Books: Phases of Gravity By Dan Simmons (1989)

"Richard Baedecker, a divorced former astronaut who walked on the moon, has hit a professional and personal low by the late ’80s. He still mourns the Challenger disaster, hates his mediocre civilian job, and can’t connect with his grown son. When he visits his son in India, Baedecker falls in love with his son’s friend Maggie, who shows him around the country and later meets him while climbing a mountain in Colorado. His travels, which take him to his Illinois birthplace and a colleague’s funeral in rural Oregon, are interspersed with flashbacks to his days at NASA. It's a story about a man's search: for love, for friendship, for family. Along the way, he'll solve a mystery."

 I find Dan Simmons’ Phases of Gravity hard to categorize. It’s not fantasy, horror, or science fiction –genre the author is well known for (Simmons is not known to stay in one lane, which I think makes him unique in a world that forces writers into one genre, book after book).  It borders on philosophy, with doses of speculative fiction and some element of magic as well. But ultimately, it may be just a novel about a former astronaut who walked on the moon who now is facing middle age and is sort of bored with his world, his life. His travels through this book show a man desperate for deeper connection in his life, but seems unsure who to turn to, the free-spirit Maggie, his son, or his two former astronauts –one who has turned to God and the other who has become a congressman. But all give him something to cling to. Since the book is set after the Challenger disaster, Simmons’ does comment on the differences between old NASA days when everyone was excited to land on the moon, and the days of the space shuttle, which now (until January 1986) was ever hardly noticed. Though, those ideals began to wane even in the Apollo days, along with Richard Nixon’s less than enthusiastic love for space travel.  

Some will find Simmons narrative style a bit difficult to get used to, as he jumbles the chronology of the book so that it can be confusing if he’s in the present (1988) or somewhere else along Richard’s timeline. There were parts that I liked, like when he returned to his small Illinois town of Glen Oak (which is probably near the town Elm Haven, which will appear in his later horror novels), but his time spent with Tom Gavin (one of his fellow astronauts) gets weird and while Simmons paints these Born Again Christians respectively, you also sense (like Maggie’s mantra, “I believe in the richness and mystery of the universe; and I don’t believe in the supernatural”) Simmons’ is making a statement about religion in an off-handed and sometimes mean way.

Phases of Gravity was released in 1989, the same year as his Hugo Award winning sci-fi novel Hyperion was published, so I can see where this book got lost in the shuffle. Still, even as an early work by this author, it well written -even if not everyone of his fans will like it.

Books: The Fifth Heart By Dan Simmons (2015)

Dan Simmons started his writing career penning novels in the horror genre, tales like his 1985 debut Carrion Comfort. But while he wrote other books like A Winter Haunting, Summer of Night, and Song of Kali, he turned to science fiction in 1989 with his critically acclaimed Hyperion Cantos and IIium/Olypos books. He's also written a mystery series under the name of Joe Kurtz. In 2007 he began taking on historical fiction, starting with The Terror, a fictionalized account of Captain Sir John Franklin's doomed attempt of the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror to force the Northwest Passage in 1845–1848. In the novel, Franklin and his crew are plagued by starvation and scurvy and forced to contend with mutiny and cannibalism, but they're also being stalked across the Arctic landscape by some sort of monster. He followed that up with 2009's Drood, which was about the final five years of Charles Dickens life as struggled to finish what would be his last (and never finished) book, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. The novel is narrated by Dickens' friend, novelist Wilkie Collins. Like The Terror, the plot mixes fiction and biographical facts, but because Collins spent a good number of years under the influence of opium, and it's derivative, laudanum, author Simmons gave us an unreliable narrator so long time fans of Dickens could not take umbrage with the acts that take place in the book. 

I've read both of the books, and enjoyed them. I skipped over, but still own, Simmons 2011 novel Black Hills and his 2013 Abominable (which I don't own, but still want to read). Both of those books continued his current run of mixing fiction with history. Which leads us to his latest novel The Fifth Heart. 

