Dan Simmons vermengt meesterlijk genres, waarbij hij met uitzonderlijk talent navigeert tussen horror, sciencefiction en psychologische thriller. Zijn werken duiken vaak in diepgaande filosofische vraagstukken en de donkere kanten van de menselijke psyche. Simmons bezit een opmerkelijk vermogen om spanning op te bouwen en complexe, onvergetelijke personages te creëren. Zijn schrijfstijl is rijk en suggestief, en trekt lezers mee naar duistere, sfeervolle werelden vol spanning en onverwachte wendingen.
The Hyperion books are credited with single-handedly reinventing and reinvigorating SF in the 1990s. A broad canvased, hugely imaginative and exciting SF epic, the books draw on the works of Keats and provide a uniquely intelligent and literary approach with cutting edge science, compelling characterisation and edge-of-your-seat excitement. The story is continued in ENDYMION and THE RISE OF ENDYMION, which Gollancz will also be publishing in an omnibus volume.
The bestselling novel, "a brilliant, massive combination of history and supernatural horror" (Stephen King), now a major TV series. The men on board the HMS Terror have every expectation of finding the Northwest Passage. But what they don't expect is a monstrous predator lurking behind the Arctic ice. When the expedition's leader, Sir John Franklin, meets a horrifying end, Captain Francis Crozier takes command, leading his surviving crewmen on a last desperate attempt to flee south across the ice. But another winter is rapidly approaching, and with it, scurvy and starvation. Crozier and his men may find that there is no escaping the terror stalking them southward. And with the crushing cold and the fear of almost certain death at their backs, the most horrifying monster among them may be each other.
It is the twenty-ninth century and the universe of the Human Hegemony is under threat. Invasion by the warlike rebel Ousters looms, and the mysterious schemes of the secessionist Al TechnoCore bring chaos even closer. On the eve of disaster, with the entire galaxy at war, seven pilgrims set forth on a final voyage to the legendary Time Tombs on Hyperion, home to the Shrike, a lethal creature, part god and part killing machine, whose powers transcend the limits of time and space. Like another fabled group of pilgrims, each traveller shares his story with his fellows, seeking answers to the unsolved riddles of all their lives. And they have resolved to die before discovering anything less than the secrets of the universe itself. HYPERION is a brilliant tapestry, a superb vision of future technology and ancient religions, of scientific revelation and timeless mystery, of transcendent joy and mind-bending horror. It is a landmark in modern science fiction.
On the world called Hyperion the mysterious Time Tombs are opening and seven pilgrims risk their lives to petition the entity called the Shrike - a creature that may well control the fate of all mankind.The Hegemony of Man - a thousand thousand worlds linked by a network of farcaster portals and high-tech gateways - is under siege by Ousters, strange, half-human tribes mutated almost beyond recognition.The AIs - Artificial Intelligences whose synthetic wisdom created and maintains the nets that bind the Hegemony - have become a threat; it seems they have turned against the Hegemony and all mankind. And there is evidence that they have begun a project to create the Ultimate Intelligence - to build, in short, God. God of Machines: the ultimate deus ex machina. His genesis may well mean man's annihilation.Something is drawing the Hegemony, the AIs, the Ousters, and indeed the entire universe, towards the Shrike and the Time Tombs from which it has arisen. In a moment the paths of man, machine and god will intersect. Nothing will ever be the same.
Two hundred and seventy-four years after the fall of the WorldWeb in Fall of Hyperion, Raoul Endymion is sent on a quest. Retrieving Aenea from the Sphinx before the Church troops reach her is only the beginning. With help from a blue-skinned android named A. Bettik, Raoul and Aenea travel the river Tethys, pursued by Father Captain Frederico DeSoya, an influential warrior-priest and his troops. The shrike continues to make enigmatic appearances, and while many questions were raised in Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion, still more are raised here. Raoul's quest will continue.
The time of reckoning has arrived. As a final genocidal Crusade threatens to enslave humanity forever, a new messiah has come of age. She is Aenea and she has undergone a strange apprenticeship to those known as the Others. Now her protector, Raul Endymion, one-time shepherd and convicted murderer, must help her deliver her startling message to her growing army of disciples. But first they must embark on a final spectacular mission to discover the underlying meaning of the universe itself. They have been followed on their journey by the mysterious Shrike--monster, angel, killing machine--who is about to reveal the long-held secret of its origin and purpose. And on the planet of Hyperion, where the story first began, the final revelation will be delivered--an apocalyptic message that unlocks the secrets of existence and the fate of humankind in the galaxy.
THE PAST... Caught behind the lines of Hitler’s Final Solution, Saul Laski is one of the multitudes destined to die in the notorious Chelmno extermination camp. Until he rises to meet his fate and finds himself face to face with an evil far older, and far greater, than the Nazi’s themselves...THE PRESENT... Compelled by the encounter to survive at all costs, so begins a journey that for Saul will span decades and cross continents, plunging into the darkest corners of 20th century history to reveal a secret society of beings who may often exist behind the world's most horrible and violent events. Killing from a distance, and by darkly manipulative proxy, they are people with the psychic ability to 'use' humans: read their minds, subjugate them to their wills, experience through their senses, feed off their emotions, force them to acts of unspeakable aggression. Each year, three of the most powerful of this hidden order meet to discuss their ongoing campaign of induced bloodshed and deliberate destruction. But this reunion, something will go terribly wrong. Saul’s quest is about to reach its elusive object, drawing hunter and hunted alike into a struggle that will plumb the depths of mankind’s attraction to violence, and determine the future of the world itself...
In the summer of 1960 in Elm Haven, Illinois, five 12-year-old boys forge the powerful bonds that a lifetime of change will not break. An ancient, sinister evil lurks in the dark, and when a long-silent bell peals in the middle of the deepest night, the people know it marks the beginning of terror. Now Mike, Duane, Dale, Harlen, and Kevin must wage a fraternal war of blood against an arcane abomination.
The Trojan War rages at the foot of Olympos Mons on Mars -- observed and influenced from on high by Zeus and his immortal family -- and twenty-first-century professor Thomas Hockenberry is there to play a role in the insidious private wars of vengeful gods and goddesses. On Earth, a small band of the few remaining humans pursues a lost past and devastating truth -- as four sentient machines depart from Jovian space to investigate, perhaps terminate, the potentially catastrophic emissions emanating from a mountaintop miles above the terraformed surface of the Red Planet.
