Dan Simmons

Author profile

born

April 04, 1948 in Peoria, Illinois, The United States

gender

male

website

http://www.dansimmons.com/

genre

Science Fiction & Fantasy, Literature & Fiction

About this author

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Dan Simmons was born in Peoria, Illinois, in 1948, and grew up in various cities and small towns in the Midwest, including Brimfield, Illinois, which was the source of his fictional "Elm Haven" in 1991's SUMMER OF NIGHT and 2002's A WINTER HAUNTING. Dan received a B.A. in English from Wabash College in 1970, winning a national Phi Beta Kappa Award during his senior year for excellence in fiction, journalism and art.

Dan received his Masters in Education from Washington University in St. Louis in 1971. He then worked in elementary education for 18 years -- 2 years in Missouri, 2 years in Buffalo, New York -- one year as a specially trained BOCES "resource teacher" and another as a sixth-grade teacher -- and 14...moreDan Simmons was born in Peoria, Illinois, in 1948, and grew up in various cities and small towns in the Midwest, including Brimfield, Illinois, which was the source of his fictional "Elm Haven" in 1991's SUMMER OF NIGHT and 2002's A WINTER HAUNTING. Dan received a B.A. in English from Wabash College in 1970, winning a national Phi Beta Kappa Award during his senior year for excellence in fiction, journalism and art.

Dan received his Masters in Education from Washington University in St. Louis in 1971. He then worked in elementary education for 18 years -- 2 years in Missouri, 2 years in Buffalo, New York -- one year as a specially trained BOCES "resource teacher" and another as a sixth-grade teacher -- and 14 years in Colorado.

ABOUT DAN
Biographic Sketch

His last four years in teaching were spent creating, coordinating, and teaching in APEX, an extensive gifted/talented program serving 19 elementary schools and some 15,000 potential students. During his years of teaching, he won awards from the Colorado Education Association and was a finalist for the Colorado Teacher of the Year. He also worked as a national language-arts consultant, sharing his own "Writing Well" curriculum which he had created for his own classroom. Eleven and twelve-year-old students in Simmons' regular 6th-grade class averaged junior-year in high school writing ability according to annual standardized and holistic writing assessments. Whenever someone says "writing can't be taught," Dan begs to differ and has the track record to prove it. Since becoming a full-time writer, Dan likes to visit college writing classes, has taught in New Hampshire's Odyssey writing program for adults, and is considering hosting his own Windwalker Writers' Workshop.

Dan's first published story appeared on Feb. 15, 1982, the day his daughter, Jane Kathryn, was born. He's always attributed that coincidence to "helping in keeping things in perspective when it comes to the relative importance of writing and life."

Dan has been a full-time writer since 1987 and lives along the Front Range of Colorado -- in the same town where he taught for 14 years -- with his wife, Karen, his daughter, Jane, (when she's home from Hamilton College) and their Pembroke Welsh Corgi, Fergie. He does much of his writing at Windwalker -- their mountain property and cabin at 8,400 feet of altitude at the base of the Continental Divide, just south of Rocky Mountain National Park. An 8-ft.-tall sculpture of the Shrike -- a thorned and frightening character from the four Hyperion/Endymion novels -- was sculpted by an ex-student and friend, Clee Richeson, and the sculpture now stands guard near the isolated cabin.(less)

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Books by Dan Simmons

Average rating: 3.93 · 75,179 ratings · 6,445 reviews · 102 distinct works

	Hyperion (Hyperion, #1) 4.15 avg rating — 17,313 ratings — published 1989 — 48 editions	My rating:
	The Fall of Hyperion (Hyperion, #2) 4.11 avg rating — 9,833 ratings — published 1990 — 49 editions	My rating:
	Endymion (Hyperion, #3) 4.01 avg rating — 5,958 ratings — published 1995 — 37 editions	My rating:
	The Rise of Endymion (Hyperion, #4) 4.07 avg rating — 5,534 ratings — published 1997 — 36 editions	My rating:
	The Terror 3.92 avg rating — 5,499 ratings — published 2007 — 31 editions	My rating:
	Ilium 3.96 avg rating — 5,121 ratings — published 2003 — 21 editions	My rating:
	Drood 3.41 avg rating — 4,010 ratings — published 2009 — 29 editions	My rating:
	Olympos (Ilium, #2) 3.84 avg rating — 3,333 ratings — published 2005 — 18 editions	My rating:
	Carrion Comfort 3.85 avg rating — 2,613 ratings — published 1989 — 28 editions	My rating:
	Summer of Night 3.94 avg rating — 2,211 ratings — 25 editions	My rating:

More books by Dan Simmons…

Series by Dan Simmons

Hyperion Cantos (4 books)
by Dan Simmons

4.11 avg rating — 39,121 ratings

Ilium (2 books)
by Dan Simmons

3.91 avg rating — 8,454 ratings

Joe Kurtz (3 books)
by Dan Simmons

3.66 avg rating — 1,000 ratings

Ilium/Olympos (4 books)
by Dan Simmons, G.L. Staffilano (Translator)

4.02 avg rating — 91 ratings

Σκοτεινά Οράματα (2 books)
by Dan Simmons, David Morrel, John Coyne, T.E.D. Klein, Ολυμπία Ευσταθιάδου (Μετάφραση), Χρ, Λιθαρής (Μετάφραση)

3.25 avg rating — 4 ratings

More series by Dan Simmons…

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Interviews

March 2009, Dan Simmons
"I love unreliable narrators. When I realized I was going to go with Wilkie Collins as my narrator, it was joyous. First of all, he's a serious drug addict, taking tremendous amounts of laudanum every day and shooting morphine at night to sleep. And second, he was a little crazy." ...More

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Quotes by Dan Simmons

“To see and feel one's beloved naked for the first time is one of life's pure, irreducible epiphanies. If there is a true religion in the universe, it must include that truth of contact or be forever hollow. To make love to the one true person who deserves that love is one of the few absolute rewards of being a human being, balancing all of the pain, loss, awkwardness, loneliness, idiocy, compromise, and clumsiness that go with the human condition. To make love to the right person makes up for a lot of mistakes.”
― Dan Simmons, The Rise of Endymion

tags: beauty , connection , happiness , inspiration , love , religion , sex

26 people liked it

“In the beginning was the Word. Then came the fucking word processor. Then came the thought processor. Then came the death of literature. And so it goes.”
― Dan Simmons

tags: history , literature , writing

21 people liked it

“Want to talk about Shakespeare's sonnets?" asked Orphu of Io.

Are you shitting me?" The moravecs loved the ancient human colloquial phrases, the more scatological the better.

Yes," said Orphu. "I am most definitely shitting you, my friend.”
― Dan Simmons, Ilium

tags: humor

16 people liked it

See all Dan Simmons's quotes »

Polls

There are 5 nominations for the October Fantasy Theme selection - from the World Fantasy Awards winners and nominees ....

The City & The City by China Miéville

7 votes 46.7%

The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch

4 votes 26.7%

The Mist by Stephen King

2 votes 13.3%

Replay by Ken Grimwood

2 votes 13.3%

Song of Kali by Dan Simmons

0 votes 0.0%

15 total votes

3 comments

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