I admit I'm not a Sherlock Holmes fan and have never read a Henry James novel, but the idea of the Great Detective getting a Portrait of a Lady author mixed up in a murder mystery that spans London, New York, Washington, and Chicago was too tempting to pass up. Plus, with my fondness for history, Simmons books are always a fun read. 

It's London in1893, and a despondent Henry James has decided to end his life. But as he stands on the precipice between life and the undiscovered country, he discovers he's not the only one under the bridge contemplating their demise that night. Indeed, it appears that Sherlock Holmes (whom James always assumed was a fictional construct) is waiting for him. Holmes convinces Henry James that they need to travel to America to solve a mystery because James is a well know friend of the family. The murder mystery part begins, actually in 1885 with the suicide death of Clover Adams, wife of the esteemed historian Henry Adams -member of the Adams family that has given the United States two Presidents. Clover's death appears to be more than it at first seemed; the suspected foul play may also involve matters of national importance. Holmes is currently on his Great Hiatus -his three-year absence after Reichenbach Falls during which time the people of London believe him to be deceased. But apparently, Holmes has faked his own death because, through his powers of ratiocination, the great detective has come to the conclusion that he is a fictional character. This leads to serious complications for James -for if his esteemed fellow investigator is merely a work of fiction, what does that make him? And what can the master storyteller do to fight against the sinister power -possibly named Moriarty- that may or may not be controlling them from the shadows?

Once again, Dan Simmons takes us on journey into the past, mixing real history with fiction. We get another unreliable narrator -by the fact that we never learn who is actually writing the book. Well, obviously it's Simmons, but we get another writer who jumps in once in a while, one who is never identified (is it Simmons? Henry James? Arthur Conan Doyle? John Watson?). Still, the book reads like a buddy comedy film at times as well, which I actually think makes the narrative work better than his previous journeys into the historical fiction genre. It's a long book, well over 600 pages and while dense with real history, you cannot help but like the cantankerous Henry James, who ends up being the perfect foil for Holmes antics. It's also fun when we meet real life figures like Teddy Roosevelt (very bullish) and Samuel Clemens, AKA Mark Twain (and whom I pictured asactor Jerry Hardin, who played a version of Twain the Star Trek: The Next Generation 2-part episode Time's Arrow. There is also a visit to the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, the same one featured in Erik Larson's nonfiction book The Devil in the White City.

We do get a bit of metaphysical antics about whether Holmes is real person, who's life has been fictionalized by author John Watson and published by his editor, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in The Strand. There is also some "meta" aspects to as well, and up until Holmes mentioned Hercule Poirot, I was going to give the novel the benefit of the doubt. This book also made me think of the classic short film An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge at the beginning. 

Still, out of all his recent historical fiction books, this was the breeziest of them all and one many -including Sherlock Holmes fans- will enjoy. 

Books: A Winter Haunting by Dan Simmons (2002)

Dale Stewart, who along with a bunch of childhood friends battled an evil entity that had taken over his old school and town, returns to Elm Haven, Illinois 41 years later. He is a mess of man, full of demons of his own, having left his wife and two daughters for a coed in Montana, who has subsequently left him.

He has returned home, and moved into Duane McBride’s old home –the same boy who was murdered by the evil stalking Elm Haven back in 1960. Here Dale, who seems to have forgotten all of the events of that summer when he was 11, tries to write a novel, in hopes of exercising the demons that seem to haunt him, hang on him like an ill-fitting coat.

But, as Stephen King once wrote, the past has a way of coming back, and Dale must come to grips with the fact he may be going insane, or the ghosts of his past are more real than he ever thought possible.

Dan Simmons is not subtle about Dale’s psychological issues, and hits the reader over the head rather bluntly with the Henry James comparisons, giving a near detailed description of the James’ The Jolly Corner. And Simmons also uses Duane as sort of window into Dale’s mind, but his memories are only limited to when he was a child and up until his death. You are left, in the end, as to whether Duane was a real ghost or part of Dale’s tortured mind.

