Worlds Enough & Time

Book excerpt: The award-winning author of the Hyperion series shifts between dark fantasy, space opera, hard sci fi & mainstream fiction in this five-novella collection. An extraordinary artist with few rivals in his chosen arena, Dan Simmons possesses a restless talent that continually presses boundaries while tantalizing the mind and touching the soul. Now he offers us a superb quintet of novellas—five dazzling masterworks of speculative fiction, including “Orphans of the Helix,” his award-winning return to the Hyperion Universe—that demonstrates the unique mastery, breathtaking invention, and flawless craftsmanship of one of contemporary fiction’s true greats. Human colonists seeking something other than godhood encounter their long-lost “cousins” . . . and an ancient scourge. A devastated man in suicide’s embrace is caught up in a bizarre cat-and-mouse game with a young woman possessing a world-ending power. The distant descendants of a once-oppressed people learn a chilling lesson about the persistence of the past. A terrifying ascent up the frigid, snow-swept slopes of K2 shatters preconceptions and reveals the true natures of four climbers, one of whom is not human. At the intersection of a grand past and a threadbare present, an aging American in Russia confronts his own mortality as he glimpses a wondrous future.