THE
TERROR Becomes Bestseller, Goes to Third Printing
Dan reports that THE TERROR, released
on January 8 of this year, achieved national bestseller
status within a few weeks and is now in its third printing,
with more than 80,000 hardcover copies currently in
print.
THE TERROR was # 17 on the New York Times
Extended Bestseller List, # 14 on Publishers Weekly’s
top 15 Bestseller List, and has been in the 30% discount
sections of Borders, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon.com
for some weeks. Dan’s short book tour in late
January through early February appeared to have helped
sales; THE TERROR was # 3 on The Denver Post
bestseller list and on that list for several weeks,
# 4 on the Los Angeles Times list, and also
on the bestseller lists in San Diego, San Francisco,
Seattle, and Portland, Oregon.
Current word is that THE TERROR will be reviewed in
New York Times Review of Books on Sunday, March
18.
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Podcast
of Rick Kleffel's January 31 Interview with Dan
While in San Francisco on tour for THE
TERROR at the end of January, Dan went to the NPR headquarters
there to do this one-hour interview with Rick Kleffel
of California's KUSP radio. Kleffel's "The Agony
Column" features podcast and broadcast interviews
with some of the top names in imaginative fiction. This
interview focuses on THE TERROR but also includes conversations
about writing SF, researching for a novel, the demise
of Joe Kurtz, and other topics.
To
hear this podcast, please click here to reach the
Agony Column Archives and scroll down to Simmons's interview
on 1-31-07 to download it in either MP3 or Real Player
format.
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Simmons
Interviewed on the Kacey Kowars Radio Show
In mid-April, Dan was interviewed about
THE TERROR and other topics on the popular Kacey Kowars
Show. Click on the following link to hear the interview
-- http://kaceykowars.com/authors/simmons.html
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IN
THE BELLY OF THE THING
(Dan's note: John Clute is one of the
most respected reviewers in the field of speculative
fiction. Here is his Feb. 19 review of THE TERROR in
his "Excessive Candour" column on SCI-FI WEEKLY,
Sci-Fi.com. SPOILER ALERT! Clute discusses the end of
the novel in detail!)
Excessive Candour
In the Belly of the Thing
By John Clute
No reader who has begun to get used to
the literatures of the early 21st century should be
flummoxed by the strangeness of The Terror, which seems
to be an historically exact recounting of the famous
doomed Arctic expedition led by the ineffably stupid
Sir John Franklin (1786-1847), who caused the deaths
of 130 men in his attempt to find the Northwest Passage
by force, but which is something else entirely. The
Terror is not only a story about white men not getting
the point of the world, it is also a story about the
wrongness of a certain kind of story.
For there is no way to understand Franklin's
insane blundering assault against the arctic ice north
of mainland Canada, nor the "supernatural"
intensity of the experience of dying there of cold at
the top of the world, as a simple narrative whose terminus
is mundanely inevitable. The story of the Franklin expedition
is not inherently a realistic story—not a tale
that can plausibly be told within the framework of a
conventional mimetic narrative process, despite the
650 pages Simmons spends seeming to obey the demands
of "realism." Because The Terror is not a
goosed documentary; it is far truer than that. It is
a fable.
We begin in medias res, where meaning
begins, six months after Franklin has finally died,
in one of the two ships stranded inextricably in the
ice because he refused to listen to reason about what
was facing the expedition. Click
here to continue reading article article at http://www.scifi.com/sfw/books/column/sfw15092.html
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READING EXCERPT FROM
THE AUDIO BOOK VERSION OF THE TERROR
Dan writes –
Over the years I’ve annoyed more than a few of
my professional peers by suggesting that listening to
an author read his or her prose is not always the best
way to get a sense of the true quality of the writing.
It is, of course, almost always interesting –
some writers (especially poets) can be wonderful reading
their own work and listening to an author’s emphasis
can be and often is a revelation – but overall,
listening to a good actor or trained professional reader
verbalize careful written prose gives us readers a better
sense of the literary cadence and quality of the book.
