"What is Dan Simmons"" wondered Dorman T. Shindler in a Publishers Weekly profile and interview of the prolific and flexible author. "Is he fish? Is he fowl? Or is he simply 'good red herring'"" Shindler went on to answer the question: "Chances are the genre-defying writer of mainstream fiction, science fiction, horror and fantasy would appreciate the latter designation." Simmons began his writing career as the author of such award-winning works of horror as Song of Kali, Carrion Comfort, Summer of Night, Children of Night, Fires of Eden, and the 2002 Winter Haunting. With the "Hyperion/Endymion" quartet of novels he produced pure science fiction, as he does in the 2003 book Ilium. But between these two genres, he has also written mainstream fiction such as Phases of Gravity and The Hollow Man, hardboiled noir crime fiction in his "Joe Kurtz" crime novels, an espionage thriller with The Crook Factory...