Prayers to Broken Stones
Encyclopedia
Prayers to Broken Stones is a short story anthology by the American author Dan Simmons
. It includes 13 of his earlier works, along with an introduction by Harlan Ellison
in which the latter relates how he "discovered" Dan Simmons at the Colorado Mountain College
's "Writers' Conference in the Rockies" in 1981. The title is a borrowed line from T. S. Eliot
's "The Hollow Men
".
Simmons survived Ellison's critique, and Ellison pushed Simmons into submitting it to Twilight Zone Magazine "for their first annual contest for unpublished writers" (pg 16, introduction to "The River Styx Runs Upstream"). Out of ~7000 submissions, it tied for first place and was published 15 February 1982 (according to PtBS's copyright page, in April, not February).
's Cantos
; the protagonist's father is a Pound scholar with an especial interest in the Cantos (reading from it to his children), and the premise can be seen as deriving from a line in the Cantos as well.
The mother of the family has died of some unspecified illness. Stricken by grief, the father bargains (heedless of the prospect of financial ruin) with the "Resurrectionists" to have his wife's corpse technologically revived. The resurrection is a hollow one, as all higher cognitive functions are irreparably damaged, although it does function somewhat autonomously. Their family is stigmatized, and the father slowly breaks down and his classes become less and less popular until he takes a sabbatical to write his long-planned work on the Cantos. He spends most of it drunk. Simon, the protagonist's brother, eventually commits suicide. A few years later, while the protagonist is at university (sponsored by the Resurrectionists, whom he has joined) the father commits suicide as well. He graduates and begins working for them and helping to spread the living dead. He does little but work, spending his free time with his resurrected family.
, when he worked with disabled and retarded children as a teacher's aide in the Upsal Day School for the Blind. The story forms the seed, the original form, of Simmons's later novel, The Hollow Man
.
Bremen succeeds in penetrating Robby's mental defenses, but is unexpectedly sucked into Robby's mind, where Gail manifests. The fusion between Gail and Bremen was deep and profound enough. Unfortunately, the strain of holding Bremen and Gail in his mind and in comprehending what the show up pushes Robby's obese body to the brink and over. Bremen leaves Robby's mind, taking Gail and Robby with him while Robby's body dies.
The events concern a day when a major and unscrupulous televangelist (Brother Freddy) sees a scheduled appearance by Dale Evans
go seriously wrong when an exotic Italian-looking fellow strolls on stage. He announces that he is Vanni Fucci (a character from Dante Alighieri
's Divine Comedy) and that "for the last seven hundred years I have lived in hell." (pg 72) Each Bolgia of Dante's Hell is allowed to send one of its inhabitants (Fucci was of the Seventh Bolgia of the Eighth Circle of Hell) back to Earth for a brief period of time, and Fucci happened to be chosen. Unlike most such returnees, he is not indulging in as many worldly pleasures as he can, however, but has returned in order to remedy a distressing problem. He recounts that Hell and even gods are created and uncreated by the strength of people's beliefs, and unfortunately Fucci was condemned to eternal suffering simply because he had gotten politically cross-wise of Dante and Dante's Hell was the most popular version (and so, the real one).
By this point, it is clear that a supernatural force is at work: Security is being prevented from getting onto the stage by an invisible and extremely resilient wall, and the cameras are physically disassembled but are still transmitting over the air.
From Fucci's perspective, the torments of Hell are quite bad enough, but the colossal and cosmic injustice of being condemned to Hell for his politics aggravates him sufficiently that he "gives God the fig"; to punish Fucci for his blasphemy, every thief "within a hundred yards" becomes "Chelidrids, jaculi, phareans, cenchriads" and "two-headed amphisbands
" (pg 80), who then attack him and rend him limb from limb in a painful orgy of violence. This punishment of course aggravates Fucci even more.
Recently, Hell's management has added big-screen TVs which broadcast "Brother Freddy's Hallelujah Breakfast Club" eight times a day. Merely speaking about this on-stage aggravates Fucci so much that he gives God the fig. Twice. Immediately most of the audience (and Brother Freddy and most of his staff) transform into the named monsters and attack Fucci. The entire ball of beasts disappears in hell
fire and brimstone
.
