Dan Simmons

Dan Simmons (born April 4, 1948) is an American science fiction and horror writer. He is the author of the Hyperion Cantos and the Ilium/Olympos cycles, among other works which span the science fiction, horror, and fantasy genres, sometimes within a single novel. A typical example of Simmons' intermingling of genres is Song of Kali (1985), winner of the World Fantasy Award.^[1] He also writes mysteries and thrillers, some of which feature the continuing character Joe Kurtz.

Biography

Born in Peoria, Illinois, 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.^[2]

He soon started writing short stories, although his career did not take off until 1982, when, through Harlan Ellison's help, his short story "The River Styx Runs Upstream" was published and awarded first prize in a Twilight Zone Magazine story competition. Simmons' first novel, Song of Kali, was released in 1985.^[2]

He worked in elementary education until 1989.^[2]

Horror fiction

Summer of Night (1991) 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 (1986) 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 (2002), Dale Stewart (one of the first book's protagonists and now an adult), revisits his boyhood home to come to grips with mysteries that have disrupted his adult life.

Between the publication of Summer of Night (1991) and A Winter Haunting (2002), several additional characters from Summer of Night appeared in: Children of the Night (1992), 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 (1994), in which the adult Cordie Cooke appears; and Darwin's Blade (2000), a thriller in which Dale's younger brother, Lawrence Stewart, appears as a minor character.^[3][4]

Soon after Summer of Night (1991), Simmons, who had written mostly horror fiction, began to focus on writing science fiction, although in 2007 he returned with a work of historical fiction and horror, The Terror. In 2009, he published another book, Drood, 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.^[5]

Historical fiction

The Terror (2007) crosses the bridge between horror and historical fiction. It is a fictionalized account of Captain John Franklin's expedition to find the Northwest Passage. The two ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, become icebound the first winter, and the captains and crew struggle to survive while being stalked across an Arctic landscape by a monster.

The Abominable (2013) recounts a mid-1920s attempt on Mount Everest by five climbers—two English, one French, one Sherpa, and one American (the narrator)—to recover the body of one of the English character's cousin.^[6]

Literary references

Many of Simmons' 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,^[7] deals with a space war and is inspired in its structure by Boccaccio's Decameron and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.
• The last story in Hyperion, “The Consul’s Tale”, is a futuristic retelling of Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet.
• The Hyperion Cantos take their titles from poems by the English Romantic John Keats.^[8]
• Carrion Comfort, as well as many of its themes, derives from a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins.
• In The Fall of Hyperion, John Keats himself appears as one of the main characters, with references to characters in Forbidden Planet and The Time Machine.
• "Vanni Fucci Is Alive and Well and Living In Hell" (1988), a short story lampooning televangelists and included in Prayers to Broken Stones, is about a brief return to earth by the title character, an inhabitant of Dante's Inferno
• The Hollow Man (1992) is a novel influenced by Dante's Inferno and T. S. Eliot
• "The Great Lover" (1993) is a short story inspired by the World War I War Poets
• The Ilium/Olympos cycle is inspired by Homer's works, as well as Shakespeare and Marcel Proust, and the character Ada and her home Ardis Hall are inspired by Vladimir Nabokov's novel Ada or Ardor, which was one of Nabokov's forays into the science fiction genre and alternate history
• Simmons' collection of short stories, Worlds Enough & Time, takes its name from the first line of the poem To His Coy Mistress by British 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

Screen adaptations

In 2009, Scott Derrickson was set to direct "Hyperion Cantos" for Warner Bros. and Graham King, with Trevor Sands penning the script to blend the first two cantos "Hyperion" and "The Fall of Hyperion" into one film.^[9] In 2011, actor Bradley Cooper expressed interest in taking over the adaptation.^[10] In 2015, it was announced that TV channel Syfy will produce a mini-series based on the Hyperion Cantos with the involvement of Cooper and King.^[11]

The Terror (2007) has been adapted as an AMC TV 10 episode-mini-series in 2018 and received generally positive reviews upon release.^[12][13]

Bibliography

Awards

References

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Dan Simmons

• Official website
• Dan Simmons' On Writing Well
• Interview by BookBanter
• Dan Simmons on Worlds Without End
• Dan Simmons at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Dan Simmons at the Internet Book List
• Works by Dan Simmons at Open Library
• Dan Simmons at Library of Congress Authorities, with 2 catalog records