Today's Chorlton charity shop book haul
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Happy Birthday!
Dan Simmons, born on April 4, 1948, is a celebrated American author known for blending science fiction, horror, and historical fiction. His most famous novel, Hyperion (1989), won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1990 and the Locus Award the same year. Hyperion cemented Simmons as a master of speculative fiction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Simmons
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Haven't been reading as much or as often as I'd like, but I did just finish Dan Simmons' "Hyperion" (1990 Hugo winner). I've been reading it in short bits for months (perhaps over a year? Not sure).
I am a little frustrated by the ending -- I guess I will be buying "The Fall of Hyperion" soon.
But it was a fascinating exercise in world-building, and it definitely achieved a brooding horror about the Shrike.
I really hated ILIUM, but I've read the first 200 pages of OLYMPOS and this is slightly better. There is SOME coherence to the storytelling. But ultimately Dan Simmons has written a literary pastiche that means nothing. My working theory is that Dan Simmons lost his mind not long after the Endymion books. Because his talent was almost completely absent after that. Though we shall see where he's at when I eventually get to THE TERROR.
There are many embarrassing qualities about Dan Simmons's work after THE RISE OF ENDYMION. This is really a reading journey I cannot recommend. Lots of awful books. It's extremely soul-crushing, given how brilliant many of those early volumes were. But these feeble efforts at PENTHOUSE LETERS-style passages are especially sad and egregious.
Capsule Review Archive – The Guiding Nose of Ulfant Banderoz by Dan Simmons
https://write.as/robinmarx/capsule-review-archive-the-guiding-nose-of-ulfant-banderoz-by-dan-simmons
As of this morning, I've read the six books that Dan Simmons published after THE FALL OF ENDYMION (a truly great novel) . And, with the exception of A WINTER HAUNTING, the dude was just gone, his creative talents atrophied. You read this shit and he's almost a completely different person. A total hack in some cases. The Joe Kurtz trilogy is a pale imitation of Richard Stark. The less said about THE CROOK FACTORY and DARWIN'S BLADE, the better. Ugh. What happened here?
I read Carrion Comfort (Aasgieren) by Dan Simmons.
https://app.thestorygraph.com/reviews/6a08aa37-f41d-4d9c-81e8-ca1d649885e2
While I haven't yet read ILIUM or OLYMPOS (and I will), by my reckoning, the decline of Dan Simmons as a sui generis talent seemed to happen after he finished THE RISE OF ENDYMION. The three novels that followed were awful or just okay. Simmons's introductions to WORLDS ENOUGH & TIME are wildly arrogant and condescending. Perhaps he was bitter because his well had run dry. It truly is sad what happened to him. He wrote too many books too fast. And his work suffered.
I haven't yet read FLASHBACK (and I'm not looking forward to it), but DARWIN'S BLADE is surely right down there as Dan Simmons at his worst. Wretched dialogue, hopelessly thin characters. And this after THE CROOK FACTORY, which dropped off significantly after the first 100 pages and is also largely tedious. I honestly think that the two brilliant Endymion books took his entire brain and he had nothing left for a few years. Writers, be careful with your creative energies!
Yes, I think you should. If you like his style, you can read “Children of the Night” afterwards. The latter is partly based on “Summer of Night” and also features vampires. If “Children of the Night” doesn't suit your taste either, maybe the whole vampire theme really isn't for you. But that would be okay too.
Listened to this as I read the end of Part 1 of The Rise of Endymion. Definitely a good listen for science fiction, especially if uneasy, meditative or horror oriented.
https://m.soundcloud.com/user-643553014/luis-alvarado-venezuela
#nts #soundcloud #reading #hyperion #hyperioncantos #reading #luisalvarado #venezuela #synthpop #sciencefiction #sf #theriseofendymion #music #playlist #dansimmons
Hi Fediverse! In terms of age, I'm hovering around the midlife crisis. My day job is IT. In my spare time I write stories (#EverlastingRoaringThunder), listen to music and do sports. On Mastodon I'm interested in all topics related to music (#Metal, #HardRock), reading (e.g. #StephenKing, #DanSimmons, #LeeChild, #CharlaineHarris, #NicholasSparks) and writing (#shortstories, #novels). I post in German and English.
Hallo Fediverse! Altersmäßig dümple ich um die Midlife Crisis herum. Mein Brotjob ist die IT. In meiner Freizeit schreibe ich Geschichten (#EverlastingRoaringThunder), höre Musik und treibe Sport. Auf Mastodon interessiere ich mich für alle Themen rund um die Musik (#Metal, #HardRock), das Lesen (z.B. #StephenKing, #DanSimmons, #LeeChild, #CharlaineHarris, #NicholasSparks) und das Schreiben (#Kurzgeschichten, #Romane). Ich poste auf Deutsch und Englisch.
After a year of getting a bunch of old ebooks off my out-of-control Kindle, I've decided to spend this winter getting through the increasing amount of random paper books I've found this year through my neighborhood's Little Free Libraries. Today, read my ★★★★★ review of the 1990 science-fiction classic #Hyperion by #DanSimmons, which turned out to be exactly as great as I had heard.
Alright, I have now read all four books in Dan Simmons's HYPERION Cantos! Largely terrific, incredible worldbuilding. I think the point at which Simmons loses it in THE RISE OF ENDYMION is at the treeship. But the first 500 pages leading up to that is imaginative and spellbinding. Pity that the dude couldn't stick the landing, but, dammit, I'm glad to have this classic series under my belt!
Four pages written so far. I should get over the hump with more. I decided to try reading fiction again and picked up Dan Simmons's THE RISE OF ENDYMION, which I was halfway through before the election. This turned out to be a smart move. Simmons pulled a storytelling move that planted a bomb in my head and I found a cool way to resolve this scene. Not theft, mind you. More invention by way of context. I have no idea how I'm summoning the energy to write in these times.
An anthology-like narrative is not my favorite format, but the mostly self-contained stories of "Hyperion" have all been awesome so far. I'm currently reading the one of the scholar and his daughter who ages backwards in time. It's heartbreaking.
Jesus Christ, ENDYMION is so much fun to read and so ambitiously and often ridiculously large that I think it matches HYPERION in quality. And that was ALREADY one of the best space operas written for literature! It's really a shame about what happened to Dan Simmons. But, goddammit, the man could write!
