Posts Tagged Dan Simmons
VJ Books Begins Presale of Signed Limited Edition Copies of The Terror by Author Dan Simmons
Dan Simmons, the award-winning author of Olympos, Ilium, and The Hyperion Cantos, has received the Hugo Award, the World Fantasy Award, the Bram Stoker Award, and British Science Fiction & Fantasy Awards, among many others.
Signed limited edition copies of The Terror by Dan Simmons are now available for pre-order through VJ Books (www.vjbooks.com). This special edition printing is limited to 500 signed numbered copies.
Bestselling author Lincoln Child says, “The Terror is nothing less than a revelation. Dan Simmons is a giant among novelists, and I am in awe of his achievement.”
The story begins in the spring of 1845; Sir John Franklin leads a company of two ships and 130 men on a hazardous voyage to the remote, uncharted Arctic. His goal: to locate and map the legendary Northwest Passage. Two years later, the expedition, which began in a spirit of optimism and high purpose, faces disaster. Franklin is dead. The two ships — the Erebus and the Terror — are hopelessly trapped by gigantic, shifting ice floes. Supplies are dwindling, and the crews struggle daily against lethal, unimaginably frigid conditions. And something — some Thing — is stalking the survivors, spreading death, suffering, and chaos in its remorseless wake.
About Dan Simmons: 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.”
Simmons 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
About VJ Books: VJ Books started in 1998 and soon learned that their customer was foremost a collector. Their customers sought collector grade first edition books, preferably autographed by the author. In an effort to respond to this demand, VJ Books has developed relationships with publishers, authors and agents to provide a continuous supply of new titles for their customers.
Each month VJ Books’ customers are able to choose from dozens of author signed books from some of the most exciting, highly acclaimed authors in the areas of mystery, suspense, sci-fi and modern literature. Sign up for VJ Books weekly newsletter at: http://visitor.constantcontact.com/manage/optin?v=001IQ4Q15knkjNta2lbpVcky1fBzD50BxcT
Q & A: Dan Simmons, author of “Drood”
(The Seattle Times, Feb. 15, Mary Ann Gwinn)
Say “Charles Dickens,” and most 21st-century citizens think of a benevolent bearded fellow with a holly wreath around his neck. The famous English author helped invent today’s Christmas by publishing “A Christmas Carol,” a fable so universally popular that Tiny Tim’s turkey banished roast goose as the English Christmas meal.
More serious students of Dickens know he had a darker side. He wandered the dismal working-class precincts of 19th-century London for research; he had an enormous ego; he practiced mesmerism (now called hypnotism). His account of the murder of Nancy by Bill Sikes in “Oliver Twist” ranks as one of the most chilling scenes in English literature.
Now novelist Dan Simmons has written “Drood,” (Little,Brown,775pp.), based on the troubled last years of Dickens’ life. The author’s health was failing. He had banished his wife and mother of his 10 children from the household and was entangled in a likely affair with a young actress.
And he was composing “The Mystery of Edwin Drood,” the darkest and most death-obsessed of his books. Dickens died before he finished it.
Simmons takes this material and creates a creepy, baroque and often hilariously tongue-in-cheek portrait of Dickens and his “frenemy,” the mystery writer Wilkie Collins.
Collins narrates “Drood.” His jealousy of Dickens swells and seethes as he becomes ever more detached from reality, courtesy of a kill-an-ox opium habit; he keeps company with a green-skinned woman and his own doppleganger, The Other Wilkie. As for the “Drood” character himself — he’s a sinister, eyelid-less (more…)
Dan Simmons – Drood
(Publisher’s Weekly, Feb. 23)
Simmons kicked off an eight-city tour in Denver, his hometown, on Feb. 16; he’ll end up on Feb. 25. Film rights to Drood have been sold to Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth). According to Publisher’s Weekly starred review, “Despite the book’s length, readers will race through the pages, drawn by the intricate plot and the proliferation of intriguing psychological puzzles, which will remind many of the work of Charles Palliser and Michael Cox.”
Order your signed first edition copy of Drood by Dan Simmons at www.vjbooks.com
Scott Derrickson to direct ‘Hyperion’
(Variety, Jan. 29, Michael Fleming)
Trevor Sands adapting Dan Simmons’ novels
The Day the Earth Stood Still” helmer Scott Derrickson is set to direct “Hyperion Cantos” for Warner Bros. and GK Films.
Derrickson boards a project that will take two Dan Simmons sci-fi novels — “Hyperion” and “The Fall of Hyperion” — and meld them into one film being scripted by Trevor Sands.
Story is set in the distant future, as a space war threatens Hyperion, a planet known for the Time Tombs — large artifacts that can move through time and are guarded by a gruesome monster called the Shrike.
Sands co-wrote and directed the 2002 film “Inside.” Recently he’s worked on Dimension’s “Six Million Dollar Man” and adapted the David Brin sci-fi novel “Startide Rising” for Paramount.
Derrickson is also attached to direct “Paradise Lost” at Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures. Derrickson also co-scripted “Devil’s Knot” for Dimension Films with Paul Boardman, his writing partner on “The Exorcism of Emily Rose.”
King just wrapped “Edge of Darkness” with Mel Gibson.
Dan Simmons – Drood
(Publisher’s Weekly, Nov. 24)
Bestseller Simmons (The Terror) brilliantly imagines a terrifying sequence of events as the inspiration for Dickens’s last, uncompleted novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, in this unsettling and complex thriller. In the course of narrowly escaping death in an 1865 train wreck and trying to rescue fellow passengers, Dickens encounters a ghoulish figure named Drood, who had apparently been traveling in a coffin. Along with his real-life novelist friend Wilkie Collins, who narrates the tale, Dickens pursues the elusive Drood, an effort that leads the pair to a nightmarish world beneath London’s streets. Collins begins to wonder whether the object of their quest, if indeed the man exists, is merely a cover for his colleague’s own murderous inclinations. Despite the book’s length, readers will race through the pages, drawn by the intricate plot and the proliferation of intriguing psychological puzzles, which will remind many of the work of Charles Palliser and Michael Cox. 4-city author tour. (Feb. 2009)