Join us this week for another of our world-famous shorts “Opinions on Simmons” where—you guessed it—we read opinions on Simmons! Dan Simmons, that is, the indelible author of such works as Hyperion, Hyperion 2: Shrike Boogaloo, Endymion, and More Endymion. Sam, trying his best to avoid the epic conclusion to his three-year Hyperion saga, has asked for more time to get his shrikes in order. In lieu, we scoured the internet for reviews (both classy and sassy) to share. Each book in the Hyperion Cantos gets 3 reviews, but spoiler! One of them is for another sci-fi epic entirely. Can we figure out which reviews are about Hyperion or does all sci-fi sound exactly the same to Danielle? Find out this week with…Opinions on Simmons!

Theme: Earning Happiness by John Bartmann.

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Danielle goes big for St. Patrick’s Day with the (probably mildly offensive to Irish everywhere) 1999 mini-series, The Magical Legend of the Leprechauns. When American, Randy Quaid, heads to Ireland on a mysterious work trip, he gets more than he bargained for when he realizes he’s sharing a home with a leprechaun (Colm Meaney, obviously). He makes quite the impression on the small town (and Sam), when he immediately peeping-toms his beautiful neighbor, then trespasses on her property, and then somehow talks the town priest into taking his side when she complains; it’s fine though, they’re love interests. That can’t matter less, however, because he quickly gets involved in the easily-prevented war between the faires and leprechauns. These immortal folk, who control all of nature, are forever at odds. When the fighting grows between their kind and Mother Nature starts to suffer, well-known Irish comedian Whoopi Goldberg (????), as their despotic Great Banshee, flies in to make it way worse by giving them the curse of mortality. When Princess Jessica of the fairies and leprechaun Mickey Muldoon, son of Colm Meaney, fall in love at a (possibly racist) masked ball, they soon realize that mortality will be the death of them (duh). Will these two kids make it? Will Whoopi Goldberg ever figure out her Irish accent? Will Randy Quaid end up behind bars where he likely belongs? Or will the war destroy them all and nature itself? The stakes have never been higher (and less necessary) this week on Book Retorts.

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Welcome back to The Rise of Endymion where everything is made up and the plot doesn’t matter. This week, Sam regales Danielle, and Filip of Mind Duck Books, with the penultimate episode of the Hyperion saga by greatest troll of the sci-fi world, Dan Simmons. Filip is still reeling from the last episode where he settled soundly in the anger stage of grief and unfortunately for Sam’s unwilling co-hosts, they realize that acceptance is a long way off. After Professor Filip gives a Programming History 101 lesson, we meet our trusty heroes who have managed to throw off Nemes who is out shaking down eight-year-old Buddhists to find them. Meanwhile, Raul, who unfortunately did not die in his hang-gliding accident, and his trusty sidekick Aenea, make their way to the jade temple, where, wouldn’t you know it, Nemes is doing her shakedown. No worries though, Raul is ready and willing to fight the murder monster and even though the man can’t find his way out of a paper bag, he manages to outmaneuver Nemes with his kick-butt chess skillz. And somehow, against all odds, Simmons’ chapter long side note about rock climbing comes back into play. Raul and Aenea celebrate the win by having zero g sex, as one does, and then nothing else matters because…the Yggdrasil is back! And to quote Sam, “All aboard, baby! Tree of pain. Toot! Toot!” If you like retconning, answers to questions you didn’t know you had, and questions to answers you thought you had, then, huzzah! This is the episode for you!

