What happens when you take elements from the past and elements from the future and fuse them together? Usually something pretty fucking average. Unless you're Dan Simmons, and then you get one of the most brilliant artificial intelligence novels to ever be written - and it is that brilliance (along with its popularity - yep, we like a popularity contest here) that places Hyperion from The Hyperion Cantos series of science fiction novels in first place.

Hyperion follows a group of travelers sent by the Church of the Final Atonement, Shrike Church, on a pilgrimage on the eve of Armageddon while the entire galaxy is warring, to the Time Tombs on Hyperion. On Hyperion there is a creature called the Shrike that is feared and worshipped, but there are also those who are ready to destroy it. As they progress, the reader learns each traveler's tale and is drawn in by the depth of character that they learn about. There are so many traditional science-fiction elements and contemporary ideas in this story by Simmons that it has something to appeal to everyone.

There's even a little bit of the Wizard of Oz in it, if that's your thing! Almost every novel within The Hyperion Cantos series won a Locus Award, with Hyperion winning both the Hugo and Locus Awards in 1990. A film adaptation is currently being developed by Warner Bros. Similar Recommendations: The Fall of Hyperion; Endymion and The Rise of Endymion (all part of The Hyperion Cantos series).