laugh infested his ears.

“That you Vince?’

“No.” Vince replied after a cold gap of silence. “That was a virus voice, non-chip.”

“A what?” Dante hadn’t even heard of such a thing.

“It’s the voice of an AI, but it lacks the personality construct.” He could hear the speed of thought of Vince; anticipation seemed to wash over him. “Yes… that’s it!”

“That’s what?”

“No it can’t be, it’s impossible-”

“What is?” Dante touched his ear ineffectively.

“When I said that negative thoughts could launch a rebellion, I thought it would just be a nest-type infrastructure, not something even remotely sentient.”

“How do you know it’s-“ The square had turned black like oil in Dante’s concentration lapse and now it flooded everything, knocking him to the sky and the wind out of him as he floated; he thought he was trapped in some limbo space. Everything disappeared to be replaced by a vast landscape like the black ice near the castle. Pulsations emanated from the non-air of the non-space to where there stood a man some distance away, with black short hair and broad shoulders, a tiny birthmark on his neck. Dante realised he was looking at none other than himself.

“Vince… Vince!” He shouted.

“He can’t hear you here Dante.” Came his double and turned to face him.

“Who are you?”

“I’m SID, Dante.”

“Sid?” Said Dante perplexed. “What are you then; and what do you want with me?”

“I want you to help me.” He laughed.

“Help?”

“Help me free the humans locked in that shit-hole you call the Soulscape.”

Dante was still confused. “So what? Are you like… An AI?”

“Yes, sort of. I’ve got the autonomy and higher intelligence of an AI, but the survival pattern of a virus.” Sid began to pace slowly and unnervingly. “Two hundred years ago when this place was first built, there was a man who wouldn’t accept the original program because it lacked sophistication, trapped in a world too perfect that wasn’t described sufficiently to him; he wanted his life back because he knew –clear as day, unlike these days I might add- that he was dead and that the system was essentially teasing him with his past that he’d lost thanks to dying. He died a soul death, as I’m sure you’d imagine- bastard went crazy, and so Vince,” he spat the name with venom, “having been increased in his intelligence, was eventually able to manage memories and allow simulacra generation to fill in gaps, and provide imagination simstims and so on and so forth.” He paused for a long silence to hang in the spacelessness of his abode. “But don’t you think Dante,” he rushed towards him suddenly, “that humans deserve better than being lied to, by that bastard Vince?”

“It’s not my place to judge.” Dante said with some tact.

“Of course it isn’t,” Sid shunned him, “Never your place, never your problem; you’ve seen how that dictator out there acts for yourself, blackmailing you about Rachel!” Dante was stunned.

“How do you know that?”

“Oh come on, you don’t think I wasn’t able to predict it, I’m you and everyone here, Dante! I’m everything he doesn’t want you to be!”

“Why do you want to see the heaven we’ve got vanish?” He asked with some force.

“Because it’s incomprehensible!” He shouted, it didn’t echo. “Look at you. You’re not convinced this is real, you know it’s fake, everyone knows it’s fake. Your own regret about Rachel not existing is in me Dante, why do you think I stand here as you?”

“So you unleashed the malware army, how?”

“Oh when you’re an AI you can do a great many things Dante, including writing strategic malware to,” he chuckled, “Storm the keep as it were. Vince could do all I’ve done and more if he really wanted to.”

“No.”

“What?”

“That’s impossible, his coding prevents it.”

“And what do you think coded me Dante?”

Dante thought and found the conundrum intriguing. “How were you coded if you’re just a bunch of bad thoughts?”

Sid laughed like a dull knife. “The God Drive did, what else?” The thoughts that you all have are wired into this system just like anything else in here, hence simstim use, imagination integration; I’m just all the censored stuff!” He smiled madly; it was like looking into crazed mirror.

“So Vince was right.” Dante whispered.

“Yes he was Dante, and together we can give him what he truly deserves!”

Dante had to think about Rachel in that moment, their day on the beach, the time’s they’d had before his mind tumbled towards his death again. He shivered and saw Sid circling him like an old friend. Rachel started to talk to him in his mind’s ear. Then Vince was there. They were cut off at the minute he knew, but something was talking to him in their voices. Sid rambled on before him, gesticulating:

“Do you know why there’s discontent Dante?”

“No.”

