Evolution and the Fall of Gods

The key metaphor of THE FALL OF HYPERION comes from John Keats's poem of the same name. In the poem, the Titans led by Saturn, have just been defeated by the upstart young gods led by Jupiter. They lament their losses and try to come to turns with the new world order. Their efforts are what created the new gods, and now those gods have replaced them. The Titans themselves were once the upstarts when they rebelled and defeated their creators, led by ancient Uranus.

The Keats poem is cited directly throughout the book, at times in specific relation to the creation of the two UIs that will replace the TechnoCore AIs and humanity. At one point, the Keats cybrid discusses the poem as an argument for evolution fifty years before Darwin. In the poem, the god of the deep, Oceanus, bids the...