The Harper
Collins Morrow EOS catalog of upcoming titles includes
the following copy for OLYMPOS' July, 2005, release
MULTIPLE AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR: HUGO AWARD •
WORLD FANTASY AWARD • LOCUS AWARD
BRAM STOKER AWARD • SCIENCE FICTION CHRONICLE
AWARD • BRITISH SCIENCE FICTION AWARD
BRITISH FANTASY AWARD • THEODORE STURGEON AWARD
• COLORADO BOOK AWARD
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OLYMPOS
Dan Simmons |
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| The
author of the Hyperion Cantos delivers his epic-concluding
companion to Ilium –
the novel that “sets new standards for SF in the
new century” raves acclaimed author Peter F. Hamilton
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| Intertwining
Homeric themes of fate, ceremony, friendship, duty, and
courage with nonstop action and SF panache, Olympos begins
with Greek and Trojan heroes led by the briefly allied
Achilles and Hector laying siege to the home of the gods.
But the conflict soon spreads far beyond mere humankind
and their ancient gods, pitting Beings with incredible
powers against one another and humanity – entities
with names such as Setebos, Night, Prospero, Caliban,
Sycorax, and the Demogorgon – thereby threatening
the existence of every living being in our solar system
and beyond. A breathtaking work of high-concept science
fiction, Olympos will be eagerly anticipated by fans everywhere.
Dan Simmons is
the author of the Hugo-Award-winning Hyperion, Song
of Kali, Carrion Comfort, Worlds Enough & Time,
and other respected works. He lives along the Front
Range of Colorado.
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| PRAISE
FOR ILIUM:
“Simmons’s
scope is truly staggering, his inventiveness continues
to impress, and the narrative offers something
for everyone.”
– Kirkus Reviews
“Magnificently original.”
-- Denver Post
“Only Simmons could
mix together Homer, Shakespeare, and Proust with
black holes, Turing machines, little green men,
and big honking robots to come up with a tale
of high adventure that’s also an engrossing
meditation on humanity’s past and future.”
– Joe Haldeman, author of The
Forever War
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MARKETING CAMPAIGN
- National Print Advertising
in Locus, New York Times Book Review
- 7-City Author Tour: Dayton,
Denver, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York City, San
Diego, Seattle
- On-line Promotion
- Official Author Website:
www.DanSimmons.com
- Reader's Edition Available
- 9-Copy Floor Display
0-06-079450-X
$233.55 ($335.55 Can.)
- 13-Copy Mixed Hardcover/Mass Market Floor Display
4 copies of Olympos and 9 copies of Ilium
0-06-079495-X
$175.71 ($246.71 Can.)
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- Ilium was a New York
Times Extended list bestseller, was chosen as a Publishers
Weekly Best Book of 2003, won the Locus Award, and
was nominated for a Hugo Award. Eos will publish the
mass market edition in June 2005
- The Hyperion Cantos
books have more than 1.1 million copies in print.
- Special effects giant
Digital Domain and producer Barnet Bain (What Dreams
May Come) have announced plans to bring Ilium and
Olympos to the screen as major motion pictures.
SCIENCE FICTION 0-380-97894-6
$25.95 ($36.95 Can.) 480
pages; 6x9 Carton Quantity: 16 |
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A sequel to Simmons's Ilium (2003) offers up the Trojan
War along with elements from The Tempest, The Time Machine,
Victorian poets and pop SF.
Ilium ended with the Greek and Trojan heroes allied against
the Olympian gods, advanced space-going robots called moravecs
aiding the human side. Meanwhile, in a different reality,
a lovely but decadent human civilization is under attack from
its feral former servants, the robotlike voynix. A third plot
strand now updates the conflict between the sorcerer Prospero,
Caliban and Caliban's monstrous god Setebos. And the revived
20th-century American scholar Hockenberry attempts to chronicle
the events while making love to volatile Helen of Troy. Simmons
brings each subplot to a boil and spins off sub-subplots about
Achilles' love for a dead Amazon queen, Odysseus' voyage to
the alternate Earth with the moravecs, the arrival of Setebos
and his minions in what was once Paris, etc. Everything comes
together into a solid adventure story, with all the mysteries
explained in respectably up-to-date SF terms. At the same
time, Simmons adopts the device of having his characters quote
freely from Homer, Shakespeare, Shelley, Browning, Proust
and a host of other sources that liberal arts majors can have
fun spotting. The author often gives his borrowings an ironic
twist--as when Odysseus quotes Tennyson's "Ulysses"
to a classical scholar who half-recognizes the poem, or when
Prospero objects to playing himself in a production of The
Tempest, not wanting to memorize so many lines. Homeric tags
alternate with tough-guy street talk, and several of the moravec
scientists turn out to be Star Trek fans. Simmons's gift for
vivid description is evident throughout, as well. He effectively
combines a serious subject, ironic perspective, strong action
and believable (if not always sympathetic) characters.
Ambitious, witty, moving: Simmons at his best.