In other words, listening to Shakespeare read King Lear
would be fascinating – and he was trained as an
actor – but listening to a recording of Sir John
Gielgud reading it almost certainly gives us a better
sense of the work.
The following link is to a Borders’ site that
includes a brief excerpt from the opening of THE TERROR.
(And despite an artifact that may still be on this site,
THE TERROR is available now in all Borders and other
bookstores.)
CLICK
HERE to listen to an excerpt of THE TERROR
(http://www.bordersmedia.com/features/audio/terror.asp)
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TWO
SIMMONS’ HORROR CLASSICS RE-RELEASED IN CONJUNCTION
WITH THE TERROR
Hachette Book Group USA, which has become the parent
company of Little, Brown and what used to be Warner
Books has, in conjunction with the release of THE TERROR,
released the mass-market paperback versions of two of
Dan’s horror classics – SUMMER OF NIGHT
and CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT.
Dan says –
“I like the feeling of the new cover art for
both books, but especially SUMMER OF NIGHT. The book
is about kids in the small town of Elm Haven, Illinois,
fighting a creeping terror in the summer of 1960, and
the sense of the Midwest is central to the tale. As
someone who grew up in the Midwest, I can attest that
the late evening sunset over cornfields – the
central image on the new cover – is very much
a part of a child’s experience there.”
 
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Canadian
Franklin-Expedition Historian Reviews THE TERROR for
The Globe and Mail
Dan writes --
"Even while I was writing THE TERROR, I knew
that it would almost certainly someday be reviewed by
an historian or writer with great knowledge about the
actual Sir John Franklin Expedition. Ken McGoogan's
recent review in The Globe and Mail -- Canada's national
newspaper -- is precisely that review by an expert.
McGoogan received the Pierre Berton Award for History
and the UBC Medal for Canadian Biography for his book
LADY FRANKLIN'S REVENGE. His book FATAL PASSAGE, about
the expedition, is being adapted as a 2-hour Canadian
TV docudrama."
From the Toronto Globe and Mail
© 2006 by Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc.
FICTION
Franklin and the white death
KEN MCGOOGAN
The Terror
By Dan Simmons
Little Brown, 769 pages, $32.99
The most impressive achievement of this brilliant
historical novel about the Franklin expedition is that
the author manages to account plausibly for all the
known facts. In recreating the harrowing true story
of the final expedition of Sir John Franklin, who disappeared
into the Arctic with two ships and 128 men in 1845,
Dan Simmons offers imaginative solutions to the thorniest
mysteries.
After spending a first winter at Beechey Island, why
did Franklin leave no note saying where he was sailing?
Why did sailors, and especially officers, begin dying
in such numbers? When, in 1847, the men abandoned the
two ice-locked ships, the Erebus and the Terror, why
did they drag sledges toward the continental mainland
and not Fury Beach, where food supplies lay waiting?
The questions get tougher: Why did local Inuit not
help the starving, scurvy-stricken white men? How could
sailors of the Royal Navy resort to eating the dead
bodies of their comrades? How did one final survivor
end up sitting in a whaleboat heading back the way it
had come? Simmons incorporates oral testimony that some
final survivors managed to get back aboard the Terror,
and dramatically explains why contemporary searchers
have failed to discover any traces of either ship.
Canadian literature is haunted by these questions.
Besides such classics as The Arctic Grail by
Pierre Berton and Frozen in Time by Owen Beattie
and John Geiger, the lost Franklin expedition figures
in works by authors as diverse as Margaret Atwood (Strange
Things: The Malevolent North in Canadian Literature)
and Mordecai Richler (Solomon Gursky Was Here).
The surprise is that Simmons, a prolific, Colorado-based
American who has won several awards for his suspense,
horror and science-fiction novels, should demonstrate
such mastery of this northern file.
And Simmons is more than plausible. He is also dramatic
and vivid -- at times, horrifically so. He delivers
arresting evocations of the cold and the dark and a
bloody flogging; I do not believe I have ever encountered
more chilling descriptions of shipboard amputations
or of the effects of scurvy, lead poisoning and botulism.
