From the bottom of the matter, rise up. MERGER OF THE MATTER, BIRTH OF THE SPIRIT. It is a night of pale moonlight, a night toward the end of the 20th century, a night when the old world is ending and the new one is beginning. It is a night when one trembles to boldly lower the sacred cross against the heart, to aid in the passage to fatherhood. So, as a crucifix, that night I pick up Hyperion, a novel by Dan Simmons. This is a masterful science fiction saga that celebrates the infinite legend of the French Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who was a 20th-century researcher, paleontologist, theologian and philosopher. And I read, pacified, until the reflections of the dawn, until the first golden rays of the East. I read the future of man, the celebration of transhumanism and the qualitative leap of humanity enhanced by machine. I have rarely loved a book this much, I have rarely loved a thinker this much. I read that night what a man thought he saw in the tombs of time.