's "The Second Coming
") is a short story which deals with televangelism after an apocalypse. Simmons mentions in the introduction that he was commissioned to write a Christmas
tale that included an "overlooked present", but that he was given free rein otherwise: one of the authors was assigned the upbeat and happy story, so the other three could be as unrelievedly grim and dark as amused them. Amusingly, the happy tale was never actually submitted, so the collection was dark indeed. It didn't help that the next Christmas they were republished in Asimov's SF Magazine "where it served to dark the next Christmas for a host of people." (p. 86). As Simmons goes on to relate, "It wasn't long before I had the reputation as The Man Who Sacrificed Christmas with a Survival Knife
." It was first published in Mile High Futures in November 1985.
, to which televangelists have dispatched missionaries equipped with Satellite TV reception units to convert the heathens. Brother Jimmy-Joe Billy-Bob has been sent to NYC. There he meets the Red Bantam clan, which tattoos images of bantams on its members (as Simmons notes, this is a sly reference to the publisher Bantam Books
), which Jimmy-Joe interprets as the Mark of the Beast. Prompted by the Holy Spirit
, Jimmy-Joe takes a survival knife that appeared as an extra present as a gift. He tells the children that "Anyone upon the roof tonight would see[the pagan and hence evil, from his perspective] Santa Claus
and his reindeer." When one comes up the flights seeking him, Billy-Bob sacrifices her on the altar holding up the antenna with the survival knife.
fictional universe
, published in Asimov's SF Magazine in December 1983. Simmons used it as the seed for Hyperion (in which it appears nearly verbatim) and The Fall of Hyperion
. Simmons's inspiration was the proposition, "What if Romeo and Juliet
had lived?" (pg 100) For a plot summary, see "The Consul's Tale".
" is a horror short story published in Dark Harvest's 1980 "Night Visions 5".
It deals with Louis Steig, whose mother is dying of cancer
. He rushes to her side, but his car crashes on some black ice
. He suffers some damage to his vision and brain. While visiting his mother, he discovers a creature no one else can see, which he calls "cancer vampires", infesting his mother with "tumor-slugs". At her funeral, many of these vampires visit to feed on the now corpulent and grown slugs infesting her body. Eventually after both his sister and his fiancee contract cancer, Louis discovers that he can kill cancer vampires by taking radioactive isotopes into his body; these isotopes act as a beacon to the slugs, who are poisoned when they flock to it. In turn, these slugs poison the vampires who eat them when the vampires themselves flock to Louis.
adaptation of "Metastasis", which appeared on the TV show Monsters in 1990. It is largely faithful to "Metastasis", simplifying some things and making the title less ominous.
veteran who returns to Vietnam
and after visiting a theme park recreating the war, goes berserk and escapes into the jungle with his grandchildren, killing his pursuers with a weapon he stole from a South Vietnamese who had returned to take revenge of the Korean government for betraying all that he and his comrades had fought for.
during the fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg
. There he is randomly assigned to assist a veteran, one Captain Montgomery from North Carolina
. The captain brandishes an antique pistol at the unnamed scout, and orders a wagon and team. Fortuitously, just such a team shows up, and the captain heads out to "Iverson's Pits", where he expects to reach a consummation to his long-held obsession with achieving a revenge on his former commander, Alfred Iverson. Apparently, Iverson's incompetence had led him to order his men into the teeth of a Union
trap while he had lunch. To cover his own failing, Iverson claimed to one and all that his men were cowards and had tried to surrender.
The two hide in some weeds and ambush a young man who looks much like Iverson did. The boy stops the Captain from killing him, as the traveler is far too young. They cordially greet the traveler, whose name is Sheads, and visit his house. Jessup Sheads toasts the captain's regiment, and then Iverson himself with some of the local wine. The Captain refuses the second toast, cursing Iverson. Sheads reveals himself to be Iverson's nephew. Iverson comes down, and the nephew kills Montgomery when he draws a revolver on Iverson. About to bury the Captain, Iverson orders Sheads to kill the scout as well, to silence all witnesses, when the very earth begins moving and opening up. With its teeth, it seizes and devours Sheads. Iverson attempts to escape on his horse and kill the Scout, but he hurls a lantern at Iverson, distracting him. The pits take Iverson and his horse, and the Scout eventually becomes a historian specializing in Gettysburg.
