Dan Simmons

Dan Simmons (1948-2026) was an American novelist who wrote across science fiction, horror and historical fiction, best known for the Hugo Award-winning space opera Hyperion (1989) and the Arctic horror novel The Terror (2007).

Born Daniel Joseph Simmons in Peoria, Illinois, on 4 April 1948, he taught in elementary schools for eighteen years in Missouri and New York and finally in Longmont, Colorado, leaving in 1987 to write full time. Harlan Ellison helped him into the Milford writers' workshop in 1982.

His first novel, Song of Kali (1985), won the World Fantasy Award. In 1989 came Hyperion, published by Doubleday, a Canterbury Tales-style frame story told by pilgrims on their way to the Time Tombs, which won the Hugo and Locus awards; The Fall of Hyperion followed in 1990. Carrion Comfort, also 1989, grew out of a 1983 Omni novelette and won the Bram Stoker Award. The Hyperion sequence continued with Endymion (1996) and The Rise of Endymion, which won the 1998 Hugo Award. Ilium won the 2004 Locus Award and was a Hugo nominee. His historical work includes The Terror, adapted for AMC television in 2018, and Drood (2009). He died in Longmont, Colorado, on 21 February 2026, aged 77, having published 31 novels and story collections in 28 countries.

For collectors

The key first is the Doubleday first edition of Hyperion (1989), the opening of the Hyperion Cantos, with The Fall of Hyperion following in 1990. Carrion Comfort was first published in hardback in 1989 by the small press Dark Harvest, with Warner's mass-market paperback following in 1990, so the Dark Harvest edition is the true first. Song of Kali (1985) is his debut and won the World Fantasy Award.