This sequel, however, moves much more quickly than Summer of Night, as I read this in just under 24 hours, feeling that I needed to know how this would turn out. So while it reads like a summer beach novel, it does more going on than one gets from those typical novels.

A Winter Haunting is a much different novel than Summer of Night, less nostalgic of a time gone by and more thriller of the mind, something Stephen King has been doing for the last 15 years or so in his tales; which is why I like King even more than I did when I started reading him 30 years ago. Sometimes the human psyche is more scary than any ghosts.

Books: Summer of Night by Dan Simmons (1991)

Dan Simmons is an “insanely prolific, multi-genre writer,” writer Barbara Ehrenreich said during a review of Simmons historical/supernatural tome Black Hills, which was published last year. Indeed, Simmons began his career in the mid-1980s with the horror genre, before breaking big with his science fiction novel Hyperion, which would spawn 4 novels in what became the Hyperion Cantos series. He continued in the sci/fi genre in the early 2000s with Ilium and Olympos. He’s also published three mysteries starring the detective Joe Kurtz. He also began writing historical novels that took on true stories, such as the fate of the lost Franklin Expedition to find the Northwest Passage, and wrapping a supernatural story around it. And while 2007s The Terror was overlong, and perhaps did not need a “monster,” and could have stood on its own as history of that time, it’s still an absorbing drama. Simmons continued his historical fiction tales with 2009s Drood, a brilliant alternative biography/horror tale of the last five years of writer Charles Dickens life.

While Black Hills is sitting on my book shelf to be read (and have, at this time, little plans to read his Hyperion Cantos series), I picked up 1991s Summer of Night. The novel, set in the summer of 1960 in a distant town near Peoria, Illinois, the book does resemble Stephen King’s 1986 novel IT. And while I say that, it’s not done as a disservice to Simmons novel. I say it only because they have very similar themes. While IT took place in both 1957 and the mid-1980s, and Summer is set in a few months’ time period in 1960, both novels feature pre-teen kids battling an ancient evil that have taken over their small towns, King’s Derry, Maine and Simmons Elm Haven, Illinois.

Five boys, Dale Stewart, his brother Lawrence, Mike O’Rourke, Jim Harlen and Kevin Grumbacher are having the best summer of their lives when they discover, through another boy, Duane McBride, that something is not quite right about their town, including the Old Central School. Duane convinces the others to help him discover the truth, only they all start to run afoul of whatever evil is haunting the town and in particular, the school.

As with most horror novels, the central premise is pretty silly, even King’s IT has a child killer that looks like a clown and who turns out to be an ancient alien who can’t seem to defeat a handful of children, but King was able to pull it off with deft plotting and characters that were believable, almost real (something I’ve been say for 30 years about King’s work, because no matter how high concept the premise is, King can create wonderful humans who you swear are people you know). Simmons characters are pretty interchangeable here and ill defined; you sometimes get confused as to who was who. Plus, if this was just the way Simmons remembered his childhood, it appears he has created a town full of alcoholics (which include most of the parents of these boys) and racists. I know it was 1960, but still, it seems a bit extreme (though I never grew up in a “small” town, so maybe this is the way he remembers it?)

And, of course, the adults here are clueless to what’s actually happening in there town, able to pass it off with gossip and logic right out those B style 1950s monster movies.

Still, I did not find it a horrible novel, just a bit depressing. The paperback clocks in at 600 pages, and we could have easily seen about 250 of those pages excised, but it does hanker back to a time when I thought America was innocent, the 1950s. Setting the book the in the summer of 1960, just before Kennedy was elected, just before the world and the US teetered on a knives edge due to racial imbalances, Summer of Night evokes –or tries too – the last summer of innocence in a small town in central Illinois.