Nor does Simmons neglect the prosaic but enhancing detail.
"Each time the survivors spent more than two days
at a camp," he writes, "the bosuns dragged
a stick through the gravel and snow in some relatively
open, flat spot to create the rough outline of the Erebus's
and Terror's top and lower deck. This allowed the men
to know where to stand during muster and gave them a
sense of familiarity."
Not surprisingly, given his experience as a novelist,
Simmons opens the narrative in October of 1847, when
it is well-advanced, and flashes back as necessary.
He alternates among several point-of view characters,
but most often he draws on Captain Francis Crozier,
who in real life was Sir John Franklin's second-in-command.
This enables him seamlessly to contextualize the expedition,
as the veteran Crozier can "remember" sailing
with Sir Edward Parry and Sir James Clark Ross, and
also visiting Franklin when he was lieutenant-governor
of Van Diemen's Land.
Simmons gives one character a diary, and he allows
the Irish Crozier to have inherited the gift of second
sight, so that on occasion, for example, he can "see"
what Lady Franklin is doing back home in London. So
far, so safe. But the author also employs one risky
narrative strategy: He adds a mystical or supernatural
dimension to the novel by introducing a marauding monster
-- a cannibalistic Arctic windigo.
In so doing, he transgresses the conventions of the
prevailing psychological realism. As a result, he will
draw fire from both literary and historical purists,
who will use the white beast as an excuse to dismiss
the novel. Aesthetically, however, Simmons makes the
device work.
First, he indicates that the beast should be read allegorically.
He does this by allowing Crozier to realize that "the
Devil trying to kill them up here in the Devil's Kingdom
was not just the white-furred thing killing and eating
them one by one, but everything here -- the unrelenting
cold, the squeezing ice, the electrical storms, the
canny lack of seals and whales and birds . . . the summers
that did not come, the leads that did not open -- everything.
The monster on the ice was just another manifestation
of a Devil that wanted them dead."
Secondly, Simmons identifies this white beast, also
called "The Terror," as emerging out of Inuit
mythology. And in this way, he integrates the Inuit
dimension, without which the novel would remain incomplete.
Finally, by introducing this inexplicable beast, Simmons
implicitly recognizes and asserts that some aspects
of what happened on that long-ago expedition must remain
forever unknown.
No book is without flaws. Simmons treats explorer
Elisha Kent Kane far too harshly, and he serves up one
fanciful sex scene that, alas, just never could have
happened. Nor did Lady Franklin, as she is properly
called, see her husband off at the London docks; and
Leopold McClintock did not read the final note at the
cairn on King William Island, but only when he arrived
back at his ship.
But this is nitpicking. While remaining true to the
historical record in every important particular, Simmons
has given us a host of colourful, believable characters
caught up in a driving, hell-bent narrative. The
Terror is a tour de force. The author's nationality
notwithstanding, this novel is far more deserving of
specifically Canadian attention than the majority of
the books that, come autumn, we will see short-listed
for this country's most prestigious literary prizes.
Ken McGoogan has written about the lost Franklin
expedition in Lady Franklin's Revenge, which recently
earned him the Pierre Berton Award for History and the
UBC Medal for Canadian Biography; and in Fatal Passage,
which is currently being turned into a two-hour TV docudrama.
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EARLY REVIEWS
OF THE TERROR
First reviews for The Terror,
which will be published by Little, Brown in early January,
are appearing in journals such as Publishers Weekly,
Kirkus, and Library Journal. These reviews are primarily
for those who purchase for bookstores, chains, and for
individual book buyers who want to keep abreast of what's
being published in coming months.
A starred review at Kirkus or Publishers
Weekly alerts readers and buyers to a book of special
significance.
Publishers Weekly Galley Talk
(Note: “Galley Talk” is a
column in Publishers Weekly in which booksellers get
to talk about upcoming titles that they’ve read
in proof form – galleys – and which they’re
very excited about. Only one book appears in Galley
Talk per issue. The following appeared in Publishers
Weekly in October.)
