Talk:Hyperion Cantos/Archive 1

Ummon

I've expanded the Ummon character's section. But I really think that the page Ummon probably shouldn't redirect to here, but rather to an article on the actual guy. --Maru 00:03, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

I would love to see that. If you could provide a stub and some links or other information I could use to find further information, I'd be happy to contribute. When I wrote the original Ummon text, I could find none of that. --Avriette 16:16, September 3, 2005 (UTC)

Currently my main source is User:Marudubshinki/Ummon; it seems trustworthy in that the information on the historical Ummon accords with my previous researches. Some of the other Wikipedias have information (see here for a Google translation). Unfortunately, the only primary text I've found which is available is the Gateless Gate, which features Ummon twice or thrice. I will learn more as time permits. --Maru 18:58, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

I have added considerably more to the page. Some of the koans and sayings I am unsure of; others I have requested the book from my library to verify the reference. --Maru (talk) 01:05, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

If you can flesh this out into a full article on Ummon, I really think the redirect should be removed. As you've found, it's kind of tough to find information. I could ask the priest at our (buddhist) temple, see what he has to say, if there's a source or two we could read. --Avriette 22:11, September 6, 2005 (UTC)

It's worth a try; but I recently lucked out with a book called "Zen Koans", purporting to be the most comprehensive collection of koans collected in English [1]; and the author appears to have had a soft spot for Ummon- I managed to glean his lineage back to Bodhidharma, some variant textual readings of koans I already found, and about 13 new koans which don't show up online, plus an excellent descriptive quote of Ummon by Kubose. I think I can start on the article while I await the interlibrary loans to arrive, although it may include too many koans. I don't really know the guidelines on that. --Maru (talk) 23:45, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

I am as good as my word- I have uploaded and largely cleaned up an Ummon article. I look forward to seeing you add your own research to the page. --Maru (talk) 03:23, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

Treeships

ISTR there were only 13 treeships before the Yggdrasil was destroyed above Hyperion. Can anyone confirm that? Avriette 22:11, September 6, 2005 (UTC)

Weren't there a total of 4 (publicly known) treeships? (I'm excluding all the ones that lifted off after the scorch of God's Grove by the 'Core). I recall a line in which someone wonders why the Templars would risk one of "the four" priceless treeships. --maru (talk) contribs 13:52, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Confirmed. They were 4 before destruction of Ygdrasil.--SidiLemine 17:40, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I recently found why I thought that: The Fall of Hyperion follows Meina Gladstone in the early chapters, and one of her musings is on the curious Templar actions in which she thinks that line. --maru (talk) contribs 21:26, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Questionable illustration

This edit added a Shrike illustration. This illustration was apparently never endorsed by the author or related publishers. It is consequently "fan-art". I have some reserves about the appropriateness of putting such an illustration. The Hyperion Cantos has never been transformed into a film or any other graphic form, thus the Shrike has no official apparence (besides occasional apparitions on book covers in various forms). To be honest, however well-meaning the illustration author was, the caption and copyright restrictions make it sounds more like a commercial plug..

I'll delete the illustration on the article page in the following days as we already have a Shrike on the book cover if there are no objections.

GrAfFiT^{Talk Contribs} 13:39, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

• Go for it. Fan art is really inappropriate here. --Etacar11 13:52, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

• Done GrAfFiT^{Talk Contribs} 14:59, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Complete article rewrite

This article should be about the Cantos as a whole, and not divided in sub articles already covered by their own pages for the two firsts. If there is no objection in a week, I'll delete the article and rewrite it in accordance to the project's guidelines. --SidiLemine 14:01, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

This would be most welcomed as the current structure is confusing. Incidentally, I just created a stub for Endymion and discovered that The Rise of Endymion is only a Redirect to the Cantos itself. Unfortunately, I haventt read either of the later books yet, so this is as far as I can help... --Tikiwont 15:30, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the support. Stubs for both Endymion and the Rise of Endymion are welcome, even if just to put in a setting and an infobox. I'll perform the split later on, leaving a succinct synopsis here and links to the different articles. Do you know if there are any guidelines/format to write articles about a series of novels? --SidiLemine 15:38, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

No idea about guidelines for a series of novels, I am just daddling around in Wikipedia since a few days and just finished reading The Fall of Hyperion. However, it seems to me that the two Hyperion novels and the two Endymion novels are quite different from each other and have recently been published in to respective 'Omnibus' editions. This 2+2 structure is something that you may want to mention / reflect also in the rewrite. --Tikiwont 16:01, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, you shouldn't be surprised. In Prayers to Broken Stones, Simmons mentions that when he started writing Endymion, it wasn't set in the Cantos. --Gwern (contribs) 16:18, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

$yD, what do you mean about redundant sub-articles? --Gwern (contribs) 16:55, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I mean that the character lists for Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion are present on the main articles for these novels. By the way, Hyperion won the Hugo prize. Doesn't that warrant "High" importance? --SidiLemine 10:46, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Oh. In that case, I agree with both your sentences (although so many characters pop up or are repeatedly referenced it seems to me best to maintain a single list to avoid redundancy and lists drifting out of sync); and as far as importance goes, who knows how the projects grade that sort of thing? --Gwern (contribs) 16:41, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

From what I gather, they're still very much discussing it, but for now they're quite far from having clear guidelines for SF works (last time I checked the discussion was still around how many books per classic author will get automatic "Top" importance). --SidiLemine 09:20, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