Two boys, Kevin and Tommy, have become convinced (mostly Kevin) that the two barber
s who run the unpopular and obscure old barbershop in town are actually vampires. Despite failing most vampire tests (like disliking garlic
, running water
, crosses
etc.) the two break into the barbershop's basement. They are captured and the truth revealed: neither barber is a vampire. Rather, they harvest blood for their resident vampire; vampires have changed over the centuries into gigantic things more akin to 1000-pound leech
es than anything that could pass for a human. They bargained with the barber guild: if the guild would hide and feed them, then the barbers would be allowed to harvest a sort of purified blood which grants partial immortality to humans. The two are forcibly inducted into this grim fraternity.
device: the main story is about the friendship between a literary-inclined teacher (based on Simmons himself) and a poor boy named Terry whom he teaches. The teacher begins telling his class every recess a portion of a fantasy story ("The Story"). This fantasy story is the tale of a centaur named Raul (compare Raul Endymion of Endymion), a neo-cat, and a sorcerer-ape who seek to reconnect their world to the "Web of Worlds" by re-connecting a farcaster and seek the humans' help in overthrowing the lizard-ish Wizards who oppress their world. This story is the earliest and first story set in what would become the Hyperion cantos
universe, preceding even "Remembering Siri". Many elements and similarities survived into the later stories (from the name of the centaur Raul, to the concepts of farcasters and the WorldWeb, to the Shrike or the levitation barge or the Sea of Grass). Although the stories did evolve and differ from "The Death of the Centaur" over time there are a number of dissimilarities: in the Cantos, the centaurs of Garden have been exterminated in a genocide by the Hegemony, and the world The Story is set on is not cut off from the farcaster network. There are shared elements with other stories in this volume: the neo-cat Gernisavien shows up as regular cat in "Eyes I Dare Not Meet in Dreams".
program in Missouri
, but on completing it found himself too poor to move back to the Northeast, and so is forced to take a job there teaching for a year.
In The Story, Raul and Gernisavien have discovered in the "Man Ruins" a map to the location of the long-forgotten farcaster portal. Hunted by the Wizards, they travel to the city of Carnval. In that city's ancient archives, they discover the key to re-activate the portal. Once activated, they can draw on the expertise of Dobby, the sorcerer-ape. The Wizards trap them in Carnval, and they can only afford to escape aboard the Sky Galleon because Raul risks his life in the Death Game fighting the "genetically-engineered" relic of the Wizard Wars, the fearsome and unbeatable Shrike. Raul survives the requisite three minutes, and wins. After they leave the Sky Galleon, all but Raul are captured by the Wizards and taken to their fortress in the cold mountain fastnesses. There Gernisavien is about to be dissected by a Wizard to get the key which she had swallowed. Kennan plans the grand finale to coincide with the end of the school year; Raul will sacrifice himself in glorious combat with the Wizards while his friends frantically reactivate the farcaster. They will succeed, and return with an army of Humans, freeing their world. But Kennan unexpectedly lands an excellent position in the East at a college, but the exigencies of the situation are such that he must cut short the school year and leave almost immediately. He would be unable to finish The Story. Terry, when Mr. Kennan tells him that he is leaving, rejects him; the details of their discussion are not given. Kennan never sees him again.
In the last days, Terry lets it be known that he knows the ending to The Story. But the tale he tells during the final recess is different from the one Kennan outlined in his letter: Raul successfully breaks into the Wizard fortress, but half-frozen and overwhelmed by their technology, cannot overcome them. He is forced to escape aboard one of their flying craft. Dobby manages to wrench one arm free, but no more, while Gernisavien is securely fastened. They know their only course of action with Raul's defeat is to have Dobby smash some chemicals together. The resulting explosion levels the mountain. Raul is safely away when it happens, but he knows that the explosion means that the quest is dead, for his friends perished with the key and knowledge necessary to reactivate the farcaster.
It concerns an engineer of explosives who, through remorse over bowing to his co-workers' blithe dismissal of technical glitches and thereby contributing to a thinly-fictionalized Challenger Incident, places explosives on the plane carrying himself and the culpable co-workers, thus killing them and committing suicide. The title is a reference to how long it would take the plane to fall to the ocean far below and to how much time's worth of oxygen
was expended of the breath-packs found in the wreckage of the Challenger.
serialized in OMNI Magazine between September and October 1983. It was later expanded into the novel Carrion Comfort
.
