Dan Simmons, author of Hyperion and The Terror, dies aged 77 | Books
Dan Simmons, author of more than 30 novels and short story collections spanning horror, political thrillers and science fiction such as Hyperion and The Terror, has died at age 77.
Simmons died in Longmont, Colorado, on Feb. 21, with his wife and daughter by his side, his obituary said.
The author was best known for Hyperion, his 1989 science fiction novel which won the prestigious Hugo Award for Best Novel and a Locus Award; Simmons later wrote three sequels.
During his career he has also won two World Fantasy Awards, a dozen Locus Awards, the Shirley Jackson Award and several Bram Stoker Awards, while his 2007 novel The Terror, a fictionalized imagining of what happened on the doomed Franklin expedition, was adapted into an acclaimed television series in 2018.
Born in Peoria, Illinois in 1948, Simmons grew up in Illinois and Indiana. He worked as an elementary school teacher for 18 years, in Missouri, New York and Colorado, where he was a finalist for the Colorado Teacher of the Year award.
“Every day after lunch, Dan told his students a daily episode of an epic tale that began on the first day of school,” his obituary read. “As they listened, the students colored the illustrations he had drawn for them. When the story finally ended on the last day of school, many remember being reduced to tears. This story would become Dan’s Hyperion Cantos.”
Simmons’ first novel, Song of Kali, was published in 1985. His other books include his 1989 vampire horror Carrion Comfort, 1991’s Summer of Night, the science fiction epics Ilium and Olympos, and 2009’s Drood, based on the final years of Charles Dickens’ life.
His 2011 political thriller Flashback, however, was widely criticized as an anti-left narrative, imagining a dystopian future where mass immigration, the climate change “hoax”, “socialist entitlements programs” and foreign policy failures under Barack Obama led to the ruin of America, a “second Holocaust” and the rise of a “new global caliphate” Islamic.
In response to criticism, Simmons pointed out that he had written a short story in 1991 that imagined a post-Reagan United States, telling an interviewer: “I’ve been called a Nazi. I’ve been called a racist. People who have no idea about my life, what I’ve done, how I’ve worked for civil rights throughout my life, or what my politics have been, and which Democratic candidates I’ve written for speeches… They think I was just picking on Obama in the book; well, before, it was Reagan, and if I had waited a few years, whoever else would be president.”
“Just like his early reading activities, Dan always wrote about what he loved,” his obituary reads. “He challenged literary norms by writing across genres, moving from one major publisher to another, and defying the pressure to conform to classic novels.
“Dan was a deeply curious learner who loved connecting with other inquisitive minds, and the many stories he imagined helped him connect with others throughout his life.”
