And We Await the Shrike...

Following up on my last post regarding Milton's Paradise Lost, the Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons have been optioned as a movie. Sorry, to be more specific - optioned as an UNfilm-able movie much in the same way as Paradise Lost and other stories that probably never should have been committed to celluloid. These would be other notable titles like Watchmen and Dune. The jury is still out on how successful Watchmen was, and Dune only worked as a miniseries that could have used a hell of a lot more budget.

The Hyperion Cantos is especially challenging, especially as the first book of four is written as a space opera in the format of the Canterbury Tales. The book is essentially a novella broken up into different tales of a traveller on their way to a pilgrimage. The second book picks up where the first book left off but more as a traditional forward moving narrative. But therein lies yet another problem, one of the main sub-stories of the Hyperion Cantos actually travels backwards.... plus with about ten main characters whose storylines all split off after book one, it gets even more complicated.

Anyways, arguably one of the major characters is The Shrike. I say "arguably" as he is more of a plot device than anything else. He's a god, the messenger of pain, and (spoiler alert), the counterbalance to the spirit of empathy. He is the herald of the future with origins in humanity's past. He is silent, vicious, perhaps non-sentient, and pretty much invincible. He teleports, time travels, and control the local quantum stream to a degree, ie., he can utilise different potential selves simultaneously to accomplish his goals. He is his own superposition, to use a phrase from quantum physics. He is the ultimate bad-ass, a chrome four-armed demon covered in spikes and shards of razor-sharp metal. You gotta respect that.

I bring you several artists' renditions of what he should look like. At the moment, he is only limited to our imaginations. And I dare someone to dress up like him at Comic Con..