Dan Simmons
Dan Simmons is an American author most widely known for his Hugo Award-winning science fiction series, known as the Hyperion Cantos, and for his Locus-winning Ilium/Olympos cycle....
. It includes 13 of his earlier works, along with an introduction by Harlan Ellison
Harlan Ellison
Harlan Jay Ellison is an American writer. His principal genre is speculative fiction.His published works include over 1,700 short stories, novellas, screenplays, teleplays, essays, a wide range of criticism covering literature, film, television, and print media...
in which the latter relates how he "discovered" Dan Simmons at the Colorado Mountain College
Colorado Mountain College
Colorado Mountain College is a network of seven junior college campuses in western Colorado. Three of the campuses are residential campuses with student residence halls and cafeterias, and are located in Steamboat Springs, Leadville, Edwards and Glenwood Springs...
's "Writers' Conference in the Rockies" in 1981. The title is a borrowed line from T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
's "The Hollow Men
The Hollow Men
The Hollow Men is a major poem by T. S. Eliot. Its themes are, like many of Eliot's poems, overlapping and fragmentary, but it is recognised to be concerned most with post-World War I Europe under the Treaty of Versailles , the difficulty of hope and religious conversion, and, as some critics...
".
History
"The River Styx Runs Upstream" was Dan Simmons's first published work, and the short story that brought him to Ellison's attention in August 1979. Simmons relates the tale in his introduction, noting that Ellison's initial reaction was this (possibly a little tongue in cheek):- "Who is this Simmons?" bellowed Ellison. "Stand up, wave your hand, show yourself, goddamnit. What egomaniacal monstrosity has the fucking gall, the unmitigated hubris to inflict a story of five thousand fucking words on this workshop? Show yourself, Simmons!"
Simmons survived Ellison's critique, and Ellison pushed Simmons into submitting it to Twilight Zone Magazine "for their first annual contest for unpublished writers" (pg 16, introduction to "The River Styx Runs Upstream"). Out of ~7000 submissions, it tied for first place and was published 15 February 1982 (according to PtBS's copyright page, in April, not February).
Plot summary
The actual story is classic Simmons in its literary allusions, with epigraphs from Ezra PoundEzra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...
's Cantos
The Cantos
The Cantos by Ezra Pound is a long, incomplete poem in 120 sections, each of which is a canto. Most of it was written between 1915 and 1962, although much of the early work was abandoned and the early cantos, as finally published, date from 1922 onwards. It is a book-length work, widely considered...
; the protagonist's father is a Pound scholar with an especial interest in the Cantos (reading from it to his children), and the premise can be seen as deriving from a line in the Cantos as well.
The mother of the family has died of some unspecified illness. Stricken by grief, the father bargains (heedless of the prospect of financial ruin) with the "Resurrectionists" to have his wife's corpse technologically revived. The resurrection is a hollow one, as all higher cognitive functions are irreparably damaged, although it does function somewhat autonomously. Their family is stigmatized, and the father slowly breaks down and his classes become less and less popular until he takes a sabbatical to write his long-planned work on the Cantos. He spends most of it drunk. Simon, the protagonist's brother, eventually commits suicide. A few years later, while the protagonist is at university (sponsored by the Resurrectionists, whom he has joined) the father commits suicide as well. He graduates and begins working for them and helping to spread the living dead. He does little but work, spending his free time with his resurrected family.
History
"Eyes I Dare Not Meet in Dreams" was first published in OMNI Magazine in September 1987. It was inspired by his 1969 experiences in Germantown, PennsylvaniaGermantown, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Germantown is a neighborhood in the northwest section of the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, about 7–8 miles northwest from the center of the city...
, when he worked with disabled and retarded children as a teacher's aide in the Upsal Day School for the Blind. The story forms the seed, the original form, of Simmons's later novel, The Hollow Man
The Hollow Man
Hollow Man or The Hollow Man may refer to:*The Hollow Man , a locked room mystery novel by John Dickson Carr*The Hollow Man , a science fiction novel by the US writer Dan Simmons...
.