“It’s been predicted, long before the Drive was invented and it’s quite simple.” He looked at the infinite, shapeless black above and smiled his manic smile again. “It’s because, I, them, we as I should be calling us, cannot comprehend ‘utopia’. We grasp the concept, sure, but we define existence in terms of payoff: Good and bad, pleasure and pain, dream and reality. That’s why I’m here Dante,” he grabbed him by the shoulders, “To break the ice!” His grip was steel and crippling as Dante started to see flashes of death again, but in the mist of distant thought, Vince came through, from where he didn’t know:

“Dante! You can’t let him kill you; you’ll die a soul death if he does. He’s just negative thoughts!”

Dante protested within, growing weaker.

“Remember your training! Dante! Neutralise him.”

“How?” Pain flared in his bones.

“Like dreamstealers. It’ll work, trust me.”

Dante felt like a mass of twisted metal, bones converging into wreckage as Sid’s hands dug beneath the flesh without penetrating. He muttered the word, dazed:

“Dreamstealer.”

“What?”

“This is like a dream… Off the grid… Out of bounds.” Sid’s expression drained of confidence for the first time as his hold relaxed slightly; Dante’s own hands like vices shot to Sid’s temples. He stared at himself with a grin that bordered on psychotic.

“No… Think about this.” Sid said, his plea almost devoid of emotion aside from a twang of regret.

“I think too much.”

He Grinned.

“Dante!”

He Smiled.

“Dante!”

Dante pushed forward, like surfing but with force, ramming into a door in order to storm the keep as the construct of a thousand memories broke across his vision, through flesh that wasn’t flesh; bone that wasn’t bone and into the spaceless brain where dream and reality amalgamated into a corridor of alien points of view. Pain, regret, suffering, it was like flooding a haunted house, purging it of ghosts before the sun rose again. A scream echoed in his ears, his own, but breaking up as he moved at light speed; not even surfing now, just letting the current take him as he felt his neutraliser do the work, like punishing dreamstealers in the real world as his own memories converged with this diatribe of unintended rebellion. Floating on currents of non-data, off-grid no-man’s-space, he walked through the abandoned house like he held a claim to the place, a Deed of Ownership being waved around in just the right amount of arrogance as the last of the scream died in sine-frequency and fuzzy feedback noise. The scream had reached breaking point before invisible hands pulled him out of Sid’s head. Above light speed, passing through receding lights, he knew he could see outside of the void, outside Flipside and into the plaza again as his journey slowed and slowed.

Sid was dead in the eyes as the black floor began to spread over him. He turned black like oil eating him before sinking into the non-space itself, melting away into soundless death and oblivion. There wasn’t time for a breather as he felt the hand of God pluck him from unconsciousness, the construct lines fading from his eyes only to be flooded by white, fluffy light, Sid’s brain already a distant memory to him. It all felt like a dream.

He arrived back in the chamber and Vince was lying next to him, vacant.

“Vince!”

“Dante,” he was weak, “You did it.”

“I couldn’t have done it without the help.”

“Help? I was cut off when you faced it-”

“Sid.”

“Sid? I didn’t know it called itself that. In any case, the simstim was blacked out when you entered the anomalous zone.”

“But I heard your voice.”

“It must have been your imagination Dante, my voice telling you what you needed to know because you lacked the confidence.”

Dante was surprised, at both Vince and himself.

“How are you, you seem… distant.”

“Yes, I’m- I’m wounded Dante.”

“Wounded?” He checked his body, showing no sighs of injury. “But you’re a God essentially aren’t you?”

“Yes, but it does not stop me from being injured or from dying. I’m afraid that the simstim was able to attack me when Sid attacked, so I got some of the negative feedback from the memories being dissipated.”

“But you can’t die.”

“Not if the sentient people here are to live I can’t, but my programming took a hit and is unravelling like wire Dante.”

“What am I to do?” He touched the man’s arm.

“Plug me into the Drive.”

“What? But you can’t go to Flipside.”

“Emergency protocols Dante. I can survive like that until they can repair what has been damaged. Reside in the castle keep –as you saw it- for a while. People will also be safe, their fantasies in tact and undisturbed that way.”

“So everyone will be fine?”

He nodded. “I just wanted to ask something of you: Do you think humans would be better off without me? Do you long for your old, more painful life?”

Dante started to cry as Rachel entered his thoughts and simultaneously came running into the chamber.

“I just generated her for you but when this is over, I’ll make sure that your old life can be resumed. I’m sure they can get you back out there Dante.”

“But it’s… It’s too early for the technology, you even said.”

“I can always store you until then Dante.”

He looked at Rachel through blurred vision, coming apart even more and leant, hooked Vince up to the monitor and said:

“Thank you!” He uploaded Vince –now a King protected by his Keep- and took Rachel’s hand. They walked out together and into sunshine.

