People who Know Me Long Time would probably have guessed that given a choice between three factions of Humans, Swarming Aliens, and Artificial Intelligences, I'd pick the AIs over pretty much anything. I felt that Durandal (Marathon) and SHODAN (System Shock) and even 343 Guilty Spark (Halo) were incredibly, utterly awesome characters in their own right. I have no logical or rational reason for this other than sheer unbridled fanboyism.

Now, it's not that I liked them, as much as I liked thinking about them. AIs in fiction fascinate me, especially those which are supposed to be "more powerful", so to speak, than normal human beings. The AI could be the antagonist and I could be rooting for the protagonists as per usual and cheer when the AI is defeated, but until then, I want to learn as much about this AI as possible, and how it actually worked (within the confines of its fictional universe, of course). I suppose it's the appeal of seeing what a near-omnipotent non-human entity can and will do, and how it goes about doing it.

Therefore, when I finally picked up The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons, I gravitated towards my usual interest, and the TechnoCore caught my immediate attention. I had read Hyperion (the previous and first book in the series) before that, but I wasn't used to the style of writing then, and so I'll probably be re-reading it soon.

But why did I pick up the books anyway? Simple: they were featured in The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. Specifically, The Fall of Hyperion was shown in episode 2 (Kyonologically), as Yuki Nagato was reading it. The following contains major spoilers for the Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons, as well as The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, for the entire anime run and up to volume 7 of the novels. Read on at your own risk. Also, I'm going to be going into Fanfiction What-If mode.

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