A later book, The Moon’s Fire-Eating Daughter
(1991), is structured similarly, this time in the form
of a journey through time as well as space, during
which the reader is introduced to a bewildering
string of historical characters, mostly authors, simi-
larly disguised in some cases but more readily deci-
phered. The individual adventures are considerably
less entertaining. Myers’s only remaining genre
novel is the marginal The Harp and the Blade
(1941), which has some minor fantastic content.
Although Silverlockremains an intellectual exercise
as much as a work of fiction, it has continued to
enjoy popularity among those readers interested in
literary fantasy and has garnered some favorable at-
tention from critics outside the genre.
Simmons, Dan(1948– )
Dan Simmons has written successfully in both sci-
ence fiction and horror, winning several awards in
each genre. He started writing during the early
1980s, producing several memorable short stories
during the first few years, most of which were later
collected as Prayers from Broken Stones(1990). His
first novel was The Song of Kali(1985), in which an
American is spending what he expects to be a bor-
ing few weeks in Calcutta but which turns into a
much livelier adventure when he stumbles into a
conspiracy involving an ancient text that might
have the power to bring Kali back into the world.
Although only a marginal occult adventure, the
novel won the World Fantasy Award and immedi-
ately raised expectations about Simmons’s future
work.
His next novel was no disappointment. Car-
rion Comfort(1989) is based on a much shorter
work originally published in 1983. Although some-
times characterized as a vampire novel, it falls into
that category only thematically. The fantastic ele-
ment involves a small group of people who have
the power to displace the personalities of others,
using these captive bodies as their tools. The
power makes them arrogant, but they are also eas-
ily bored and engage in constant internecine war-
fare using their victims as weapons and spending
their lives thoughtlessly. The novel is arguably sci-
ence fiction, since Simmons makes some efforts to
explain their abilities as a human mutation, but
the atmosphere is clearly horror. The novel won
the Bram Stoker Award.
Summer of Night(1991) is very reminiscent of
Stephen KING. A group of children prove wiser
than adults when they recognize that there is an
evil presence in the local school building and per-
severe despite the reanimated dead and other op-
position. Although the novel is more predictable
than most of Simmons’s other fiction, the charac-
terization of the young protagonists is particularly
well handled, and the evil entity, though somewhat
slow in making an appearance, is suitably nasty.
Several scenes excised from the book version later
appeared as the chapbook Banished Dreams(1996).
Simmons continued to write occasional short sto-
ries, and two additional collections appeared dur-
ing the early 1990s, Going After the Rubber Chicken
(1991) and Lovedeath(1993).
His second roundabout assault on the vampire
story was Children of the Night(1992), the title de-
rived from Dracula’s term for his faithful wolves.
The novel is set in Romania, the traditional home-
land of Dracula and vampirism, but in the present
day following the collapse of the communist gov-
ernment. Since the Ceau ̧sescu regime refused to
acknowledge the existence of AIDS while it was in
power, the aftermath includes thousands of or-
phans bearing the disease, most of them confined
to horrifyingly terrible conditions in poorly staffed
and financed state run institutions. An American
doctor trying to help discovers a child with an un-
usual immune system, after which he is pursued by
mysterious men who seem to be immune to bullets.
The eventual revelation that the child is the son of
Dracula himself is followed by a satisfyingly heroic
rescue.
Simmons wrote primarily science fiction dur-
ing the rest of the 1990s as well as a mainstream
novel about Ernest Hemingway, and only one addi-
tional horror novel, the interesting but uneven
Fires of Eden(1994). The construction of a new re-
sort in the Hawaiian Islands precipitates a battle
among traditional Hawaiian gods and demons, the
story alternating between the present and Mark
Twain’s somewhat similar experiences a century
earlier. The background mythos is interesting. The
horrors are decidedly nontraditional, but the story
lacks the cohesiveness of Simmons’s other novels.Simmons, Dan 323