Worlds Enough & Time: Five Tales of Speculative Fiction

by Dan Simmons

Book Overview

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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060506040
• ISBN13: 9780060506049
• Release Date: November 2002
• Publisher: Harper Voyager
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.3" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

Not Free SF Reader

A collection of long stories by Simmons. They are also accompanied by very length introductions, where as well as talking about the story you get the odd anecdote. For example, Kelly Dahl campground is a place in Colorado, and of being accosted by high-fiving aliens in Italy while being interviewed, etc. Mentioning that Jaws is a better movie than book (absolutely agree), and other bits and pieces. He isn't really one for the breezy introduction, all told, though. Along with that, it is a high quality collection, and 'On K2 with Kanakaredes is the standout.' An average of 3.80, and the interesting other material means you won't find many collections better than this. Worlds Enough and Time : Looking for Kelly Dahl - Dan Simmons Worlds Enough and Time : Orphans of the Helix - Dan Simmons Worlds Enough and Time : The Ninth of Av - Dan Simmons Worlds Enough and Time : On K2 with Kanakaredes - Dan Simmons Worlds Enough and Time : The End of Gravity - Dan Simmons Student-teacher worldhunt. 4 out of 5 Hyperion kid and Shrike buddy pay a visit for some teleporting fun. 3.5 out of 5 We are definitely faxed. 3.5 out of 5 On a really big mountain, a human and an alien mountaineer come to an understanding. 4.5 out of 5 Old 'nauts not dead yet. 3.5 out of 5 5 out of 5

Great Stories

Dan Simmons has written a masterfull work. I have marked down four stars when I really give it 4 1/2. This is wonderfull to read. Simmons also writes an anecdote to each story about the story or his connection to writing the story. In his anecdotes, you find that he loves where he lives and loves the annual neighborhood get togethers. He also loves writing, but not necessarily the business of writing. Taken together, they add a nice depth to his writing and gives you a greater appreciation to his stories. There are five here and not one of them is a dud. He returns to Hyperion in one of the stories and the reader would enjoy the story more if they had read the series, but the story still stands on its own legs. He also writes about mountain climbing with aliens and the brotherhood that develops with such an activity whether you are human or not. The "End of Gravity" is about an American writer going to Russia to look at their space accompishments. The "Ninth of Av" is about Jewish decendents going through another dark period of history. If you are new to Dan Simmons, then this is a good book to start with becasue you get a wide variety of his style and abilities. Highly Recommended.

Some of his best work, and it got hidden away...

Dan Simmons' WORLDS ENOUGH AND TIME didn't receive quite the fanfare it deserved when it was published late last year. WE & T, which collects five of Simmons' best recent sci-fi (or speculative) novellas, was originally put out in hardcover by a small press, in a relatively small run. It wasn't made readily available to the readers who would have eaten it up until its large-size paperback publication earlier this year, which means it unfortunately missed its window of window time at the front of the major chain bookstores, where bestsellers get stacked like Aztec pyramids. It's too bad, because WE & T contains some of Simmons best work. Some of the best work from a guy who has been writing consistently for over twenty years now without hardly ever compromising the intelligence, emotion, and spontaneity of his output. If you like Dan Simmons' work, but haven't read this one (or haven't even heard of it until you clicked on this page) don't waste any time...click on the add to your cart button, or run out to your local bookstore or library and hope they have a copy. It's a short, but consistently good collection that'll keep reminding you over and over again what a good writer Simmons is. The collection includes two pieces that tie into Simmons' larger Sci-Fi opi (let's pretend I didn't use that phrase): THE HYPERION CANTOS, and the recently begun ILIUM-OLYMPOS saga. "Children of the Helix," probably the tightest plotted and most thrilling story included in WE & T is drawn from the HYPERION universe, though, as Simmons explains in his introduction for the tale, he originally wrote it as a STAR TREK episode. "The Ninth of Av," an obscure and yet strangely moving look into the far-future, serves as the seed for the new Homeric saga that Simmons has just begun this summer with the excellent ILIUM and will continue next year with OLYMPOS. Also included is "Looking for Kelly Dahl," a great first narrative detailing a truly bizarre relationship that reads half non-fiction of Tracy Kidder and half like Richard Matheson's I AM LEGEND. The writing is this tale is probably the best in the collection and nearly the best in Simmons' career. He hits all of the right emotional notes so that they resound like echoing memories in an empty house. It's just beautiful.Rounding out the collection are a thrilling adventure story about a team of rogue mountaineers that must climb K2 with an alien. Definitely a journey a discovery. Also, Simmons includes an interesting treatment for a movie that he wrote, which if made, might star Dustin Hoffman.At the end of the day, WE & T is a great bite-size sampler of Simmons at his best. It's either a great introduction for those unfamiliar with the work of this amazingly talented writer, or a great unexpected treat for those Simmons fans who may have missed this one when it initially fell through the cracks.

Excellent collection of novellas

The tales in this book are all thought provoking and fast moving. The reader finds himself fully immersed in them; while reading this novel I felt myself in the mountains of Colorado then off to the Himalayas climbing K2 and then blasting off into space with a bunch of Russian cosmonauts. Thanks Dan for allowing us armchair astronauts to dream !

Simmons does it again!

There isn't a single thing Simmons isn't capable of writing. His novels have touched nearly every single genre - horror, dark humour, sci-fi, fantasy, action, hard-boiled crime... Simmons is able to dip his pen in every type of story that fancies him, and always excels at it. His new collection, Worlds Enough and Time, contains five science-fiction stories. But Simmons isn't able to simply write the typical sci-fi yarn. What he does is go deeper than most authors do to get a meaningful, powerful and always affecting final product.The collection's best story is also its opener. Looking For Kelly Dahl is a ghost story in which a man is confronted by one of his old students. After a suicide attempt, the narrator awakens in an empty world where the only two inhabitants are himself and Kelly Dahl, a disturbed young woman who wants something out of him. What that is, however, isn't clear until the last pages of the story. Affecting, touching and often terrifying, Looking For Kelly Dahl is an amazing story that fully displays Simmons at his very best.I also really enjoyed the stories The Ninth Av and On K2 with Kanakaredes. In the first story, history repeats itslef with the earth's distant Jewish descendents are faced with yet a new period of assimilation and darkness. In the second story, three men who are set on climbing to the top of K2 are forced by the government to bring an alien ambassador along for the ride. Both stories are widly original and thought-provoking.Fans of Simmon's amazingly popular Hyperion series will be happy with the story Orphans of the Helix, which takes place in the Hyperion universe. Although a little slow moving, the story pushes just the right buttons. And the final climax is just perfect.The only story that truly disappointed me is the closing piece, called The End Of Gravity. Well, it's not really a story, but really a film scriptment. And that's exactly how it reads: like an outline. I'm not a big fan of present-tense narratives, like this story makes the use of. And I can't say that the story itself provoked the same feelings the other four stories in this collections unearthed in me. All in all, Worlds Enough and Time displays Dan Simmons at his very best. These stories, although all falling in the sci-fi genre, should please fans of the genre but also the people who do not particularly like science fiction. Because these stories are very litteray. If you read between the lines, you'll always find more than is displayed on the page. And that is what makes an author stand above all others.