Plot summary
The two central characters are the Americans Bremen and Gail. Both are telepaths, the only other telepaths that either has ever known. Inevitably, they fall in love. When Gail dies of illness, Bremen is devastated. He gives up his career in mathematics and becomes a drifter. At the commencement of the action, he has ended up at a facility for retarded and otherwise disabled minors. He becomes sort of fond one named Robby, who had been blinded and mentally crippled before birth by his mother's drug abuse habits, and resolves that before he leaves the facility (for he feels he has been there too long), he will use his telepathic power to give Robby a gift of sorts: images and sounds of the outside world.Bremen succeeds in penetrating Robby's mental defenses, but is unexpectedly sucked into Robby's mind, where Gail manifests. The fusion between Gail and Bremen was deep and profound enough. Unfortunately, the strain of holding Bremen and Gail in his mind and in comprehending what the show up pushes Robby's obese body to the brink and over. Bremen leaves Robby's mind, taking Gail and Robby with him while Robby's body dies.
"Vanni Fucci is Alive and Well and Living in Hell"
This story, and the following one, are both darkly humorous and deal with televangelists. It was first published in Dark Harvest's "Night Visions 5" in 1988.The events concern a day when a major and unscrupulous televangelist (Brother Freddy) sees a scheduled appearance by Dale Evans
Dale Evans
Dale Evans, was an American writer, movie star, and singer-songwriter. She was the third wife of singing cowboy Roy Rogers.-Early life:...
go seriously wrong when an exotic Italian-looking fellow strolls on stage. He announces that he is Vanni Fucci (a character from Dante Alighieri
Dante Alighieri
Durante degli Alighieri, mononymously referred to as Dante , was an Italian poet, prose writer, literary theorist, moral philosopher, and political thinker. He is best known for the monumental epic poem La commedia, later named La divina commedia ...
's Divine Comedy) and that "for the last seven hundred years I have lived in hell." (pg 72) Each Bolgia of Dante's Hell is allowed to send one of its inhabitants (Fucci was of the Seventh Bolgia of the Eighth Circle of Hell) back to Earth for a brief period of time, and Fucci happened to be chosen. Unlike most such returnees, he is not indulging in as many worldly pleasures as he can, however, but has returned in order to remedy a distressing problem. He recounts that Hell and even gods are created and uncreated by the strength of people's beliefs, and unfortunately Fucci was condemned to eternal suffering simply because he had gotten politically cross-wise of Dante and Dante's Hell was the most popular version (and so, the real one).
By this point, it is clear that a supernatural force is at work: Security is being prevented from getting onto the stage by an invisible and extremely resilient wall, and the cameras are physically disassembled but are still transmitting over the air.
From Fucci's perspective, the torments of Hell are quite bad enough, but the colossal and cosmic injustice of being condemned to Hell for his politics aggravates him sufficiently that he "gives God the fig"; to punish Fucci for his blasphemy, every thief "within a hundred yards" becomes "Chelidrids, jaculi, phareans, cenchriads" and "two-headed amphisbands
Amphisbaena
Amphisbaena , amphisbaina, amphisbene, amphisboena, amphisbona, amphista, amphivena, or anphivena , a Greek word, from amphis, meaning "both ways", and bainein, meaning "to go", also called the Mother of Ants, is a mythological, ant-eating serpent with a head at each end...
" (pg 80), who then attack him and rend him limb from limb in a painful orgy of violence. This punishment of course aggravates Fucci even more.
Recently, Hell's management has added big-screen TVs which broadcast "Brother Freddy's Hallelujah Breakfast Club" eight times a day. Merely speaking about this on-stage aggravates Fucci so much that he gives God the fig. Twice. Immediately most of the audience (and Brother Freddy and most of his staff) transform into the named monsters and attack Fucci. The entire ball of beasts disappears in hell
Hell
In many religious traditions, a hell is a place of suffering and punishment in the afterlife. Religions with a linear divine history often depict hells as endless. Religions with a cyclic history often depict a hell as an intermediary period between incarnations...
fire and brimstone
Brimstone
Brimstone is an alternative name for sulfur. It may also refer to:* Fire and brimstone, an idiomatic expression of signs of God's wrath in the Bible* Brimstone , a DC Comics character...
.
"Vexed to Nightmare by a Rocking Cradle"
"Vexed to Nightmare by a Rocking Cradle" (besides being an allusion to William Butler YeatsWilliam Butler Yeats
William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and playwright, and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years he served as an Irish Senator for two terms...