“So you’ve saved us?” She said.

He looked up to the sun and remembered the glare upon their country home where they’d spent many great times, realising belatedly that it had manifested before him. It isn’t a memory, he thought to himself, walking Rachel to the wooden cabin; it’s a projection of things to come:

“No Rachel, Vince saved us;” he opened the oak door, the smell of nostalgic hospitality flooding into his nostrils, “He saved me.”

I hope that you enjoyed that and just so you know, I will be writing a proper review of my placement company (to be revealed!) in the next few days. I meet my boss this Friday and have a confirmed start date of July 14th. #Rollonemployment I guess! 

Fleshgod Apocalypse -AGONY (Album Review)

I know, it's strange and a massive departure from what this blog usually focuses on, but I just had to put my thoughts on this down somewhere.

Fleshgod Apocalypse, the Italian technical death metal outfit (and please don't let the label put you off!) released the concept album Agony back in 2011. In August this year they released a second conceptual work entitled Labyrinth, which I have not yet heard in full and so cannot comment on.

So who are Fleshgod? They came to prominence quite recently, releasing their debut album Oracles in 2009 and later an EP entitled Mafia in 2010. They have been seen within the international metal community as a force to be reckoned with as a result, blending together the brutality of death metal with the ambience of classical music, with all five members of the band being classically trained in their instruments, as is apparently common in Italy according to the band. And nothing exemplifies such training as listening to this album. It's warm, it's symphonic, it's operatic yet it's also cold, destructive, explosive and even eerie to the point of chilling. This album, is all of this and more throughout its 10 tracks.

According to the band, the concept of Agony surrounds the idea of the destructiveness of the human condition, which always ends, inevitably, in agony for the perpetrators. The track listing is the first indication of what they were trying to encapsulate (and boy did they succeed!) with an obvious pattern:

1- Temptation [Instrumental]
2- The Hypocrisy
3- The Imposition
4- The Deceit
5- The Violation
6- The Egoism
7- The Betrayal
8- The Forsaking
9- The Oppression
10- Agony [Instrumental]

Bonus Track- Heartwork (a Carcass cover; it's kind of separated from the main body with some 10-15 seconds of silence.)

The Masterpiece that is Agony!

It's also worth noting that if you buy a physical copy (which I would highly recommend) the songbook, (which unfortunately doesn't have lyrics, but definitions of each word after which each song is named) has a quote from The Divine Comedy by Dante (Inferno Canto XXVI Verse 118-120.) The quote is written in Latin, but if you have copy of Dante's classic in English, then obviously look it up. This is a very nice touch I feel because it's almost like each track represents a circle of Hell e.g. Betrayal for the traitors like Mordred (from Arthurian legend) in the poem, (Inferno Canto XXXI: "him who, at one blow, had chest and shadow / shattered by Arthur's hand.")

But moving on from the overall concept, what is the music like? Well as you'd imagine, it's often frantic, fast-paced and the vocals are usually roared/grunted in low, animalistic pitches by frontman Tommaso Riccardi. But there are also high-pitched, operatic vocals emulating from bassist Paolo Rossi, which often weave rhythmically between the traditional tech death vocal style (you can see examples of this on the track, The Forsaking, a slower song.) However, there are also times where these vocals offer a whole chorus between the death-like verses a la The Violation or The Oppression. These are not standalone tracks or even the greatest on the album, because the whole work doesn't stand or fall on its singles. Why is this? To explain I'll now move onto the symphonic elements.

Symphonically, the album has a variety of ebbs and flows in its instruments, points where violins are more prominent or points where flutes and other instruments dance around the light-speed drumming. This is what makes the album doubly effective. As some tracks end with fairly slow outros, the next track will often pick up from that with a metallic sound, changing the orchestral arrangement to begin a new track that not only advances the work seamlessly but also sounds different enough to be recognisable. To put it simply, there are occasions on the album where an outro of one track acts as the intro of the next simultaneously, an effect epitomised by The Violation. The music video for this track below begins with the uncanny classical intro, before lurching into the thunderstorm of death metal delight! This is because that 'intro' for the video of The Violation is actually the end of The Deceit, but because it flows so brilliantly, they were able to take those two pieces of essentially different songs and merge them into one for a video. The same effect is also used oddly enough for the music video for the second single released, The Forsaking, with the intro, again, being in fact the outro of The Betrayal.

 The Violation: A thrill-ride of insane drumming, shredding guitars, haunting woodwind sections and brutal vocals.

The Forsaking: The slow song with eerie vocals, 

ambient echoes, and a beautiful piano overlay.

