{"id":100,"date":"2006-11-17T10:05:35","date_gmt":"2006-11-17T14:05:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/?p=100"},"modified":"2008-07-07T13:47:05","modified_gmt":"2008-07-07T17:47:05","slug":"chips-picks-dan-simmons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/?p=100","title":{"rendered":"Chip&#8217;s Picks &#8211; Dan Simmons"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Continuing the Chip&#8217;s Picks series, my next author to recommend will be <B>Dan Simmons<\/B>.<\/p>\n<p>Simmons has done quite a bit of work in the horror genre (<I>Summer of Night<\/I>, <I>Song of Kali<\/I>), and his science fiction is tinged with a lot of cringe-inducing imagery.  However, his descriptions are amazingly rich and detailed, and his characters seem like real people instead of coatracks to hang ideas on (a complaint I always have about Asimov).<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->Books to look for include:<UL><LI><I>Hyperion<\/I> &#8211; A group of &#8220;pilgrims,&#8221; all with dark secrets, travel toward a mysterious, ancient, and deadly shrine on an alien world.  Written in the style of <I>The Canterbury Tales<\/I>, each traveler has his or her own chapter, and they all tell their tales in a distinct voice.  Simmons explores some of the things that humans might become, and some of the dangers that may await them in the future.<\/LI><\/p>\n<p><LI><I>Hyperion&#8217;s Fall<\/I>, <I>Endymion<\/I>, <I>Rise of Endymion<\/I> (the sequels) &#8211; None of these are as powerful as <I>Hyperion<\/I>, but they&#8217;re all worth reading.  <I>Hyperion&#8217;s Fall<\/I> ties up, more or less, the loose ends from the first book, but it has a tacked-on feeling to it, as though Simmons hadn&#8217;t really intended to write a sequel.  The two Endymion books explore characters in the same universe, whose fates are related to the goings-on in the Hyperion novels, but the ties are fairly loose.<\/LI><\/p>\n<p><LI><I>Prayers to Broken Stones<\/I> &#8211; A collection of short stories (including one which became a chapter in <I>Hyperion<\/I>) covering topics as diverse as the familial implications of returning from the dead, a combat theme park in Vietnam, and psychic vampires, Simmons really shines with short stories.<\/LI><\/p>\n<p><LI><I>Ilium<\/I> and <I>Olympos<\/I> &#8211; Three planets (Earth, Mars, and Jupiter), two major literary themes (<I>The Iliad<\/I> and <I>The Tempest<\/I>), loads of AIs, cyborgs, hypersentient thingummies, and a couple of confused humans.  I haven&#8217;t read these two yet, but I&#8217;ve had endless paragraphs quoted at me by my husband, whose judgment I trust in such matters.  If I can convince him to write &#8220;Shadow&#8217;s Picks,&#8221; I&#8217;ll letcha know.<\/LI><\/UL><\/p>\n<p>Related:<br \/>\n<A HREF=\"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/?p=92\">Robert A. Heinlein<\/A><br \/>\n<A HREF=\"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/?p=101\">Tim Powers<\/A><br \/>\n<A HREF=\"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/?p=110\">Neal Stephenson<\/A><br \/>\n<A HREF=\"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/?p=195\">Roger Zelazny<\/A><br \/>\n<A HREF=\"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/?p=201\">Richard Morgan<\/A><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Continuing the Chip&#8217;s Picks series, my next author to recommend will be Dan Simmons. Simmons has done quite a bit of work in the horror genre (Summer of Night, Song of Kali), and his science fiction is tinged with a lot of cringe-inducing imagery. However, his descriptions are amazingly rich and detailed, and his characters [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}