A Few Minutes with Dan Simmons

by

Don Kinney

In August, 1996 award-winning, best-selling author Dan Simmons turned in the final book of the Hyperion science fiction space opera epic saga, THE RISE OF ENDYMION, to Bantam.

His most recent horror novel was his "beach book" FIRES OF EDEN, released in hardback in 1994, mass market paperback in 1995.

Past novels and collections include SONG OF KALI (1985), CARRION COMFORT (1989), HYPERION (1989), PHASES OF GRAVITY (1989), PRAYERS TO BROKEN STONES (1990), THE FALL OF HYPERION (1991), SUMMER OF NIGHT (1991), THE HOLLOW MAN (1992), CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT(1992), LOVEDEATH (1993), ENDYMION (1995).

Simmons has also appeared in many anthologies and magazines. I spent a few moments with him between his panels at the Rocky Mountain Book Festival in October 1996 and asked what books we could expect from him in the future.

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Horror: With your new book deal it looks like you are moving away from genre writing and more toward the mainstream. Could you talk a little bit about breaking away from SF and horror?

Dan Simmons: For a couple of years I'll be away simply because of my two book contract that is outside of science fiction, horror and fantasy. So, for that period of time and if all goes as planned, yeah, that will be out of genre. I don't think of it as moving on so much as doing what I want to do next.

H: Will you write another genre book at some point?

DS: I've got ideas that could be horror novels. I've at least one science fiction story/novel that I traveled to Japan, Asia and Hong Kong to research a few years ago and still haven't written. It comes down to what book should be written next. Not for market considerations -- it's time to write that book. Who knows when I'll be back to which genre.

H: I've heard Dean Koontz and Robert McCammon, among others, have tried to set themselves apart from horror writing. You don't see yourself looking back at your genre writing with disdain like they seem to at times?

DS: I'm not sure either one has done that. What they've tried to do is get rid some labels that limited what they could write. One thing that I honor in other writers is their attempt to write what they want to write and not to be restricted by the demands of their publisher ... even by the demands of their audience. To have any integrity as a writer you need to write what moves you ... the story you're passionate about telling. And I think in both McCammon and Koontz's case that's what they're fighting for. It's not like Kurt Vonnegut, who said he keeps all his genre fiction in the lower right hand drawer of his desk and every once in a while he'll open the drawer and sentimentally take a pee into it. No, it's not like that.

H: Can you talk a little bit about the upcoming mainstream books you have under contract?

DS: I've contracted for two books for Avon. The order in which I write them is not set in stone, yet. One book is called GOING EAST. It's about a couple that just had a divorce. They end up driving across the country in the late-1990s just as they had in the late-1960s. The story is about them then and now and all the things that happened to them and us, the country, in those years. The other book is called THE CROOK FACTORY, a bit of an espionage suspense novel with Ernest Hemingway as the main character. Based on a lot of true events. Set in 1941-42.

H: THE CROOK FACTORY is the Hemingway novel you're setting in Cuba? Have you made the trip to Cuba to do research and get a sense of place?

DS: No, I'm running about four months behind schedule ... sometime this winter I'll be taking the trip. The RISE OF ENDYMION ran over 1100 pages and was a big project that took longer than I thought it would to finish.

H: Do you see yourself writing another book or books with the length and scope of the Hyperion saga?

DS: I'm not sure I saw the scope of the Hyperion/Endymion story when I wrote the novella that became HYPERION. When I started writing HYPERION I knew the book was very, very large but I resisted writing more than two books for quite a while. Right now I have no plans for any series like that. In fact, my hope is that people will see this last Hyperion book, THE RISE OF ENDYMION, as important -- or more so -- than the first book, HYPERION. I don't like sequels.

H: How do you approach novel writing -- do you just start writing or do you work from outline?

DS: I do a tremendous amount of pre-writing. I don't start out and then rewrite the book when I'm done because I've already worked it out in great detail. On the other hand, I start with something organic before I know I'm going to write a book and I don't start prematurely. I've offended some beginning writers by saying, the biggest problem is you get an idea and you immediately start writing. I suggest that part of being a professional is knowing what to do and not starting to write immediately. Wait until the all the elements are there ... then a rather mystical process happens. I've always compared it to a seed crystal in a saturated solution -- when you get that seed crystal then the solution becomes saturated and you have a novel. Otherwise, you have a string of good, but not necessarily related, ideas. To answer the question whether I outline -- yeah, I outline, but only after I see the story itself.

H: Are your characters fleshed out when you start the novel or do they grow as the book gets written?

DS: I think it's a test of the vitality of a novel that the characters grow during the course of the story. I think all novelists that produce quality fiction discover that happens. Simply because what's happening with the writer and the story during the writing of the novel is that he's discovering more and more about the characters. No matter who you base it on, no matter how well you think you know the character, it's just like any relationship, you get to know them better and better. You're living with them a year, two years, three years ... you're bound to get to know them better. That's not always for the best, either. You get to know their bad side, too. Yeah, anyone can set a plot down in an outline but the fact of what the character's going to do while walking the labyrinth of that plot is a little more iffy. That's really the great fun of writing a novel.

H: So you let your characters talk to you?

DS: I usually don't indulge in that. I listen to other writers say how their characters rebel and all that stuff and I think that's more of a rhetorical ploy than anything else. Although I love it in "The French Lieutenant's Woman" where the author has the character Charles, instead of going back to the hotel as the author said he was supposed to, Charles then goes out to get a drink at a bar and has a whole 'nother series of adventures. The author's telling us how he had planned this to happen but the character had done that. That's cute, that's metafiction, but it doesn't really happen that way, I think. No matter how much we writers say that our characters take on a life of their own, really what's happening is we're discovering the form in the clay. We're discovering more about the character. And you're always adding new material. Who knows what's affecting your character's direction? Something that happened to you four months into the novel? Something you recall from ten years before? We don't understand the process, but it's fun to watch the characters become real.

H: Well, it's good to know at some point you'll get back to writing genre after you get this current contract satisfied.

DS: I can't say I'll be back for certain. I'm like a captain of a ship ... who in the log never says, "I'm going to North America."... you're bound for a destination. You're lucky to say you're bound for the next book because who knows what's going to happen? There's no big farewell. I've written, in the Hyperion books alone, over a million words on this one, great story. Anybody would have to recuperate from a book that size.

H: Then good luck with the other projects, Dan.

DS: Thank you.

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