Hyperion
Starts terribly, with a brooding protagonist playing a grand piano outside in a storm. Also, despite being set in 3200CE or whatever, it makes dozens of of leaden references to the culture of C20th Earth.
But the structure (6 tales from 7 travellers, cf. Chaucer) and the sheer variety of styles and themes soon kicks in and drags you through a delicious cyber-goth intrigue. The poet character is annoying, but he’s meant to be. (The key problem of metafiction: to write a great poet character, you really have to be a great poet yourself. Nabokov was, but even he dodged the issue by making Pale Fire about a flawed poet.)
At one point it implies that Keats’ poems were retrocaused by schemes of time-travelling AIs, which is a thing I must admire.
But the structure (6 tales from 7 travellers, cf. Chaucer) and the sheer variety of styles and themes soon kicks in and drags you through a delicious cyber-goth intrigue. The poet character is annoying, but he’s meant to be. (The key problem of metafiction: to write a great poet character, you really have to be a great poet yourself. Nabokov was, but even he dodged the issue by making Pale Fire about a flawed poet.)
At one point it implies that Keats’ poems were retrocaused by schemes of time-travelling AIs, which is a thing I must admire.