[Supermancho]

It's interesting how different stories have different underlying religious underpinnings in different parts of the world. It's important to consider that these themes are precisely because the stories are born from the surrounding culture.

Christian references in the Cantos were probably incidental, given the expected familiarity of the intended audience (american white male young men). eg The Matrix trilogy started with the obvious messianic hero's journey, then attempted to expand it in the following films (karma, cycles of death and rebirth, etc).

For some, these religious messages can be a turn off, I agree. I happened to be raised in a culture that allowed me to ignore it more or less and I can recognize that.

[sgillen]

Not sure if I agree with the christian references being incidental ... the first book is literally a retelling of the The Canterbury Tales, all the characters are on a pilgrimage. there are a bunch of religious groups with at least one being central to the story, there are cross shaped parasites that grant eternal life.

I still think you can enjoy it without caring much about religion.

[AlanYx]

>there are cross shaped parasites that grant eternal life

Without giving away any spoilers to the books, the parasites are only that on the surface. If anything, the books present a wary picture of religion, especially the last two Endymion books, but also a wary picture of technology.

[Supermancho]

> the first book is literally a retelling of the The Canterbury Tales, all the characters are on a pilgrimage.

As we have both read the books, it's notable that you associate pilgrimage with Christianity. This illustrates the point.

[Barrin92]

>Christian references in the Cantos were probably incidental,

They're not at all incidental. The themes and the literal Catholic Church don't just make it into the books by osmosis, they're central to it and deliberate.

Like Gene Wolfe he's part of a pretty small group of US authors who wrote Catholic speculative fiction. Like Wolfe his writing is also fairly un-American. If Heinlein or Asimov are examples of archetypal US science fiction, Simmons is about as far as the other end as you can be, with the post-modern structure, the Canterbury Tales as a template for the story and so on.

[twoodfin]

Small but significant. A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller comes immediately to mind. (And readers of this thread who did appreciate the religious themes of Hyperion may be interested.)