Sad and to me, completely unexpected news:
Dan Simmons, author of some of the most popular, award-winning, thought-provoking, mind-expanding, and iconic horror and science of the last 40 years,
has died at age 77. I first read him around 1990 or so, after hearing so much about his debut horror novel,
Song of Kali. Boy, did that one do a number on me! In quick succession I read a bunch of his short stories, then soon after that dove into
Hyperion, thanks to my boss and a coworker, both big SF guys. Boy, did
that one do a number on me! I'd never really read any true SF before, so being introduced to many of its subgenres in one novel blew my brain out. It hit particularly hard because I had just read, or read sections of,
The Canterbury Tales in my World Lit class at community college, so I grokked the narrative device immediately.
Today I pulled down my Simmons mass markets, and I realized for all his prolific output, I kind of lost track of his work after the mid-1990s. But I have to say many if not most of his paperbacks have some of the greatest cover art of the entire
Paperbacks from Hell era, and the books themselves are treasured mementos of those days long gone. Dig:
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