That's foolish. It's not like we are drowning in articles on books - we should be accepting as many articles as we can get. --Gwern (contribs) 15:53, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, I don't know about foolish, but certainly there's still a lot of road to go. Moreover they're gone to throwing huge chunks of text at each other now, which almost always stalls any type of reflexion. Feel free to have a look. Actually, I think we might define a few guidelines as to rate importance of SF novels, and see what they think about it, what do you say?--SidiLemine 17:37, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Sheesh. You would think it'd be pretty easy: High importance for anything winning a Nebula/Hugo etc., conditional highs for merely nominated (for example, the novels of The Book of the New Sun), default Medium for works by important authors like Asimov, Heinlein, Herbert, etc. and Low by default for everything else. --Gwern (contribs) 18:54, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good! Might be a little hard to adapt to the classics (you're not going to chase if every Shakespeare has been nominated for a prize in order to give him 'High' importance), but it's a start. We might just want to adjust for series by great authors (like, if only the first "foundation" by Asimov has had a prize, I guess the sequels are, if not top, at least High), as SF works very much by series. Is there already an importance assessment for the authors going on?--SidiLemine 09:41, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Looking at some author article, it looks like the only assessors are Biography project members. And as for series, well, I did say by default it'd be Medium. --Gwern (contribs) 15:29, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

I personally would agree. High importance works are almost universally singular and groundbreaking pieces of literature, while series placed in the same setting may be rather popular but only very rarely quite as important for historical or literary reasons. Special exceptions could be made for distinctly influential triologies or similar rarities consisting of basically one large work in multiple books. --84.186.202.26 17:48, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Please don't just delete the article. You'll lose the history that way. Please just do your rewrite, preferably in scratch space under your user page, and then update this article. There's no need for a delete. ... aa:talk 18:04, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

No worries. By delete, I just meant "remove unuseful stuff". But with a new job starting now, I guess it will be waaay longer than I scheduled... About series, there are a few in whitch no particular volume is of exceptional importance. LOTR comes to mind. --SidiLemine 10:11, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

I think it's close to OR to suggest so, but my personal feeling is that Fall of Hyperion is the most important to the story, when considered separate from the other novels. The first book is just window dressing on the second, as are the third and fourth. ... aa:talk 13:29, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, the first one is the one that had a Hugo Award, and to me the fourth is the most important, as it gives out the whole plot.... But I'm not really fond of that importance thing anyway.--SidiLemine 14:42, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

The summary

Doing an overall summary would be quite tricky I'd imagine. There are a HUGE number of plot holes and inconstancies in this saga. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 66.134.249.34 (talk) 19:15, 15 March 2007 (UTC).

It's not too bad if you are working internally in the Hyperion duology or Endymion, especially since I think a lot of the plot holes people have detected in the first duology were actually just ramifications of the 2 or 3 different contending futures; but unifying them is a headache, especially as Simmons has said Endymion was never originally meant to be in the Hyperion Cantos universe at all! --Gwern (contribs) 20:13 15 March 2007 (GMT)

Planets

Tsingtao-Hsishang Panna is missing, maybe a few others too. PAStheLoD 01:18, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Hyperion cover.jpg

Image:Hyperion cover.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot (talk) 17:44, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Merger proposal

There are several articles, such as Hawking drive, Technocore, and Deathwand, which IMHO should be merged back into this one. Two of the three, in particular, are largely already covered within the scope of this one and could simply be replaced with redirects; the Technocore article should simply be rolled into this one at the appropriate point. Exerda (talk) 17:10, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Why does "treeship" redirect here?

I don't know what a treeship is, and this article doesn't seem to help. So why does "treeship" redirect here? Please undo the redirect. Thanks! Softlavender (talk) 03:41, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

• Done. Fixed. Redirect removed and cleaned-up article restored. Softlavender (talk) 04:10, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

I really think treeship should be merged into this article. It's a concept important only to the Cantos (appearing as it does in practically every novel and short story), but there's no way it has notability on its own. In addition, it's never going to be anything more than a stub, so there's hardly any size-related reason to not merge it. --Gwern (contribs) 04:18 15 December 2008 (GMT)

If that's the case, then TREESHIP (if it's going to be a redirect) needs to be featured prominently in this article somewhere, such as in the Technology glossary. Frankly, I think it was idiotic that anyone even started an article called "Treeship," and it should actually be completely deleted. Since I didn't know how to delete the article or get it deleted, I removed the redirect and resurrected the article. If you know how to delete the article completely or request that it be deleted, please do so. Softlavender (talk) 06:17, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

So... you think it should be featured prominently, but it's idiotic to think it merits an article? OK, then. --Gwern (contribs) 23:11 16 December 2008 (GMT)

Was that sarcasm, or did you not get my meaning? "Treeship," before I restored the article on it (because I don't know how to request its complete deletion from Wikipedia), redirected here, even though there is absolutely no prominent mention of the word in this 34,000-byte article. That certainly did not work, and anyone (like me) who clicked on the Wikilink "treeship" from another completely unrelated article (on Hugh Jackman) wanting to know what it meant simply got an article on a vast science-fiction world with no definition of the word treeship. You yourself implied that there is no reason to have an article on "treeship." [I've since removed the word treeship from the Hugh Jackman article (it wasn't even accurate there, I since discovered).] So now, in my opinion, either the treeship article should stand as is, or should be deleted entirely. There should NOT be a redirect of a word to an article which either (1) is not a synonym or a clear superset of the word or (2) does not explain the word itself very prominently. I hope that was clearer. Softlavender (talk) 10:36, 17 December 2008 (UTC)