the shrike

The Shrike is a character from Dan Simmons' Hyperion universe, set far in humanity's future.

The Shrike appears in all of the Hyperion books and is something of an enigma; its true purpose isn't 'revealed' until the second book, but even then it is left a malleable purpose. In fact, this explanation is changed significantly in the latter two books (The Endymion duology). The Shrike appears to act both autonomously and as a servant of some unknown force or entity, and in the first two Hyperion books, exists solely in the area around the Time Tombs on the planet Hyperion. In the latter two, it is effectively unfettered.…more