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Danielle pulls a Spook Retorts in February as she recaps the “best horror movie of 2024,” Abigail. Cue a mysterious stranger who has put together what Sam argues is definitely not a heist team to kidnap a ballerina child for a ransom amount that makes no sense. Stolen from her home, Abigail (titular ballerina child) is taken to a gothic mansion in the woods to spend the night. The (not) heist team has one job: to babysit. Spoiler: it does not go well. They quickly realize that Abigail is the daughter of the mythical crime lord, Kristof Lazaar, and he may be out for blood. As the (not) heist team begin dying one by one, in increasingly and absurdly gory ways (hello exploding bodies), they begin to wonder if not everything is as it appears. And Abigail, channeling her inner Kevin McAllister, gets in on the fun. Get ready to pump up the tunes (Swan Lake, specifically), put on your ballet slippers, and join Sam as he guesses every single possible plot option, somehow getting them all correct and all wrong at the exact same time.

Theme: Earning Happiness by John Bartmann.

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We continue the never ending saga of The Rise of Endymion by Dan Simmons from 1997. We return with…more exposition! And special guest (and trauma buddy) Filip, from the Mind Duck Books podcast, who is in the anger stage of Hyperion Grief. Raul (rhymes with Tall) has arrived on a mountain planet that probably has a name but only one of us knows it (spoiler: it’s Sam). Due to time debt (and shenanigans) Aenea has aged up and that’s good news for Raul because he’s into her. But in a really gross way where he keeps referencing his paternal attitude towards her and how she used to be a child. Please stop, we’re begging you. Back on this mountain planet, they go to a big soirée with the Dalai Lama. Aenea is apparently smarter than him, because she’s smarter than everyone, but oh no! There’s also a lot of bad guys there partying too, and despite her best disguise (a veil) they recognize her and try to start some rumble snaps. Luckily, the Shrike is back in action! And by back in action we mean he shows up, says hi, and leaves. They somehow get out of there and have some more sex (oh, did we not mention that? They’re having sex now). And then mixed in, there’s lots of mountain planet time where we follow Raul around as he doesn’t learn anything Aenea is teaching her disciples, so therefore, we as readers still know nothing. Who needs to know the reasons or plot of a book? Not us. This absolutely infuriates Sam, like to the point that this is the part when Hyperion officially broke him. So join us this week for some much needed group therapy!

Special thanks to friend of the pod and honorary co-host Filip from Mind Duck Books for joining us on this thrilling journey! You can find Mind Duck Books on Twitter and Instagram, and listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Theme: Earning Happiness by John Bartmann.

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Danielle starts the new year out strong with the another entry in the Ice Planet Barbarian series by Ruby Dixon with the 2015 book Barbarian Lover. We’re back on the Ice Planet, which probably has a name, and the tribe with the wayward girls is chugging along. Many of the girls are paired off and pregnant, fortunately we’re spared the horror of an alien pregnancy as we follow Kira, who’s single. Kira’s not out of the woods yet as one of the tribes men is determined to mate with her despite not resonating yet, but Kira refuses his advances because she’s afraid she’ll never resonate because she’s barren. And if you think Kira’s struggle with her infertility and finding a place in a society that is just all about procreation would make for an interesting story, you’re going to hate how this ends. Anyway, Kira also had a translator device implanted in her head by the kidnapper aliens and it starts going off, warning Kira that the kidnappers are back for their wayward cargo. So Kira and her romantic interest (and a few others that don’t really matter) set out to another crashed alien spaceship that just so happens to be the ship the brought the barbarians to this ice planet. Remarkably, it’s still working and speaks perfect English, and knows enough about humans to perform a surgery on Kira to remove the alien implant. You’d think a ship this useful would be used even once more by a society struggling to survive, but infuriatingly, Kira and the others just kinda forget about it. Anyway, the kidnapper aliens have already found them, so it’s up to a fresh out of surgery, and recently laid, Kira to save the day!

Theme: Earning Happiness by John Bartmann.

