Hyperion

Hyperion is a Hugo Award-winning 1989 science fiction novel by Dan Simmons. It is the first book of his Hyperion Cantos, and is the only book in it to extensively employ the literary device of the frame story (although arguably The Fall of Hyperion also uses it, but to a lesser extent). The plot of the novel is highly complex, featuring multiple time-lines and characters whose behavior changes dramatically. The story opens in medias res. More than 700 years after the 21st century, humanity has spread across the galaxy, first aboard "Hawking drive" ships and then, after Earth is destroyed in a scientific accident (the Big Mistake) through what that accident was studying: controlled singularities known as "farcasters" which permit nigh instantaneous travel between points separated by apparently unlimited distances. The farcaster network (the "WorldWeb") profoundly changed the Hegemony of Man (the political entity headquartered on the planet Tau Ceti Center which controls all worlds in... full article at wikipedia