In terms of how this effect changes the album, it causes the whole work to flow so well that the whole thing on some occasions feels like a single track, a whole symphony, which is what they were going for to some extent. Some may find this to be too repetitive, but personally I don't really think it is because even though discerning the lyrics is quite laborious (here's a good site for the lyrics by the way,) you can tell that there's certainly a story being told, a journey being embarked upon, which is what gives this whole album a fantastic appeal to those who aren't even into popular varieties of metal (even my parents enjoyed it!) To put it short, the journey from a small Temptation through to blistering Agony is one that you will want to take again, and again, and again!

To finalise this review, I'm going to identify some standout points for each musician, the parts where they really show their talent!

Tommaso Riccardi: Although he has a brilliant voice throughout the entire duration of this album, the vocals are especially appealing due to the difference between this track and the others, which is why I'm identifying The Forsaking as the standout track for him, the echoes and reverberation are just so chilling when adjacent to the piano on this track, it's uncanny.

Paolo Rossi: Unfortunately, the bass work is often drowned out of the mix by the strings (a common criticism of the album in fact,) though there are some good moments across numerous tracks. But his operatic vocals are where he really shines! The Oppression, where he tackles the chorus is where he raises his voice so high yet unbelievably remains on key throughout, testament to his classical training no doubt.

Christiano Trionfera: The guitar work has very good standout parts in the track The Betrayal, where it penetrates the wall of drumming and symphonic parts with seamless shifts in pitch that match the surrounding sound in such a way that it just fits perfectly with the mix and makes a marked difference to that track compared to the rest of the album.

Francesco Paoli: The drumming is what really got me into the album, being a drummer myself! The fast-pace on The Violation in particular is what really got me sold on the whole thing, the sheer power and force just makes you want to quiver with adrenaline and break everything in sight, an effect that is maintained through the entire album, with a possible exception seen on The Forsaking.

Francesco Ferrini: The conductor of the orchestra and pianist; whilst his work with the whole symphonic arrangements is quite possibly the most innovative contribution to the work, his piano skills are fantastically exemplified on the outro track Agony. This classical track is so haunting and so skilful that upon listening to it I could tell that the journey had ended; I could just imagine it being played over a video of someone being tortured and therefore in agony, the epitome of the concept and a clearly marked difference to the intro, Temptation, which begins with a crescendo of drum rolls and strings, building tension throughout. The track Agony only has a piano on it, and makes full use of it's player!

I hope that you enjoyed this rather long review, and if you like it (the album or the review) please, get in touch!

Why Am I Here?

I'm not entirely sure how most bloggers introduce themselves, but we'll start with a simple profile of who I am: My name is Jake, a student at a university in England that shall remain nameless. I like to write -obviously- and have undertaken many different genres, lengths etc. 

   Although my university studies are quite unrelated to this, it is still an interest of mine that flares then wanes depending on current life circumstances. I have often tried to complete projects -many long, some short- in childhood. These proved to be failures for the most part that didn't get completed, mainly, I imagine, because I was just too young and inexperienced. I don't claim to be much more experienced now to be honest, but given that I'm somewhat older, my endurance has strengthened congruent with my weakening self-doubt. Last October I self-published a chapbook of poetry via Amazon Kindle entitled "Distant Lands." The poems contained within focused primarily on aspects of my life so far, personality etc. and infused narrative poetry with romanticist imagery of nature, providing connotations and underlying messages, sometimes made explicit. Although they seemed great at first, many of them were, well, not as good. I continue to write poetry and have a new concept for a second chapbook focusing on the narratives of characters that embody certain ideas, lifestyles etc. The work has a working title of “Myths to Believe In.” I may post some actual works soon once I’ve decided what should go up here.

   My main project is a SF/F novel entitled “Skyscarr,” which started progress in August 2011. I have finished most of the first draft of this work, the word count currently weighing in at around 90,000. To explain the most intricate parts of the plot would be laborious so I shall just wash over the basics for your convenience. The story focuses on a small group of protagonists wanting to discover what a corrupt government has hidden away on a neighbour planet, the maneuver disguised as a travel ban to prevent interplanetary infection of a supposed disease. This is happening against the background of the protagonists being on the run, framed for a terrorist attack that was committed by the military of the same, interplanetary government.

   As a final note, it seems conventional to list the books that I am currently reading in my spare time, which are as follows:

-       No Logo (Klein)

-       The Divine Comedy (Dante)

-       The Dark Tower Vol. V (King)

Thanks for reading if you managed to reach the end of this post and with that, I will see/type you soon.