About the Author

Dan Simmons is the Hugo Award-winning author of Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion, and their sequels, Endymion and The Rise of Endymion. He has written the critically acclaimed suspense novels Darwin's Blade and The Crook Factory, as well as other highly respected works, including Summer of Night and its sequel A Winter Haunting, Song of Kali, Carrion Comfort, and Worlds Enough & Time. Simmons makes his home in Colorado.

Reviews

As in his last collection, Lovedeath (1993), the chameleonic Simmons shifts effortlessly between dark fantasy, space opera, hard SF and mainstream fiction, offering five high-concept novellas in which parallel plots and colliding lives yield intricately layered and emotionally resonant narratives. In Looking for Kelly Dahl, a self-pitying alcoholic teacher finds salvation when he is absorbed into a fantasy world of unsullied nature conjured by a sexually abused student. On K2 with Kanakaredes distills a potent study of universal values from an account of a team of mountain climbersthree human and one extraterrestrialstruggling together to scale a formidable peak. Occasionally the stories can seem too consciously didactic, as in The Ninth of Av, which depends on a strained analogy between Scott's failed polar expedition and an episode of future genocide, and Orphans of the Helix, a vividly detailed but surprisingly dramaless extension of the author's landmark Hyperion/Endymion saga. But the author's lapidary prose and ambitious ideas more often mesh seamlessly, as in The End of Gravity, where he turns a fleshed-out treatment for an as-yet-unproduced film about humanity's place in the cosmic scheme into a mesmerizing meditation with the intensity of a prose poem. Simmons's readers know to expect literate and illuminating fiction that pushes the envelope of his chosen story forms, and this volume will not disappoint them. (Apr. 30) FYI: Simmons's latest novel is A Winter Haunting (Forecasts, Jan. 14). Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.