Hyperion author Dan Simmons dies from stroke at 77

Dan Simmons, the author of more than three dozen books, including the famed Hyperion Cantos, has died from a stroke. He was 77.

Simmons, who worked in elementary education before becoming an author in the 1980s, produced a broad portfolio of writing that spanned several genres, including horror fiction, historical fiction, and science fiction. Often his books included elements of all of these. This obituary will focus on what is generally considered his greatest work, and what I believe is possibly the greatest science fiction novel of all time, Hyperion.

Published in 1989, Hyperion is set in a far-flung future in which human settlement spans hundreds of planets. The novel feels both familiar, in that its structure follows Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and utterly unfamiliar in its strange, far-flung setting.

Seven characters, seven stories

At its heart are the background stories of seven characters on a pilgrimage to the Time Tombs, which move backward in time. There, they may possibly confront a legendary, mythical, terrifying, and time-bending creature known as the Shrike. Each of the stories told by the seven characters are done so in a different subgenre, from tragedy to political thriller to military science fiction, and so on.

I went into Hyperion blind, decades ago, knowing almost nothing about it. I was never the same after finishing it. For a book that is, essentially, “hard” science fiction, Hyperion is also one of the most emotional books I have ever read.

The first tale is that of a priest, Lenar Hoyt, and the dying religion of Catholicism. By the end of this story of cruciforms, isolated civilizations, tesla trees, and more, I was floored. And that was just the first story of seven! Most powerful, for me, was the Scholar’s Tale, the story of Sol Weintraub and his daughter, Rachel. The first of my two daughters had just been born when I read this book, and for the first time ever, when reading, I cried. Cried like a baby.

Anyway, the characters are all on a pilgrimage and tell their stories along the way. It’s a remarkable journey with a satisfyingly climactic ending.

A worthy catalog of works

I have read a lot of science fiction over the years and have really enjoyed everything from Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series to N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy. But I keep coming back to the powerful stories within Simmons’ Hyperion novel. It is the novel that has stuck with me the longest, which I keep coming back to, and has enduring ideas that have helped form my world view.

There are three sequels to the original book, making up the “Cantos” of novels. Opinions vary on the quality of the sequels, and some are better than others (the author is obsessed with John Keats). But they all feature strong storytelling set against an epic scale, and the series is brought to a recognizable and, in my opinion, gratifying conclusion. In an era when major science fiction and fantasy series start out strong, become a little weaker over time, but then are never finished—I’m talking to you, George and Patrick—Simmons does not let the reader down. He was nothing if not prolific.

I have not read all of his other books, and those I have I found to be hit or miss. In particular, I found The Terror (a fictional horror story about Franklin’s lost expedition) to be great fun.

In any case, fans of epic fiction have lost a giant, a great writer and epic story-teller with a gift for dark twists and colorful characters. We can only hope he has found a tree ship to take him to a celestial paradise rather than become infected with a cruciform.