Dan Simmons


Dan Simmons is an American science fiction and horror writer. He is the author of the Hyperion Cantos and the Ilium/Olympos cycles, among other works that span the science fiction, horror, and fantasy genres, sometimes within a single novel. Simmons's genre-intermingling Song of Kali won the World Fantasy Award. He also writes mysteries and thrillers, some of which feature the continuing character Joe Kurtz.

Biography

Born in Peoria, Illinois, Simmons started writing stories as a child with the goal of mesmerizing his audience with his story telling. Simmons received a B.A. in English from Wabash College in 1970 and, in 1971, a Masters in Education from Washington University in St. Louis.
He soon started writing short stories, although his career did not take off until 1982, when, through Harlan Ellison's help, Simmons was invited to the Milford workshop, which Ellison considered to be "the best SF writing workshop in the world". Simmons considered Ellison as a mentor, friend, and the reason he pursued writing full-time. Simmons' short story "The River Styx Runs Upstream" was published and awarded first prize in a Twilight Zone Magazine story competition, and he was taken on as a client by Ellison's agent, Richard Curtis. Simmons's first novel, Song of Kali, was released in 1985.
He worked in elementary education until 1989.
He lives in Longmont, Colorado as of 2007.

Horror fiction

Summer of Night recounts the childhood of a group of pre-teens who band together in the 1960s, to defeat a centuries-old evil that terrorizes their hometown of Elm Haven, Illinois. The novel, which was praised by Stephen King in a cover blurb, is similar to King's It in its focus on small-town life, the corruption of innocence, the return of an ancient evil, and the responsibility for others that emerges with the transition from youth to adulthood.
In the sequel to Summer of Night, A Winter Haunting, Dale Stewart, revisits his boyhood home to come to grips with mysteries that have disrupted his adult life.
Between the publication of Summer of Night and A Winter Haunting, several additional characters from Summer of Night appeared in: Children of the Night, a loose sequel to Summer of Night, which features Mike O'Rourke, now much older and a Roman Catholic priest, who is sent on a mission to investigate bizarre events in a European city; Fires of Eden, in which the adult Cordie Cooke appears; and Darwin's Blade, a thriller in which Dale's younger brother, Lawrence Stewart, appears as a minor character.
After Summer of Night, Simmons focused on writing science fiction until the 2007 work of historical fiction and horror, The Terror. His 2009 book Drood is based on the last years of Charles Dickens' life leading up to the writing of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, which Dickens had partially completed at the time of his death.

Historical fiction

The Terror crosses the bridge between horror and historical fiction. It is a fictionalized account of Sir John Franklin and his expedition to find the Northwest Passage. The two ships, and, become icebound the first winter, and the captains and crew struggle to survive while being stalked across an Arctic landscape by a monster. The novel was adapted into a ten-part television series.
The Abominable recounts a mid-1920s attempt on Mount Everest by five climbers—two British, one French, one Sherpa, and one American —to recover the body of a cousin of one of the British characters.

Literary references

Many of Simmons's works have strong ties with classic literature. For example:
  • His 1989 novel Hyperion, winner of Hugo and Locus Awards for the best science fiction novel, deals with a space war and is inspired in its structure by Boccaccio's Decameron and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.
  • The Hyperion Cantos take their titles from poems by the British Romantic John Keats.
  • The title of Carrion Comfort, as well as many of its themes, derives from the poem "Carrion Comfort" by Gerard Manley Hopkins.
  • The Hollow Man is a novel influenced by Dante's Inferno and T. S. Eliot
  • "The Great Lover" is a short story inspired by the World War I War Poets
  • Simmons's collection of short stories, Worlds Enough & Time, takes its name from the first line of the poem "To His Coy Mistress" by English poet Andrew Marvell: "Had we but world enough, and time"
  • The detective in Flashback is named Nick Bottom after a character in Shakespeare's ''A Midsummer Night's Dream''

    Novels

Series

[Hyperion Cantos]
  1. Hyperion –
  2. The Fall of Hyperion –
  3. Endymion –
  4. The Rise of Endymion –
    Related short fiction
  • "Remembering Siri" - ', prequel to Hyperion
  • "The Death of the Centaur" - '
  • "Orphans of the Helix" - , sequel to ''The Rise of Endymion''
    Seasons of Horror
  1. Summer of Night –
  2. Children of the Night –
  3. Fires of Eden –
  4. Darwin's Blade –
  5. A Winter Haunting –
    Related
  • Banished Dreams, collects three prophetic dream sequences that were expurgated from the published edition of Summer of Night, entitled "Dale's Dream", "Kevin's Dream" and "Mike's Dream"
    Joe Kurtz
  1. Hardcase –
  2. Hard Freeze –
  3. Hard as Nails –
    ''[Ilium/Olympos]''
  4. Ilium –
  5. Olympos –

    Standalone

  • Song of Kali –
  • Carrion Comfort, expansion of the eponymous novelette published in Prayers to Broken Stones –
  • Phases of Gravity –
  • The Hollow Man –
  • The Crook Factory –
  • The Terror –
  • Drood –
  • Black Hills –
  • Flashback –
  • The Abominable –
  • The Fifth Heart –
  • Omega Canyon –