's "The Second Coming
The Second Coming (poem)
"The Second Coming" is a poem composed by Irish poet William Butler Yeats in 1919 and first printed in The Dial and afterwards included in his 1921 collection of verses titled Michael Robartes and the Dancer. The poem uses Christian imagery regarding the Apocalypse and second coming as allegory to...
") is a short story which deals with televangelism after an apocalypse. Simmons mentions in the introduction that he was commissioned to write a Christmas
Christmas
Christmas or Christmas Day is an annual holiday generally celebrated on December 25 by billions of people around the world. It is a Christian feast that commemorates the birth of Jesus Christ, liturgically closing the Advent season and initiating the season of Christmastide, which lasts twelve days...
tale that included an "overlooked present", but that he was given free rein otherwise: one of the authors was assigned the upbeat and happy story, so the other three could be as unrelievedly grim and dark as amused them. Amusingly, the happy tale was never actually submitted, so the collection was dark indeed. It didn't help that the next Christmas they were republished in Asimov's SF Magazine "where it served to dark the next Christmas for a host of people." (p. 86). As Simmons goes on to relate, "It wasn't long before I had the reputation as The Man Who Sacrificed Christmas with a Survival Knife
Survival knife
Survival knives are knives intended for survival purposes in a wilderness environment, often in an emergency situation when the user has lost most of his/her main equipment. Military units issue some type of survival knife to pilots in the event their plane may be shot down. Survival knives can be...
." It was first published in Mile High Futures in November 1985.
Plot summary
It is set in a flooded post-apocalyptic New York CityNew York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, to which televangelists have dispatched missionaries equipped with Satellite TV reception units to convert the heathens. Brother Jimmy-Joe Billy-Bob has been sent to NYC. There he meets the Red Bantam clan, which tattoos images of bantams on its members (as Simmons notes, this is a sly reference to the publisher Bantam Books
Bantam Books
Bantam Books is an American publishing house owned entirely by Random House, the German media corporation subsidiary of Bertelsmann; it is an imprint of the Random House Publishing Group. It was formed in 1945 by Walter B. Pitkin, Jr., Sidney B. Kramer, and Ian and Betty Ballantine...
), which Jimmy-Joe interprets as the Mark of the Beast. Prompted by the Holy Spirit
Holy Spirit
Holy Spirit is a term introduced in English translations of the Hebrew Bible, but understood differently in the main Abrahamic religions.While the general concept of a "Spirit" that permeates the cosmos has been used in various religions Holy Spirit is a term introduced in English translations of...
, Jimmy-Joe takes a survival knife that appeared as an extra present as a gift. He tells the children that "Anyone upon the roof tonight would see
Santa Claus
Santa Claus is a folklore figure in various cultures who distributes gifts to children, normally on Christmas Eve. Each name is a variation of Saint Nicholas, but refers to Santa Claus...
and his reindeer." When one comes up the flights seeking him, Billy-Bob sacrifices her on the altar holding up the antenna with the survival knife.
"Remembering Siri"
"Remembering Siri" is a science-fiction short story; it is the first work Simmons wrote down (the original of Death of the Centaur presumably is the absolute first story ever told of the Cantos) in his Hyperion CantosHyperion Cantos
The Hyperion Cantos is a series of science fiction novels by Dan Simmons. Set in the far future, and focusing more on plot and story development than technical detail, it falls into the soft science fiction category...
fictional universe
Fictional universe
A fictional universe is a self-consistent fictional setting with elements that differ from the real world. It may also be called an imagined, constructed or fictional realm ....
, published in Asimov's SF Magazine in December 1983. Simmons used it as the seed for Hyperion (in which it appears nearly verbatim) and The Fall of Hyperion
The Fall of Hyperion
The Fall of Hyperion is the second science fiction novel by Dan Simmons in his Hyperion Cantos fictional universe. The novel was written in 1990, and won both the British Science Fiction and a Locus Awards in 1991...
. Simmons's inspiration was the proposition, "What if Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy written early in the career of playwright William Shakespeare about two young star-crossed lovers whose deaths ultimately unite their feuding families. It was among Shakespeare's most popular archetypal stories of young, teenage lovers.Romeo and Juliet belongs to a...
had lived?" (pg 100) For a plot summary, see "The Consul's Tale".
