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5 unusual facts about Dan Simmons


43-Man Squamish

The science fiction novel Endymion by Dan Simmons describes Raul's flight through a crowded mess as, "They made way for me as I dodged through them like a deep brooder on a forty-three-man squamish team herding the goat in for the goal."

Dan Simmons

"Vanni Fucci Is Alive and Well and Living In Hell", a 1988 short story lampooning televangelists included in Prayers to Broken Stones, is about a brief return to earth by the title character, an inhabitant of Dante's Inferno

Carrion Comfort derives its title and many of its themes from a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins

His collection of short stories, "Worlds Enough & Time", takes its name from the first line of the poem To His Coy Mistress by British poet Andrew Marvell: 'Had we but world enough, and time,'.

In The Fall of Hyperion, John Keats appears as one of the main characters, with references to characters in Forbidden Planet and The Time Machine.


Jurgen Ziewe

Many of his fantasy images found their way onto book covers of well known science fiction authors including Robert Silverberg, Vernor Vinge, Steven Baxter, Iain Banks, Dan Simmons, Greg Bear, John Barnes and Peter F. Hamilton and writers of the Mind-Body-Spirit genre.

Portals in fiction

In his Hyperion Cantos novel series, Dan Simmons imagines a network of portals called "farcasters" which connect most human-inhabited planets.

Postliterate society

Many science-fiction societies are postliterate, as in Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, Dan Simmons' novel Ilium, and Gary Shteyngart's Super Sad True Love Story.

Thomas S. Ray

In The Rise of Endymion, Dan Simmons's conclusion to his famous Hyperion Cantos sci-fi series, it is revealed by the character of Aenea that the TechnoCore originated from a human experiment in which computer programs were allowed to compete for resources (e.g. memory) and evolve accordingly.

Yunmen Wenyan

Yunmen's Japanese name, Ummon, was the namesake for a character which was featured prominently in Dan Simmons' acclaimed Hyperion Cantos science fiction series; Simmon's Ummon was a vastly advanced, intelligent AI from the "TechnoCore", who reveals key plot elements to the main characters, through koans and mondo (dialogue).


see also

Ouster

In Dan Simmons' Hyperion universe, Ousters are a branch of humanity that chose to travel/live in space, "between the stars", as opposed to dwelling in planetary systems