

Many of his works have similarly strong ties with classic literature: This novel deals with a space war, and is inspired in its structure by Boccaccio's Decameron and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Simmons became famous in 1989 for Hyperion, winner of Hugo and Locus Awards for the best science fiction novel. In 2013 Simmons will release The Abominable, a supernatural horrow adventure, set on the snowy peaks of Mount Everest. In 2009 he also wrote a book, Drood, based on the last years of Charles Dickens' life, those leading up to the writing of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, which Dickens had partially completed at the time of his death.

Soon after Summer of Night, Simmons, who had written mostly horror fiction, began to focus on writing science fiction, although in 2007 he returned with a work of historical fiction and horror, The Terror. Another Summer of Night character, Dale's younger brother, Lawrence Stewart, appears as a minor character in Simmons' thriller Darwin's Blade, while the adult Cordie Cooke appears in Fires of Eden. Children of the Night, another loose sequel, features a much older Mike O'Rourke, now a Roman Catholic priest, who is sent on a mission to investigate bizarre events in a European city. In the sequel to Summer of Night, A Winter Haunting, Dale Stewart (one of the first book's protagonists, and now an adult), revisits his boyhood home to come to grips with mysteries that have disrupted his adult life. The novel, which was praised by Stephen King, is similar to King's It in its focus on small town life, the corruption of innocence, the return of an ancient evil, and the responsibility for others that emerges with the transition from youth to adulthood. Summer of Night (1991) recounts the childhood of a group of pre-teens who band together in the 1960s to defeat a centuries-old evil that terrorizes their hometown of Elm Haven, Illinois. His first novel, Song of Kali, was released in 1985. He soon started to write short stories, although his career did not take off until 1982, when, through Harlan Ellison's help, his short story "The River Styx Runs Upstream" was published and awarded first prize in a Twilight Zone Magazine story competition. He subsequently worked in elementary education until 1989. in English from Wabash College in 1970, and, in 1971, a Masters in Education from Washington University in St. Born in Peoria, Illinois, Simmons received an A.B.
