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L'Hégémonie gouverne plus de trois cents mondes. Quant aux Extros, ils ont pris le large après l'Hégire. Reviendront-ils ?

Un de leurs essaims, depuis trois cents ans, se rapproche d'Hypérion. Les habitants de cette planète ont fini par devenir nerveux, ils réclament l'évacuation. Pour l'Hégémonie, le jeu n'en vaut pas la chandelle.

Mais, sur la même planète, on annonce l'ouverture prochaine des Tombeaux du Temps. Le Techno-Centre n'arrive pas à produire des prévisions fiables à ce sujet. Alors, l'Hégémonie agit : elle envoie sept pèlerins sur Hypérion.

Drôles de pèlerins ! Celui-ci n'arrive pas à se débarrasser d'un parasite de résurrection ; celui-là écrit un poème qui, selon lui, infléchira le cours des événements. Deux d'entre eux veulent tuer le gritche ; un autre hésite à lui sacrifier sa propre fille, qui naîtra dans trois jours.

Et le dernier semble trahir tout le monde, ce qui étrangement ne trouble personne. Bref, l'Hégémonie en fait le minimum ; qu'est-ce qui se cache là-dessous ?

Jeremy Bremen has a secret. All his life he's been cursed with the ability to read minds. He knows the secret thoughts, fears, and desires of others as if they were his own. For years, his wife, Gail, has served as a shield between Jeremy and the burden of this terrible knowledge. But Gail is dying, her mind ebbing slowly away, leaving him vulnerable to the chaotic flood of thought that threatens to sweep away his sanity. Now Jeremy is on the run—from his mind, from his past, from himself—hoping to find peace in isolation. Instead he witnesses an act of brutality that propels him on a treacherous trek across a dark and dangerous America. From a fantasy theme park to the lair of a killer to a sterile hospital room in St. Louis, he follows a voice that is calling him to witness the stunning mystery at the heart of mortality.

Ex-astronaut Richard Baedecker sees everything he has ever done as merely preparation for something bigger and his quest for higher meaning leads him to a mysterious young woman who shows him the "places of power" in his own past.

Dale Stewart's life has become a shadow of what it once was. A respected college professor and successful novelist, he sabotaged his career and his marriage with an obsessive love affair that ended badly.With darkness closing in on him, Dale decides to return to his boyhood home in Illinois. Drawn by a recurring nightmare that has plagued him since his youth -- and a troubling certainty that something is waiting for him there -- he hopes to exorcise his demons.In the last hours of Halloween, he reaches the outskirts of the dying town of Elm Haven. There, he moves into the abandoned farmhouse that was once the home of his closest boyhood friend, the strange and brilliant Duane McBride, who lost his young life in a grisly "accident" back in the terrible summer of 1960. Hoping to find peace in isolation, he settles in for the long, harsh winter.But Dale is not alone. Soon after he arrives, cryptic messages begin appearing mysteriously on his computer screen while he struggles to work on his novel. He sees black dogs roaming the grounds. And an old enemy has reemerged, a bully who seems as determined to persecute Dale as he was in childhood.

There's a bitter wind brewing in Buffalo, New York and it's blowing in more than just snow. "Little Skag" Farino, the last don of the local crime family, wants Kurtz dead and is sending in platoons of hit men, starting with the Attica Three Stooges and working up through more competent killers. Little Skag's beautiful sister, Angelina Farino Ferrara, is back from seven years in Sicily and has her own deadly agenda for Kurtz.

If that isn't enough, Kurtz is approached by a dying concert violinist who wants his daughter's killer found. Rejecting the case at first, he is soon on the trail of a man who's not just the murderer of one child, but a cold-blooded serial killer who is a master of alternate identities and has the power to send a hundred men after Kurtz. As the bodies pile up like cords of wood, HARD FREEZE hits town with the power of a whiteout blizzard and builds to a truly chilling climax. This is a crime novel where trigger fingers freeze to blue steel.

Somewhere in western New York there's a remote mountaintop in the moonlight, its dark forests and moon-dappled meadows populated only by corpses, and if ex-PI Joe Kurtz doesn't unravel the secret of that place in five days, he'll be one of them.

Everyone seems to want a piece of Kurtz and most succeed in getting one. Unknown assailants gun down Kurtz and his female parole officer, giving Kurtz the headache of a lifetime but putting pretty Peg O'Toole on life support. While working his own case through a haze of concussion migraine, Kurtz has to deal with Toma Gonzaga, the gay don who owes Kurtz a blood debt, and Angelina Farino Ferrara, the female don who is after Kurtz's body — or maybe just his head.

And while someone is murdering all the heroin addicts in Buffalo and hauling away the bodies, a serial killer called the Artful Dodger hatches his twisted plan.