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We start the new year with part three of The Rise of Endymion by Dan Simmons from 1997. We return with…exposition! In a very long scene on the popesteroid, Pope Hoyt brings in Councilor Albedo to explain to the various church leaders that Aenea is carrying a literal engineered virus that will spread through humanity, kill off the cruciforms, and then evolve humans into the Ousters. This is apparently a bad thing? So to combat that, they have been putting billions of people without cruciforms in stasis and stashing them in the labyrinth worlds in a plan that the TechnoCore promises totally isn’t evil, swearsies. Anyway, remember all that stuff about the three warring factions in the TechnoCore? Yeah, apparently that’s not really the case so just forget all that. This revelation just about breaks Fillip’s spirit. Meanwhile, Raul spends an interminable amount of time floating through the atmosphere of a gas giant in his kayak looking at clouds. Eventually, he’s eaten by a giant cuttlefish thing, but then we just join up with Raul after the cuttlefish flings him through the next Farcaster to end up back with the Consul’s ship. The fact that we spend no time with Raul in the cuttlefish is the most baffling thing since the fact those things on that ice planet were called “wraiths”. Anyway, Raul and the ship head off to find Aenea, but conveniently, meeting her will incur a five-year time debt, so she’ll be an adult by the time Raul arrives. Those noises you here are Danielle gagging at the thought, and frankly, we’re all on her side. So we enter part two of the book on a real downer, will Raul and Aenea finally meet up? Will it be as creepy as we fear? Probably!

Special thanks to friend of the pod and honorary co-host Filip from Mind Duck Books for joining us on this thrilling journey! You can find Mind Duck Books on Twitter and Instagram, and listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Theme: Earning Happiness by John Bartmann.

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Danielle ends our Winter Bizarre this year with the 2023 Eddie Murphy movie Candy Cane Lane. Chris is your average Christmas obsessed man living in the one neighborhood in Los Angeles which goes full Candy Cane Lane with a house decorating contest each year. After losing his job and then conveniently learning the decorating contest prize this year is one-hundred-thousand dollars, Chris goes off the deep end to win. He drags his young daughter along, instead of taking her to school, and finds a random Christmas store under an overpass. Totally normal. Inside, Chris manically spends way too much money on a massive tree of indeterminate height, and many other decorations, to win that competition. Chris is pressed by the store owner, Pepper, to sign the receipt without reading the fine print, which should be a red flag, but then somehow when he’s given the tree it’s been been collapsed into a large tuna can for transport, and that fact he is sanguine about all this shows just how much he’s lost touch with reality. Now the movie takes a sharp turn towards lunacy as all the ornaments on the tree, which depicted the Twelve Days of Christmas song, come to life and escape, and Chris learns that Pepper is a rogue elf dishing out vigilante Christmas justice and he has to collect the golden rings from the song lest he be turned into a Christmas figurine forever. So Chris battles a truly ludicrous amount of birds and maids a milking to prevent himself being served some piping hot justice cocoa. Happy holidays!

Theme: Earning Happiness by John Bartmann.

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The Winter Bizarre is back! And Sam kicks things off with the truly insane movie A Karate Christmas Miracle from 2019. This movie opens with Jesse, an average ten-year-old boy who has given himself the task of earning a black belt in karate by Christmas, which is like six days away. He believes that doing so will bring his father back, who was kidnapped a year ago by a clown who committed a mass shooting in a movie theater his dad was at. And if you think this movie has anything insightful or sensitive to say about any of these topics, prepare for disappointment. In fact, this movie barely addresses them, and spends the vast majority of its runtime following Jesse’s mom, Abby, as she pals around with a psychic law professor trying to determine if her husband is still alive. Look, we’re sorry, but there’s no way to describe this movie that doesn’t sounds like we had a stroke while writing this. Neither Danielle nor Sam are prepared for this movie or the absolutely ludicrous twists and turns it takes all to arrive at an ending that leaves Danielle perhaps more angry than she’s ever been at a piece of media Sam brought to her. Truly, the real Christmas miracle.

Theme: Earning Happiness by John Bartmann.

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It’s the time of year again, and the thankers are back! This year Danielle and Sam take some time to think back to their childhoods and recall the media they consumed as kids that they are thankful for. So relive with us some of our best and most traumatic childhood memories.

Theme: Earning Happiness by John Bartmann.

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