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Publishers
Weekly Review of OLYMPOS
OLYMPOS
DAN SIMMONS.Eos,$25.95 (576p)
ISBN 0-380-97894-6
DShakespeare’s rawing fromTempest Homer’sand the
Iliad, work of several 19th-century poets, Simmons achieves
another triumph in this majestic, if convoluted, sequel to
his much-praised Ilium (2003). Posthumans masquerading as
the Greek gods and living on Mars travel back and forth through
time and alternate universes to interfere in the real Trojan
War, employing a resurrected late 20th-century classics professor,
Thomas Hockenberry, as their tool. Meanwhile, the last remaining
old-style human beings on a far-future Earth must struggle
for survival against a variety of hostile forces. Superhuman
entities with names
like Prospero, Caliban and Ariel lay complex plots, using
human beings as game pieces. From the outer solar system,
an
advanced race of semiorganic Artificial Intelligences, called
moravecs, observe Earth and Mars in consternation, trying
to
make sense of the situation, hoping to shift the balance of
power before out-of-control quantum forces destroy everything.
This is powerful stuff, rich in both high- tech sense of wonder
and literary allusions, but Simmons is in complete control
of his material as half a dozen baroque plot lines smoothly
converge on a rousing and highly satisfying conclusion. Agent,
Richard Curtis.7-city author tour. (June 28)
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OLYMPOS
Sneak Preview
The 1,300-page manuscript for OLYMPOS
was delivered to Harper Collins EOS editor Jennifer
Brehl in September of 2004, has been accepted, and is
currently in the proofreading stage. The book is scheduled
for release in July, 2005.
“The scope and scale of ILIUM was pretty large,”
Dan said recently, “but OLYMPOS is larger and,
I think, more compelling. Having left the predictable
confines of the classic Iliad, all bets are off concerning
the future and fates of all the characters. Even mighty
Zeus is at risk.”
Those who’ve read OLYMPOS in manuscript agree
that the story begun in ILIUM becomes more compelling
as the different strands in that first novel –
the fate of the post-humans on Earth, the adventurous
moravecs Mahnmut and Orphu, the heroes of ancient Troy,
the Olympian gods, and the various other plots –
converge and gain momentum, ending in what one reader
has called “a literally world-shattering climax.”
“I feel good about this concluding volume of
the tale because I think the human elements of the story
gain focus and importance in OLYMPOS,” said Dan.
“And when the entire tale is told, it becomes
apparent that the central theme of all the stories was
not so much the Iliad, but the ancient Prometheus legend.”
ILIUM is scheduled for mass-market paperback release
in June and Dan will be touring for OLYMPOS in July,
2005. |

Artwork by
François Baranger
www.francois-baranger.com/
|
click here for OLYMPOS Sneak
Preview.
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MISTER
KURTZ, HE DEAD
Dan’s
extremely hard-boiled former P.I. hero Joe Kurtz is no more.
Although Kurtz had survived attempts on his life by the mafia,
the Buffalo P.D., fellow inmates, his mafia-don girlfriend,
and assorted hoodlums (and took more lumps than a Brit with
a sweet tooth dropping sugar cubes in his tea), Joe Kurtz
finally met his demise this autumn by an unlikely hand –
his creator’s.
“I owed one more Joe Kurtz novel to St. Martin’s
Press,” Dan reported, “but I bought back that
book, thus putting an effective end to the Joe Kurtz series.”
The Kurtz books, consisting of the three novels HARDCASE,
HARD FREEZE, and HARD AS NAILS – what Dan’s brother
Wayne uncouthly referred to as “the Viagra series”
– had originally been designed to be a single ultra-hardboiled
novel, but Dan had enjoyed the character of Joe Kurtz and
the Buffalo, New York, setting, and agreed to do more books
about the ex-P.I. who now did private investigations mostly
for the Mafia.
“I liked Kurtz,” Dan said, “and I really
enjoyed returning to Buffalo and its surrounding areas such
as Lackawanna from time to time to seek out some mean streets
and scenic locations. I also enjoyed working with my editor
at St. Martins, Marc Resnick . . . Marc was always enthusiastic
about the Kurtz novels, offered great editorial advice, and
was a pleasure to work with.”
So why kill Kurtz off?
“In the end it came down to scheduling,” said
Dan. “In both 2002 and 2003 I was doing a major novel
such as ILIUM for Harper Collins EOS and then a Joe Kurtz
novel for St. Martins in the same year, while trying to find
time for screenplays and other projects. After OLYMPOS –
which weighs in at 1,300 manuscript pages – I just ran
out of steam. I didn’t want to shortchange the next
Kurtz novel . . . so I killed him off instead. Think of it
in terms of literally buying time for myself.”
The proposed title for the next Joe Kurtz book was HARD DAY
DYING. Was it true that Dan was going to throw Joe off Reichenbach
Falls in that book anyway?
“As was true in the first three Kurtz books, Joe was
in for some rough treatment in the fourth novel,” said
Simmons. “But in the end it wasn’t going to be
Joe Kurtz who experienced the actual dying part of that hard
day. Let’s just say that Joe Kurtz wasn’t a guy
you wanted to make an enemy of unless you had to. And I was
curious in HARD DAY DYING to see which woman Kurtz ended up
with – the mafia babe or the tough female cop. Now I
may never know.”