Frazer Dobson, Park Road Books in Charlotte,
NC
I've always enjoyed Dan Simmons's work, but nothing
he's done has blown me away like his new novel, THE
TERROR. This gripping story of seamen trapped in the
Arctic ice while something big and nasty devours them
one by one held me rapt for the nearly 800 pages. The
characters leap off the page, and despite it's length,
there's not an ounce of fat or filler. I'm going to
be pushing this one hard to anyone who enjoys great
adventure stories--it is technically a horror tale,
but Simmons's skill in putting you right in the middle
of the frozen action lifts it above genre fiction. It's
going to be a good Father's Day handsell, too. Anyone
who enjoys Patrick O'Brian or tales or Arctic expeditions
is going to love it. I sure wish it were going to be
out in time for Christmas, but, hey, people have to
spend their Book Sense gift cards on something, right?
The first great read of 2007.
 Publishers
Weekly Starred Review
The Terror
DAN SIMMONS. Little, Brown, $25.99
(784p) ISBN 978-0-316-01744-2
Hugo-winner Simmons (Olympos) brings
the horrific trials and tribulations of arctic exploration
vividly to life in this beautifully written historical,
which injects a note of supernatural horror into the
1840s Franklin expedition and its doomed search for
the Northwest Passage. Sir John Franklin, the leader
of the expedition and captain of the Erebus,
is an aging fool. Francis Crozier,his second in command
and captain of the Terror, is a competent sailor,
but embittered after years of seeing lesser men with
better connections given preferment over him. With their
two ships quickly trapped in pack ice, their voyage
is a disaster from start to finish. Some men perish
from disease, others from the cold, still others from
botulism traced to tinned food purchased from the lowest
bidder. Madness, mutiny and cannibalism follow. And
then there’s the monstrous creature from the ice,
the thing like a polar bear but many times larger, possessed
of a dark and vicious intelligence. This complex tale
should find many devoted readers and add significantly
to Simmons’s already considerable reputation.
Kirkus
Starred Review
Horror novel based on an ill-fated 19th-century
polar expedition.
Simmons (Olympos, 2005, etc.) tells the story
through the eyes of several characters, including the
expedition’s leader, Sir John Franklin, co-commander
Captain Francis Crozier and the ship’s surgeon
Harry Goodsir. The author jumbles the chronological
sequence, beginning in October 1847 with Terror (one
of the expedition’s two ships; the other was Erebus)
trapped in the ice north of Canada, where they have
come in search of the Northwest Passage. The initial
scene immediately introduces the novel’s main
supernatural element: a giant bear-like entity (the
crew call it the thing) that preys on the explorers
and appears invulnerable to their weapons. The expedition
is in enough trouble without this hostile being’s
attention. Food is short, thanks in part to improperly
prepared canned goods; the ships have been frozen in
thick sea ice for two consecutive winters; many of the
crew show signs of scurvy; and temperatures have been
consistently 50 or more degrees below zero. Overconfident
Franklin has disobeyed orders to leave behind messages
detailing his movements, so rescue expeditions have
no idea where to search for him. Crozier, for his part,
is a chronic drunk, although it doesn’t seem to
affect his command of his ship and men. Simmons convincingly
renders both period details and the nuts and bolts of
polar exploration as his narrative moves back and forth
in time to show the expedition’s launch in 1845
and its early days in the Arctic. Tension builds as
the men struggle to survive: The thing is a constant
menace, and deaths continue to mount as a result of
brutal Arctic conditions. The supernatural element helps
resolve the plot in a surprising yet highly effective
manner.
One of Simmons’ best. (Agent: Richard Curtis/Richard
Curtis Associates Inc.)
. . .
Simmons, Dan
THE TERROR
Little, Brown (784 pp.)