In Kurtz's corner is police detective Rigby King, a beautiful woman who was his lover when they were both rebellious teenagers in Father Baker's Orphanage. Rigby also has designs on Joe Kurtz, but whether they're aimed at bedding or abetting him, helping him stay alive, or simply putting him away for life, Kurtz will have to discover the hard way.

When was published in 1985, Dan Simmons was virtually unknown, having published only a few short stories. But this sharp, vivid novel struck a raw nerve. A startled and amazed readership could only gasp in wonder and horror at the apparent ease with which the author made readers feel that they were living the nightmarish reality he so potently conveyed in the pages of this blood-curdling novel.

Here is Calcutta, perhaps the foulest and most crime-ridden city in the world: filthy, stench-ridden, crawling with vermin both human and otherwise, possessed of evils so vile that they beggar description.

In this steaming, fetid cradle of chaos, the ordeal of an American man and his family plays out, moment by moment, page by page, in a novel so truly frightening that otherwise jaded readers will quail in fear at its gut-wrenching finale.

One of the great masterpieces of horror of this century, will leave an indelible imprint on your soul. Once you read it, you'll never forget it. . . . Never.

Joe Kurtz has been wronged one too many times. So when he takes out the drugdealing thug who killed his girlfriend, the exPI gets to cool his heels for 11 years in Attica. It's there that he meets "Little Skag" Farino, the son of an aging Buffalo, New York, mob boss. In exchange for protecting the kid's manhood against any unwanted jailhouse affection, Kurtz gets an audience with Little Skag's father upon his release from prison.

Semiretired Don Byron Farino is still clinging to what dwindling power he holds on the New York organized crime scene. He enlists Kurtz's help to track down the Family's missing accountanta man with too much knowledge of Family business to have on the loose. But someone doesn't want the accountant found. As the story twists and turns and the body count rises, Kurtz no longer knows whom he can trust. Everyone seems to be after something, from the mob boss's sultry yet dangerous daughter, to a hit man named The Dane, an albino killer who is good with a knife, and a dwarf who is armed to the teeth and hellbent on revenge.

Bestselling author Dan Simmons expertly builds the tension as he springs one surprise after another, all the while daring the reader to take a ride with Kurtz through the cold, windy streets of Buffalo where one wrong move could mean a bellyfull of lead.

On June 9, 1865, while traveling by train to London with his secret mistress, 53-year-old Charles Dickens — at the height of his powers and popularity, the most famous and successful novelist in the world and perhaps in the history of the world — hurtled into a disaster that changed his life forever.

Did Dickens begin living a dark double life after the accident? Were his nightly forays into the worst slums of London and his deepening obsession with corpses, crypts, murder, opium dens, the use of lime pits to dissolve bodies, and a hidden subterranean London mere research… or something more terrifying?

Just as he did in , Dan Simmons draws impeccably from history to create a gloriously engaging and terrifying narrative. Based on the historical details of Charles Dickens's life and narrated by Wilkie Collins (Dickens's friend, frequent collaborator, and Salieri-style secret rival), explores the still-unsolved mysteries of the famous author's last years and may provide the key to Dickens's final, unfinished work: . Chilling, haunting, and utterly original, is Dan Simmons at his powerful best.

A Romanian infant who flourishes when given the wrong blood transfusion could hold the key to a cure for AIDS and cancer, but he also shares an intimate link to a clan of vampires.

Bram Stoker (nominee)

Paha Sapa, a young Sioux warrior, first encounters General George Armstrong Custer as Custer lies dying on the battlefield at Little Bighorn. He believes?as do the holy men of his tribe?that the legendary general's ghost entered him at that moment and will remain with him until Sapa convinces him to leave.

In BLACK HILLS, Dan Simmons weaves the stories of Paha Sapa and Custer together seamlessly, depicting a violent and tumultuous time in the history of Native Americans and the United States Army. Haunted by the voice of the general his people called "Long Hair," Paha Sapa lives a long life, driven by a dramatic vision he experiences in the Black Hills that are his tribe's homeland. As an explosives worker on the massive Mount Rushmore project, he may finally be rid of his ghosts?on the very day FDR comes to South Dakota to dedicate the Jefferson face.

As an expert in accident reconstruction, it is Darwin Minor’s job to use science and instinct to unravel the real causes of unnatural disasters. But a series of seemingly random high-speed fatal car wrecks — accidents which seem staged — is leading him down a dangerous road.

Taking the events and characters of the Iliad as his jumping off point Dan Simmons has created an epic of time travel and savage warfare. Travellers from 40,000 years in the future return to Homer's Greece and rewrite history forever, their technology impacting on the population in agodlike fashion. This is broad scope space opera rich in classical and literary allusion from one of the key figures in 1990s world SF and marks a return to the genre for one of its greats.