    Short stories

Collections

  • Prayers to Broken Stones, six short stories and seven novellas/novelettes:
  • : "The River Styx Runs Upstream", "Eyes I Dare Not Meet in Dreams", "Vanni Fucci Is Alive and Well and Living in Hell", "Vexed to Nightmare by a Rocking Cradle", "Remembering Siri", "Metastasis", "The Offering", "E-Ticket to 'Namland" AKA "E-Ticket to Namland", "Iverson's Pits", "Shave and a Haircut, Two Bites", "The Death of the Centaur", "Two Minutes Forty-Five Seconds", "Carrion Comfort"
  • Lovedeath, collection of five novelettes and novellas
  • : "Entropy's Bed at Midnight", "Dying in Bangkok" AKA "Death in Bangkok", "Sleeping with Teeth Women", "Flashback", "The Great Lover"
  • Worlds Enough & Time, collection of five novellas/novelettes:
  • : "Looking for Kelly Dahl", "Orphans of the Helix", "The Ninth of Av", "On K2 with Kanakaredes", "The End of Gravity"

    Uncollected short fiction

  • "Presents of Mind"
  • "Dying Is Easy, Comedy Is Hard" - '
  • "The Counselor" - '
  • "All Dracula's Children" - '
  • "My Private Memoirs of the Hoffer Stigmata Pandemic"
  • "This Year's Class Picture"
  • "Elm Haven, IL" - ', from Freak Show series
  • "One Small Step for Max"
  • "My Copsa Micas" - '
  • Madame Bovary, C'est Moi
  • Muse of Fire - '
  • The Guiding Nose of Ulfänt Banderōz - published as a chapbook and set in Jack Vance's Dying Earth setting
  • ''The Final Pogrom''

    Non-fiction

  • Going After the Rubber Chicken, a collection of three convention guest-of-honor speeches by Simmons
  • Summer Sketches, Simmons reveals how his travel experiences have allowed him to instill a feeling of place in readers of his fiction
  • Negative Spaces: Two talks, about science fiction

    Adaptations

In January 2004, it was announced that the screenplay he wrote for his novels Ilium and Olympos would be made into a film by Digital Domain and Barnet Bain Films, with Simmons acting as executive producer. Ilium is described as an "epic tale that spans 5,000 years and sweeps across the entire solar system, including themes and characters from Homer's Iliad and Shakespeare's The Tempest."
In 2008, Guillermo del Toro was scheduled to direct a film adaptation of Drood for Universal Pictures. As of December 2017, the project is still listed as "in development".
In 2009, Scott Derrickson was set to direct Hyperion Cantos for Warner Bros. and Graham King, with Trevor Sands penning a script adapting Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion into one film. In 2011, actor Bradley Cooper expressed interest in taking over the adaptation. In 2015, it was announced that TV channel Syfy would produce a miniseries based on the Hyperion Cantos with the involvement of Cooper and King. As of May 2017, the project was still "in development" at Syfy. On November 1, 2021, Cooper and King restarted the feature film adaptation at Warner Bros., with Tom Spezialy set to write the script.
The Terror was adapted in 2018 as an AMC 10-episode miniseries and received generally positive reviews upon release.

Awards

Wins

WorkYear & AwardCategoryRef.
Song of Kali1986 World Fantasy AwardNovel
Carrion Comfort1989 Bram Stoker AwardNovel
Carrion Comfort1990 Locus AwardHorror Novel
Carrion Comfort1990 British Fantasy AwardAugust Derleth Award
Hyperion1990 Locus AwardSF Novel
Hyperion1990 Hugo AwardNovel
Hyperion1991 Premio IgnotusForeign Novel
Hyperion1995 Seiun AwardTranslated Long Story
Hyperion1998 Tähtivaeltaja Award-
The Fall of Hyperion1991 Locus AwardSF Novel
The Fall of Hyperion1991 SF Chronicle AwardNovel
The Fall of Hyperion1991 BSFA AwardNovel
The Fall of Hyperion1996 Seiun AwardTranslated Long Work
Entropy's Bed at Midnight1991 Locus AwardNovelette
Entropy's Bed at Midnight1991 Readercon AwardsShort Work
Prayers to Broken Stones1991 Bram Stoker AwardFiction Collection
Summer of Night1992 Locus AwardHorror/Dark Fantasy Novel
All Dracula's Children1992 Locus AwardNovelette
This Year's Class Picture1992 Bram Stoker AwardShort Fiction
This Year's Class Picture1993 World Fantasy AwardShort Fiction
This Year's Class Picture1993 Theodore Sturgeon AwardShort Science Fiction
This Year's Class Picture1999 Seiun AwardTranslated Short Story
This Year's Class Picture2009 FantLab's Book of the Year AwardNovella/Short Story-
This Year's Class Picture2010 Nocte Award
Foreign Short Story
Children of the Night1993 Locus AwardHorror/Dark Fantasy Novel
Dying in Bangkok1993 Bram Stoker AwardNovelette
Dying in Bangkok1994 Locus AwardNovelette
Fires of Eden1995 Locus AwardHorror/Dark Fantasy Novel
The Great Lover1996 Grand Prix de l'ImaginaireForeign Short story/Collection of Foreign Short Stories
The Rise of Endymion1998 Locus AwardSF Novel
The Rise of Endymion1998 SF Chronicle AwardNovel
The Rise of Endymion1999 Prix ZoneForeign SF Novel
Orphans of the Helix2000 Locus AwardNovella
The Crook Factory2000 Colorado Book AwardLiterary Fiction
A Winter Haunting2002 International Horror Guild AwardNovel
A Winter Haunting2003 Colorado Book AwardFiction
Ilium2004 Locus AwardSF Novel
Ilium2004 SF Site Readers PollSF/Fantasy Book
The Terror2007 International Horror Guild AwardNovel
The Terror2008 FantLab's Book of the Year AwardNovel/Collection
Drood2009 Black Quill AwardsDark Novel Genre of the Year
2013 World Horror Convention Grand Master Award