$25.99
paper $18.00
Jan. 8, 2007
ISBN: 0-316-01744-2
paper: 0-316-11328-X
Library Journal Review for
Nov. 15
(November 15, 2006; 0-316-01744-3; 978-0-316-01744-2)
Though Simmons is best known for his convoluted sf
novels Hyperion, Ilium, and Olympos, his new work shows
that he’s also capable of writing a direct and
compelling narrative. For the moste part, it’s
a straightforward sea story following the difficulties
of the dwindling remains of Sir John Franklin’s
failed 1840’s mission to find the Northwest Passage.
However, in addition to scurvy, frostbite, botulism,
snow-blindness, and threats of mutiny, the crews of
HMS Terror and HMS Erebus are harried by some enormous
Thing out on the ice. The story is told from the viewpoints
of several members of the ships’ crews, with emphasis
on Terror captain Francis Crozier and Erebus surgeon
Harry Goodsir. The effects of malnutrition and climate
on the men are related in grisly detail, while the predations
of the Thing are often left vague. As several characters
remark, the real monsters in this tale are their own
shipmates and the North itself. It’s clear that
Simmons devoted a lot of t ime to researching the history
of the Franklin Expedition. Highly recommended for all
fiction collections.
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THE
TERROR UK and US COVERS
Below we have a final cover proof for
the Little, Brown US cover for The Terror and
an earlier proof (which will be modified) for the Transworld
– UK Bantam version of The Terror.
Dan asks – “Which one of these do you readers
prefer? The UK or the US version? Feel free to give
me your opinions on the Dan Simmons Forum.”
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Early
Blog Review of THE TERROR
Even though Advance Readers’ Copies
of The Terror are just in the process of going
out to reviewers, reps and book customers have received
their ARCs and here is one early opinon posted on the
SIBA web site, from a bookstore reviewer with a blog
in Charlotte, who also sent a review to Booksense.
http://www.sibaweb.com/frazer
08.24.06
Book #27: Dan Simmons’
The Terror
Posted in Uncategorized at 4:11
pm by Frazer
So last night, I was in the kitchen
about 7.30, working on dinner (chicken piccata–a
good quick meal for a Wednesday night), when Sally came
in the kitchen, and said, “Where’s my dinner?
I’m hungry!” (When it comes to food, Sally–and,
indeed, the entire Brewster clan–is very direct.)
“I’m working on it, honey,
almost finished. We’ll have dinner in fifteen
minutes.”
Then she noticed that I was leaning
over something on the counter next to the cutting board
where I was mincing shallots. “Hey,” she
said. “You’re reading while you’re
cooking! You never do that!”
“I know,” I admitted,
“but I’ve only got 100 more pages, and I’ve
got to finish it tonight!”
Click
Here to continue reading the blog
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OLYMPOS
Out in Mass-market Paperback
 
With the July, 2006 release of Olympos in paperback,
the entire Ilium-Olympos saga, beginning with the 2005
Hugo-nominated Ilium and concluding with Olympos, is
now available in mass-market paperback format.
Intertwining Homeric themes of fate, ceremony,
friendship, duty, and courage with nonstop action and
cutting-edge 21st Century SF sophistication, the Ilium-Olympos
saga has been called one of the great achievements in
contemporary speculative fiction.
Nick Givers said in LOCUS – “Considered
as a great explosion of Story, Dan Simmons’s OLYMPOS
, sequel to the already voluminous ILIUM (2003), is
a supreme achievement . . . this is, in other words,
something resembling the ultimate SF novel, a convergence
of most, if not all, of SF’s idioms and narrative
potentials in a synthesis so commanding that it might
appear to put a capstone to the entire literary project
that is SF, obviating any need to go further . . . for
readers seeking to understand what SF is and what it
can be, the ILIUM/OLYMPOS diptych will for the time
being be the cynosure.
Kirkus Review of
OLYMPOS
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.
Publishers Weekly Review
of OLYMPOS
OLYMPOS
DAN SIMMONS.Eos,$25.95 (576p)
ISBN 0-380-97894-6
Shakespeare’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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