ADHD & Faster-Than-Light Travel

With musings about Hyperion & The Vanished Birds

Stories of Lifetimes

This week I finished my re-read of Hyperion (see my previous posts for more context on the book), and in doing so had the pleasure of experiencing its final, heart-wrenching story for a second time – now with four years and hundreds more novels under my belt.

The final pilgrim to tell his tale is the Consul, who serves as the closest thing to a point-of-view character in the book's frame narrative – yet who remains entirely mysterious to the reader and his fellow pilgrims alike up until this point. I won't relate or even discuss his entire story today, since it also does a lot of heavy lifting in connecting the various story threads and the overall ideas of the Hyperion Cantos are for another time.

The Consul tells the story of his grandparents: Merin Aspic, who lives and works on an interstellar spaceship, and Siri, a native of the oceanic planet Maui-Covenant. Merin and his ship are part of an effort to bring Siri's world into 'civilization' by installing a farcaster (essentially a teleportation gate between worlds), simultaneously opening it to millions of waiting tourists and oil-hungry corporations.

Farcaster portal from the cover of Endymion, art by Gary Ruddell

When they first meet, Merin is nineteen and Siri is sixteen. But time dilation means that while Merin travels back and forth at faster-than-light speeds, he experiences far less time than Siri does on Maui-Covenant: they re-unite seven times over the course of their lives, and each time Siri is eleven years older while he has aged less than a single year.

(I'm not going to attempt to convey any of the romance here; consider reading these books to get a sense of it, but I personally found Dan Simmons – like so many 80's sci-fi authors – got a little carried away with it. That being said, he also doesn't let Siri's older age get in the way of his descriptions, so a win against ageism perhaps?)

On his eighth return, at twenty-four years old and with the farcaster's activation imminent, Merin finds Siri passed away during the intervening years. Their son Donel is more than twice Merin's age and their grandson, the Consul, is already nine. Out of respect for Siri and his own realization about the damage 'civilization' will bring to Maui-Covenant, Merin destroys the farcaster at its moment of activation and ignites a decades-long colonial war.

Suffice to say that the Consul still has feelings about this, but that will have to wait for now.

The Consul from Hyperion, by Kriszta Arányi

Last year I read Simon Jimenez' The Vanished Birds, which tells a strikingly similar story – so much so that I checked and yes, Jimenez lists Hyperion as his foremost inspiration. It's wonderful to see books ~35 years apart examining similar issues, within the context of their own age.

This lovely book sees local planet-bound boy Kaeda meet Captain Nia Imani and establish a relationship together, but her interstellar trips of a few months see him age fifteen years each time she returns. Unlike with Merin and Siri there is no expectation of monogamy here, yet we see Nia's emotion at losing Kaeda after knowing him all his life.

Colonialism, capitalism and empire are major themes here as well: Kaeda's world exists entirely to supply food and other resources to the central planets of the corporation Nia works for. Their lack of education, technology and social mobility is strictly enforced; they are stuck as slaves to distant masters. Even Nia's situation isn't much better, living job-to-job with harsh schedules keeping her and her crew from enjoying the supposed liberty of their interstellar craft.

The second half of the story corresponds in some ways with the final Hyperion Cantos book, so I'll return at some point (perhaps Thursday?) to further examine these themes and how the authors offer satisfying conclusions despite tackling such overwhelming issues!

Cover of The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez

ADHD, Relationship Decay, Object Permanence & Time Blindness

Took longer than expected, but we got here. If you have ADHD, I hope you see where I’m going with this. If you don’t (have it or see it), this probably sounds like a hell of a leap. But this is an idea I’ve been chewing on lately, so why not share it and hear people’s thoughts?

Having ADHD sometimes feels exactly like being Merin or Nia, where you can pick back up friendships as though no time has passed for you – but you can tell that time has definitely passed for the other person.

There doesn't seem to be a single name or reason for this effect. This thread puts it nicely in terms of "relationship decay", where neurodivergent minds don't experience the same loss over time as neurotypical ones. Almost certainly linked to this is our Time Blindness and our struggle to perceive events beyond the binary of 'Now' and 'Not now'. If we're only ever in the 'Now', it makes a kind of sense to me that a person could return after a long time but for us it's just them returning – again a binary present/not present, without room for time to have much impact.

And that's what mostly came up while I was researching this: not-present may be barely perceptible to us, but for the people around us it can represent months or years of no contact. I saw this described often in terms of object permanence and the phrase 'out of sight, out of mind.' (It isn't quite the same as a toddler's path to object permanence: we know things exist, but without external stimulus we struggle to think of them.)

In their respective stories, Merin and Nia travel and work for a few months between the blissful moments they have with their planet-bound partners. Still a long time, but each visit is just around the corner compared to the decade and more that Siri and Kaeda experience. They re-connect having lived and changed little, while their partners have lived a significant fraction of their lives. Time has affected them differently, just as it does for re-connecting people with and without ADHD.

Practical Advice

I don't have much of a moral to offer here, beyond a reminder to check in on the people you care about – even if it feels like just a moment ago that you last spoke (but probably not if it literally was a moment ago). It's Mother's Day here in Canada, so reach out to your (or a) cool mom! If you're struggling with these ADHD symptoms, consider reading more on the topic – managing them (better) is possible!

And, I suppose, know what you're getting into if you start an interstellar relationship this week.

Thanks as always for reading, until next time <3