In the summer of 1960 in Elm Haven, Illinois, a sinister being is stalking the town's children, and when a long-silent bell peals in the middle of the night, the townfolk know it marks the end of innocence.

Bram Stoker (nominee) 

"An American nightmare with scares, suspense, and a sweet, surprising nostalgia, one of those rare must-read books. I am in awe of Dan Simmons."

Stephen King

In un lontano futuro di straordinaria complessità fantastica, la maggior parte dei pianeti della galassia è collegata da una Rete che permette di trasferirsi in pochi secondi da un mondo all’altro. Ma anche in questo universo, apparentemente perfetto, l’umanità è minacciata da pericoli di sconvolgente portata. Ai margini dell’Egemonia si stanno infatti radunando gli Sciami di migrazione degli alieni Ouster, mentre gruppi dotati di sofisticatissimi strumenti tecnologici e strane sette esoteriche premono per conquistare un potere divino. Paradossalmente, per gli uomini, l’unica speranza di salvezza è un piccolo gruppo di pellegrini sperduti su Hyperion, il mondo nei cui insondabili recessi si nasconde il crudele, onnipotente e misterioso Shrike. Dopo Hyperion, dalla magistrale penna di Dan Simmons un altro grande classico della fantascienza moderna, un romanzo affascinante in cui si fondono l’avventura classica e i temi più inquietanti del cyberspazio.

Helen of Troy is in mourning for her dead husband, Paris. Killed in single combat with the merciless Apollo. His body a scorched and blasted thing. Hockenberry, her lover, still sneaks from her bed after their nights of lovemaking. And the Gods still strike out from the besieged Olympos. Their single-molecule bomb casings quantum phase-shifting through the moravecs' force shield and laying waste to Ilium. Or so Hockenberry and the amusing little metal creature, Mahnmut, have tried to explain to her. Helen of Troy does not give a fig about machines. She must dress for the funeral. And man and the gods and the unknown players in this tragedy must prepare for the final act. And a battle that will decide the future of the universe itself.

Anno Domini 3126. Quasi tre secoli dopo la Caduta. Pianeta Hyperion. Raul Endymion, una giovane guida, viene condannato a morte dopo un omicidio commesso per legittima difesa. E la sua morte, al contrario di quella dell'uomo da lui ucciso, sarebbe definitiva, perché il ragazzo è fra i pochi a non essersi convertito alla religione della Chiesa ufficiale, non è un cristiano rinato e non ha accettato su di sé il simbionte crucimorfo che rende possibile la Risurrezione. La sentenza, tuttavia, non viene eseguita. Martin Sileno lo ha infatti scelto per una missione destinata a cambiare il volto dell'universo: accompagnare nel futuro e proteggere la giovane Aenea, figlia di Brawne Lamia e del cibrido John Keats, che sta per riemergere dalla Sfinge nella Valle delle Tombe Del Tempo. Dal teleporter di Vettore Rinascimento al ghiaccio eterno di Sol Draconis Septem, Endymion accompagnerà così Aenea in un viaggio verso la verità e la salvezza del genere umano, chiarendo lungo il cammino molti enigmi rimasti irrisolti in "Hiperion" e nella "Caduta di Hiperion": qual è il ruolo del TecnoNucleo all'interno della Pax? perchè le IA hanno 'rapito' la vecchia terra? qual è l'origine e la vera natura dello Shrike? chi ha creato il simbionte cruciomorfo che permette la Risurrezione e perché?

L’inquisizione è tornata a colpire. Nell’anno del Signore 3131, la Chiesa, garante dell’immortalità fisica a tutti i suoi fedeli, ingaggia una crociata contro gli Ouster, indomiti mutanti di origine umana. E lancia nello spazio una spietata caccia a Aenea — la fanciulla ritenuta il nuovo messia — per carpire il segreto della sua forza misteriosa. Mentre Endymion è custodito nella cella della morte, la ribellione dei giusti sta per giungere al suo atto finale: tutto ruota intorno a Aenea, dotata di grandi poteri e portatrice di oscure verità… Dopo «Hyperion», «La caduta di Hyperion» ed «Endymion», Dan Simmons tocca con questo romanzo l’apice della forza visionaria e immaginativa. E conclude una delle più celebrate, irresistibili e sensazionali saghe fantascientifiche del nostro tempo.

Hypérion

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Au 28° siècle, sur la planète Hypérion, les dangers s’amoncellent. Celui de la guerre avec l’approche de la flottes des Extros en perpétuel conflit avec l’Hégémonie. Celui du gritche, figure mythologique et meurtrière que révère l’Eglise des Templiers. Celui de l’ouverture des Tombeaux du Temps qui dérivent de l’avenir vers le passé à la rencontre d’une imprévisible catastrophe.