In
a mild twist of irony, actor Thomas Jane (Deep Blue Sea,
Dreamcatcher, The Punisher) had recently taken an interest
in Joe Kurtz as a possible character for a TV series or feature
film.
“Joe’s still out there doing his thing –
I just won’t be taking notice of it any more,”
says Dan. “And his first three books will remain available
in paperback . . . I hope. I like Tom Jane as an actor; he
reminds me a little of the young Steve McQueen. And I’d
enjoy seeing a movie or TV show made based on the character
because I love the setting of Buffalo, New York. If they did
shoot a series there, many of the street names might be familiar
to viewers because the bible for the old “Hill Street
Blues” TV show told writers to use Buffalo street names
for the unnamed city that series took place in. I bet you
didn’t know that.”
No, we didn’t. Thank you, Dan, for that piece of trivia.
And farewell, Joe Kurtz, wherever you are.
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ILIUM
wins Locus Readers Poll Award for Best Novel
Winners of the 2004 Locus Awards have been announced in
Locus Magazine's July 2004 issue, along with complete results
of this year's readers poll. Full results of the voting can
be found at Locus online at http://www.locusmag.com/2004/News/
06_LocusAwards.html
The Locus Awards are based on ballots sent in by readers of
Locus Magazine, the perennially unofficial “official
magazine of the science fiction and fantasy field.”
Voters run the full gamut of readers, fans, professional writers,
agents, editors, publishers, and others with a strong and
vested interest in imaginative literature and speculative
fiction. This year there were 134 SF novels nominated for
Best Novel on 538 ballots.
For the past several years Locus Awards winners have been
announced at a banquet during Westercon; however this year
arrangements could not be made with the Westercon committee.
The awards were officially presented at a ceremony at Worldcon
in Boston, Friday 3 September at 11 a.m. Winner for Best SF
Novel is -- • ILLIUM, Dan Simmons (Subterranean; Eos)
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GOLLANCZ
ORION brings out OLYMPOS, ILIUM, and HYPERION OMNIBUS
IN U.K.
Dan’s U.K. publisher ORION –
an imprint of Gollancz of London – is reissuing
Dan’s backlist in the U.K., beginning with THE
HYPERION OMBNIBUS – a gathering of HYPERION
and THE FALL OF HYPERION into one volume, a first
for British readers – and last year published
ILIUM at about the same time as the American edition
hit the stands. In 2005, Orion will publish OLYMPOS.
Response to ILIUM has been strong in
the U.K. and includes some of the following –
“Exuberant. Visceral detail, breathtaking
audacity”
-Justina
Robson, THE GUARDIAN
“Sets the standard for SF in the
new century”
-Peter
F. Hamilton
“Grade A hyper-imaginative space
opera and about as unmissable as Science Fiction gets”
-SFX
The covers for the ORION editions are
especially striking – following the visual theme
of the ancient helmet seen as a scarred planetoid
first used for the cover of ILIUM.
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HYPERION
as a video game?
Discussions are currently under way to adapt
the HYPERION Saga as a high-tech video and computer game.
Negotiations are still in progress and Dan is being represented
by Michael Prevett of Relevant Entertainment.
(Left) The Hyperion “movie poster” art used here
is a work of art from one of our contributors, an artist named
“Sparth”.
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Jane
K. Simmons: Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction
As
Dan mentioned in his June Message, his daughter Jane Kathryn
Simmons graduated from New York's Hamilton College in May
as a comparative literature major. During her last two years
at Hamilton, Jane's interests focused on James Joyce's ULYSSES
and Marcel Proust's IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME. (In June, 2004,
she pursued her interest in Joyce to the Bloomsday celebration
in Dublin, where more than 800 scholars from around the world
descended on that Irish city to celebrate the annual James
Joyce Festival and -- this year -- the centenary of the day
in history, June 16, 1904, on which all the events in Joyce's
ULYSSES take place. Reportedly, a good time was had by all
-- especially, Jane says, during the Official James Joyce
Pub Crawl.)
Since then she's attended the Maine Photographic Workshop
in filmmaking and video production and currently -- as of
December -- is an intern in a documentary film production
company. Her dad hopes she hasn't completely abandoned the
Word for the Visual.
Part of Jane's senior thesis at Hamilton was
a series of her poems based on the characters, themes, and
evolving complexity of style in Proust's masterpiece. We've
had some nice feedback from readers who enjoyed perusing Jane's
poetry -- subsumed under the Wallace Stegner-borrowed heading
"Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction" -- so her proud
father decided to keep the poems on this web site for a while
longer.
You
can reach Jane's poems by clicking here.
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HYPERION
Role Playing Game in St. Petersburg, Russia
In
May of this year in Saint Petersburg, a role game was created
around the Dan Simmons novel HYPERION. Ananev Jurin has sent
these interesting photos taken during the playing of this
game.

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