Books: Drood by Dan Simmons (2009)

After his 2007 long novel The Terror, where author Dan Simmons took on a fictionalized look at what might have happened to the Franklin's lost expedition of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror between 1845 - 1848, now takes on a fictionalized account of the last five years of Charles Dickens' life told from the view point of Dickens' friend and fellow author Wilkie Collins. The title comes from Dickens' unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

This is a well-researched novel, much like The Terror, which mixes factual biography from the lives of Dickens, Collins, and other literary and historical figures of the Victorian era with a complex plot, complicated even further by an unreliable narrator. Wilkie Collins, perhaps the first writer to pen a book in the genre known today as mystery and suspense, and Charles Dickens are friends first, rivals later, when it comes to writing. And from there, Simmons draws us readers into a deft plot of horror, mystery, drug addiction, and the enigmas of the mind.

The characters come off the page as real now as they were (hopefully) a hundred and fifty years ago. The story begins with the real-life train accident that Dickens was involved with (which also included his secret mistress) in June of 1865, which seems to change his life forever. It continues with Wilkie Collins assumption that the accident caused Dickens to begin a deadly second life, with trips to the underbelly of London, and his obsession with corpses, crypts, murder, opium dens, and the use of lime pits to dissolve bodies.

Dickens claims its all research for his next novel, but is this mere research leading to something more terrifying?

So with Drood, Simmons (like many authors have tried since Dickens’ death in 1870), explores the unsolved mysteries of the author's last years and also may provide (again, as many have done over the years) the key to Dickens' final, unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

It’s a chilling, staggering novel that shows us that there are still powerful writers in the world who can put out an impressive, totally original work of fiction that is also very entertaining.

Books: The Terror by Dan Simmons

In The Terror, author Dan Simmons takes a true, historical story of the famed Franklin Expedition to find the Northwest Passage and wraps a it into a thriller worthy of Stephen King.

The crewmen of the Terror, and its sister ship, the Erebus, have been trapped in Arctic ice for two years without a thaw when the novel begins. Shortly, we are told how the expedition began its voyage, with great detail, and how eventually they end up trapped in the Arctic. As the story moves forward, we learn that the real threat to their existence is not the ever changing, ever shifting arctic landscape, the victuals that are poisonous even before they’re opened, or even the slow destruction of the two ship caught in the grips of unforgiven able ice. The real threat comes from the darkness of the winter nights, from a supernatural creature that is stalking the crews one by one or whole groups, leaving bodies mangled or just plain missing.

Simmons takes his time setting up the story, going into great detail about both ships and its crew. And I suppose, killing off 146 people takes time and many pages (the mass market edition clocks in at 955 pages). As the horror of their adventure unwinds, I was often reminded of The Bridge Over the River Kwai and the role of Colonel Nicholson (played by Alec Guinness). Insomuch, I guess, as the Colonel plays by the rules of British military and dislikes anyone who questions his orders, especially lowly officers below his status. Colonel Nicholson, despite being a POW and forced to build a bridge, deplores sabotage and other deliberate attempts to delay its progress -after all, that is what the rules of his war states. So does the captain of the Terror, in essence. Despite being trapped in the ice, and with everything going down hill quickly, he decides to stay longer than they should’ve, thus dooming him and his crew to fate of the arctic and whatever is stalking them.

The characters featured in The Terror are almost all actual members of Franklin's crew, whose unexplained disappearance has warranted a great deal of speculation. The main characters in the novel include Sir John Franklin, commander of the expedition and captain of Erebus, Captain Francis Crozier, captain of Terror, Dr. Harry D.S Goodsir, and Captain James Fitzjames.

The book, maybe, is a bit over long, but it’s a damn fine adventure, horror story and thriller. The characters are well developed, but it was hard for me (anyways) to keep them all straight. And, perhaps, my only criticism lies in one gay character who becomes the leader of mutinous group and who kills at leisure and eventually goes mad. Now, I realize this is set at a time (1846 to 1848) when such men were hanged for being gay, but still (and there are two other gay men who are portrayed in more brighter light).

As for the monster that is stalking the men, Simmons reveals little of what it actually is, though he spends the last few chapters exploring Eskimo mythology. But in the end, whether the bear-monster is an actual mythological creature or something else is left unexplained.