Dans l’espoir de sauver Hypérion et d’accomplir leurs destins suspendus, sept pèlerins se dirigent ensemble vers le sanctuaire du gritche. Il y a le père Lenar Hoyt, prêtre catholique, qui a vu l’enfer ; le colonel Kassad, dit le Boucher de Bressia, à la recherche d’un rêve ; Martin Silenus, le poète, qui a connu la Vieille Terre et perdu les mots ; Brawne Lamia, la belle détective, qui a aimé un John Keats synthétique : le Consul qui a régné sur Hypérion ; Sol Weintraub, l’érudit, dont la fille perd des années ; et le templier Het Masteen, qui garde ses secrets.

Autant d’énigmes, autant d’histoires, qu’ils choisissent de conter avant d’affronter les labyrinthes d’Hypérion. Autant de styles différents.

Confieso mi debilidad por Dan Simmons, un escritor que se mueve entre lo sublime (Hyperion) y lo ridículo (Los fuegos del Edén), con poco lugar para las medias tintas. Un verano tenebroso, ay, además de reforzar la manía ésa de que los relatos que antes tenían 300 páginas hoy deben tener 800 (799, para ser precisos), se acerca más a lo segundo que a lo primero. Una pena.

Una pena porque el comienzo es más que prometedor, y hace presagiar uno de esos relatos neblinosos en los que nada se dice y todo se cuenta (al estilo Ramsey Campbell, escritor que narra siempre entre líneas, para regocijo de algunos y enfado de otros): un prólogo de pocas páginas nos revela la historia de un caserón que sirve como escuela a Elm Haven, Illinois. A continuación, la trama deriva hacia uno de esos cuentos de iniciación sexual/vital de niños/camaradas en bicicleta al estilo Stephen King. Nada que objetar a que Dan Simmons, harto de obtener el aplauso de la crítica, pero no la aceptación masiva del público, se lanzara en su momento al mercadeo del terror estereotipado, pero tampoco es cuestión de pasarse. Hay que cumplir unos mínimos. Para empezar, una base creíble, cosa de la que carece esta novela. Porque, vamos a ver: ¿quién se cree que una campana que perteneció a los Borgia y que fue construida con el metal fundido de una ancestral reliquia egipcia (¡relacionada con Osiris, oh… ah…!) acabe en un pueblecito del Illinois profundo, por mucho que se hable de excéntricos millonarios? ¿Quién se cree que un niño de once años (y estadounidense, y del medio rural, y de los años 60…) sea todo un experto en latín, interprete los textos de Aleister Crowley mejor que el gurú de una logia y deduzca de ello en un pispás que la clave está en exorcizar el mal a tiro limpio? Y, sobre todo: ¿por qué Simmnons se empeña en destrozar un ambiente ominoso, que elabora con un estilo sencillo y preciso, en un desarrollo insulso y mecánico y en un clímax pirotécnico de más de cien páginas que remite a pequeñas joyas del cine pulp, como Temblores (gusanos gigantes y dentudos incluidos), pero que es indigno de alguien con su categoría profesional? La traducción, por cierto, no ayuda: parece que hay gente que no se ha percatado de que `doceavo` no es lo mismo que `duodécimo` y de que el gerundio en castellano no se suele usar para describir acciones consecutivas, sino simultáneas, por citar sólo algunos ejemplos.

Además, a pesar de que la novela es larga, muy larga, como decía más arriba, hay un buen montón de cabos sueltos. Se dan un garbeo unos cuantos zombies que no se sabe muy bien de dónde salen, aunque se sospeche. Hay unos malvados sectarios a los que se alude durante toda la novela, pero que apenas aparecen hasta el desenlace (Elm Haven cuenta con unos pocos centenares de habitantes, así que, teniendo en cuenta que los protagonistas se pasan páginas y páginas corriendo de aquí para allá, en algún momento tendrían que encontrarse con ellos). Por continuar con incoherencias varias, a lo largo de la trama el malhadado pueblo queda sembrado de cadáveres desmembrados, se desencadenan varios tiroteos, un camión sacado de El diablo sobre ruedas, con un remolque cargado de animales muertos y hediondos, se dedica a perseguir a niños por la carretera, los gusanos que protagonizan el clímax se pasean por galerías subterráneas abriendo agujeros de paredes legamosas por todas partes… y el sheriff no se entera. Y la gente apenas se alarma. ¿Por qué?

¿Por qué ha escrito semejante despropósito Dan Simmons?

Alberto Cairo