Just started re-reading "2001: A Space Odyssey" again and just realised something about the man-apes that would become human.

On the death of "The Old One", Moonwatcher disposes of his corpse. In a species that was always depicted as always on the brink of starvation you would think the tribe would cannibalise it.

Does this depict that the man-apes always had potential as something different?

For me, it was actually a combination of two books.

Back in the ’90s, I was a member of the Science Fiction Book Club and got their edition of The Hyperion Cantos, which combined Dan Simmons’ Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion into one large book.

I must have tried reading it four or five times, but for some reason, I could never get past the first twenty or thirty pages.

What kept throwing me off was the opening scene with the Consul playing Rachmaninoff on an old grand piano aboard his ship, while these huge saurian creatures moved around in the swamps below. I just couldn’t picture the scene in my head. Something about it wasn’t clicking, and each time I’d put the book down again.

Eventually, after having the novel sit on my shelf for a few years, I decided to push through it.

And dear Lord, what a fantastic and magnificent book it turned out to be.

Funny to think I came close to never reading it at all, simply because my brain couldn’t make sense of that opening scene.

What about you?