![\"\"](\"http:\/\/stallonezone.com\/zone\/2026\/z022826rip_dan_simmons.png\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
It was announced yesterday that Daniel Simmons died on February 21st from complications of a stroke.\u00a0 Mr. Simmons was 77.<\/p>\n
Dan Simmons began his career in education. Mr. Simmons received a B.A. in English from Wabash College and a Masters Degree in Education from Washington University in St. Louis.\u00a0 While teaching, Dan Simmons began submitting short stories.<\/p>\n
His first published story, \u201cThe River Styx Runs Upstream,\u201d<\/em> won the Rod Serling Memorial Award<\/em>.\u00a0 This got Dan Simmons an agent.\u00a0 His first novel, SONG OF KALI followed.\u00a0 It won the World Fantasy Award<\/em>. His first horror novel, CARRION COMFORT, won the Bram Stoker Award<\/em>. His first science fiction novel, HYPERION, won the Hugo Award<\/em>.<\/p>\n Someone who writes in a lot of different genres, could be the sign of an artist looking for his voice. In Mr. Simmons\u2019 case, it was a talent who refused to be constrained.<\/p>\n Even with all the awards Dan Simmons won, I was only vaguely familiar with his work. I don\u2019t read fantasy, and very little science fiction or horror. But I do love a hardboiled thriller! You know, the kind written by Andrew Vachss, or Eugene Izzi, Stephen Hunter, or Richard Stark.\u00a0 And that is how I came to love Dan Simmons’ writing.<\/p>\n Mr. Simmons wrote three novels about Joe Kurtz –<\/p>\n Joe Kurtz was a PI\u2026 before he was an ex-con. See he killed a man, a couple of men actually. They\u2019d murdered his girl and unborn child. While it\u2019s pretty reasonable to me that he threw one of \u2019em off a six story building, the jury didn\u2019t see it that way.<\/em><\/p>\n Now, out of prison after eleven-and-a-half years\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n \u2026you\u2019d think things would be looking up for Kurtz. You\u2019d be wrong. Too many people want him dead\u2026<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n I loved the Kurtz novels and they led me to others written by Mr. Simmons.\u00a0 I enjoyed every one of them.\u00a0 Even in the genres I generally avoided.\u00a0 In fact, I still have a few Dan Simmons novels on my “to be read” shelf.\u00a0 I’m going to have to move them up on the list. Dan Simmons was a master storyteller.\u00a0 He was able to write compelling tales in every genre he attempted.\u00a0 How many writers can say that?<\/p>\n Out thoughts and prayers go out to Daniel Simmon’s family, friends and fans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It was announced yesterday that Daniel Simmons died on February 21st from complications of a stroke.\u00a0 Mr. Simmons was 77.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":912,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[61,52,51,53,57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-authors","category-books","category-crime","category-horror","category-rip"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/912"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41187"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41187\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41188,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41187\/revisions\/41188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}