Dan Simmons

Daniel Joseph Simmons (April 4, 1948 – February 21, 2026) was an American science fiction and horror writer. He was 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-interminglingSong of Kali (1985) won the World Fantasy Award. He also wrote mysteries and thrillers, some of which feature the continuing character Joe Kurtz.

Biography

Born in Peoria, Illinois, on April 4, 1948, 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.

Simmons 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.

Simmons died from complications of a stroke in Longmont, Colorado, on February 21, 2026, at the age of 77.

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.[citation needed]

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.[citation needed]

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.

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's 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 (2007) 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, 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 novel was adapted into a ten-part television series.[citation needed]

The Abominable (2013) recounts a mid-1920s attempt on Mount Everest by five climbers—two British, one French, one Sherpa, and one American (the narrator)—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 (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
• 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

Bibliography

Novels

Series

Hyperion Cantos

1. Hyperion (1989) – ISBN 978-0553283686
2. The Fall of Hyperion (1990) – ISBN 978-0553288209
3. Endymion (1996) – ISBN 978-3453315174
4. The Rise of Endymion (1997) – ISBN 978-0747258933

Related short fiction

• "Remembering Siri" (1983) – (Novelette), prequel to Hyperion[citation needed]
• "The Death of the Centaur" (1990) – (Novelette)[citation needed]
• "Orphans of the Helix" (1999) – (Novelette), sequel to The Rise of Endymion[citation needed]

Seasons of Horror

1. Summer of Night (1991) – ISBN 978-0312550677
2. Children of the Night (1992) – ISBN 978-1250009852
3. Fires of Eden (1994) – ISBN 978-0061056147
4. Darwin's Blade (2000) – ISBN 978-0380973699
5. A Winter Haunting (2002) – ISBN 978-0380817160

Related

• Banished Dreams (1990), 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"[citation needed]

Joe Kurtz

1. Hardcase (2001) – ISBN 978-0312980160
2. Hard Freeze (2002) – ISBN 978-0316213509
3. Hard as Nails (2003) – ISBN 978-0312994686

Ilium/Olympos

1. Ilium (2003) – ISBN 978-0380817924
2. Olympos (2005) – ISBN 978-0380817931

Standalone

• Song of Kali (1985) – ISBN 978-0312944087
• Carrion Comfort (1989), expansion of the eponymous novelette published in Prayers to Broken Stones – ISBN 978-0913165386
• Phases of Gravity (1989) – ISBN 978-0553277647
• The Hollow Man (1992) – ISBN 978-0935716641
• The Crook Factory (1999) – ISBN 978-0380973682
• The Terror (2007) – ISBN 978-0316017442
• Drood (2009) – ISBN 978-0316007023
• Black Hills (2010) – ISBN 978-1849160902
• Flashback (2011) – ISBN 978-0316006965
• The Abominable (2013) – ISBN 978-0751550283
• The Fifth Heart (2015) – ISBN 978-0316198820
• Omega Canyon (unpublished, original publication date 2025) – ISBN 978-0316198912

Short stories

Collections

• Prayers to Broken Stones (1990), six short stories and seven novellas/novelettes: "The River Styx Runs Upstream", "Eyes I Dare Not Meet in Dreams" (novelette), "Vanni Fucci Is Alive and Well and Living in Hell", "Vexed to Nightmare by a Rocking Cradle", "Remembering Siri" (novelette of Hyperion Cantos series), "Metastasis", "The Offering" (novelette), "E-Ticket to 'Namland" AKA "E-Ticket to Namland" (novelette), "Iverson's Pits" (novella), "Shave and a Haircut, Two Bites", "The Death of the Centaur" (novelette of Hyperion Cantos series), "Two Minutes Forty-Five Seconds", "Carrion Comfort" (novelette)
• Lovedeath (1993), collection of five novelettes and novellas "Entropy's Bed at Midnight" (novelette), "Dying in Bangkok" AKA "Death in Bangkok" (novelette), "Sleeping with Teeth Women" (novella), "Flashback" (novelette), "The Great Lover" (novella)
• Worlds Enough & Time (2002), collection of five novellas/novelettes: "Looking for Kelly Dahl" (novella), "Orphans of the Helix" (novelette from Hyperion Cantos series), "The Ninth of Av" (novella), "On K2 with Kanakaredes" (novelette), "The End of Gravity" (novella)

Uncollected short fiction

• "Presents of Mind" (1986, with Edward Bryant, Steve Rasnic Tem and Connie Willis)
• "Dying Is Easy, Comedy Is Hard" (1990, with Edward Bryant) – (Novelette)
• "The Counselor" (1991) – (Novelette)
• "All Dracula's Children" (1991) – (Novelette)
• "My Private Memoirs of the Hoffer Stigmata Pandemic" (1991)
• "This Year's Class Picture" (1992) (Appeared in The Living Dead, an anthology edited by John Joseph Adams)
• "Elm Haven, IL" (1992) – (Novelette), from Freak Show series
• "One Small Step for Max" (1992)
• "My Copsa Micas" (1994) – (Novelette)
• Madame Bovary, C'est Moi (2000)
• Muse of Fire (2007) – (Novella)
• The Guiding Nose of Ulfänt Banderōz (2009) – (Novella) published as a chapbook and set in Jack Vance's Dying Earth setting
• The Final Pogrom (2024)

Non-fiction

• Going After the Rubber Chicken (1991), a collection of three convention guest-of-honor speeches by Simmons
• Summer Sketches (1992), Simmons reveals how his travel experiences have allowed him to instill a feeling of place in readers of his fiction
• Negative Spaces: Two talks (1999), 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 (2007) was adapted in 2018 as an AMC 10-episode miniseries and received generally positive reviews upon release.

Awards

Wins

Nominations

Simmons has been nominated on numerous occasions in a range of categories for his fiction, including the Arthur C. Clarke Award, Bram Stoker Award, British Fantasy Society Award, Hugo Award, Nebula Award, and World Fantasy Award.

Finalists

Other

Notes

External links

• Interview by BookBanter
• on Worlds Without End
• at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• at the Internet Book List
• at Open Library
• at the Library of Congress, with 2 library catalog records
• at IMDb
• discography at Discogs