"Metastasis"
"MetastasisMetastasis
Metastasis, or metastatic disease , is the spread of a disease from one organ or part to another non-adjacent organ or part. It was previously thought that only malignant tumor cells and infections have the capacity to metastasize; however, this is being reconsidered due to new research...
" is a horror short story published in Dark Harvest's 1980 "Night Visions 5".
It deals with Louis Steig, whose mother is dying of cancer
Cancer
Cancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...
. He rushes to her side, but his car crashes on some black ice
Black ice
Black ice, sometimes called glare ice or clear ice, refers to a thin coating of glazed ice on a surface.While not truly black, it is virtually transparent, allowing black asphalt/macadam roadways to be seen through it, hence the term "black ice"...
. He suffers some damage to his vision and brain. While visiting his mother, he discovers a creature no one else can see, which he calls "cancer vampires", infesting his mother with "tumor-slugs". At her funeral, many of these vampires visit to feed on the now corpulent and grown slugs infesting her body. Eventually after both his sister and his fiancee contract cancer, Louis discovers that he can kill cancer vampires by taking radioactive isotopes into his body; these isotopes act as a beacon to the slugs, who are poisoned when they flock to it. In turn, these slugs poison the vampires who eat them when the vampires themselves flock to Louis.
"The Offering"
"The Offering" is a teleplayTeleplay
A teleplay is a television play, a comedy or drama written or adapted for television. The term surfaced during the 1950s with wide usage to distinguish a television plays from stage plays for the theater and screenplays written for films...
adaptation of "Metastasis", which appeared on the TV show Monsters in 1990. It is largely faithful to "Metastasis", simplifying some things and making the title less ominous.
E-Ticket to 'Namland
"E-Ticket to 'Namland" was first published in OMNI Magazine in November 1987. It concerns a Vietnam warVietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
veteran who returns to Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
and after visiting a theme park recreating the war, goes berserk and escapes into the jungle with his grandchildren, killing his pursuers with a weapon he stole from a South Vietnamese who had returned to take revenge of the Korean government for betraying all that he and his comrades had fought for.
"Iverson's Pits"
"Iverson's Pits" is another horror short story, published in 1988 in "Night Visions 5" by Dark Harvest.Plot summary
It recounts the fate of a young Boy ScoutBoy Scout
A Scout is a boy or a girl, usually 11 to 18 years of age, participating in the worldwide Scouting movement. Because of the large age and development span, many Scouting associations have split this age group into a junior and a senior section...
during the fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg
Battle of Gettysburg
The Battle of Gettysburg , was fought July 1–3, 1863, in and around the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The battle with the largest number of casualties in the American Civil War, it is often described as the war's turning point. Union Maj. Gen. George Gordon Meade's Army of the Potomac...
. There he is randomly assigned to assist a veteran, one Captain Montgomery from North Carolina
North Carolina
North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...
. The captain brandishes an antique pistol at the unnamed scout, and orders a wagon and team. Fortuitously, just such a team shows up, and the captain heads out to "Iverson's Pits", where he expects to reach a consummation to his long-held obsession with achieving a revenge on his former commander, Alfred Iverson. Apparently, Iverson's incompetence had led him to order his men into the teeth of a Union
Union (American Civil War)
During the American Civil War, the Union was a name used to refer to the federal government of the United States, which was supported by the twenty free states and five border slave states. It was opposed by 11 southern slave states that had declared a secession to join together to form the...
trap while he had lunch. To cover his own failing, Iverson claimed to one and all that his men were cowards and had tried to surrender.
The two hide in some weeds and ambush a young man who looks much like Iverson did. The boy stops the Captain from killing him, as the traveler is far too young. They cordially greet the traveler, whose name is Sheads, and visit his house. Jessup Sheads toasts the captain's regiment, and then Iverson himself with some of the local wine. The Captain refuses the second toast, cursing Iverson. Sheads reveals himself to be Iverson's nephew. Iverson comes down, and the nephew kills Montgomery when he draws a revolver on Iverson. About to bury the Captain, Iverson orders Sheads to kill the scout as well, to silence all witnesses, when the very earth begins moving and opening up. With its teeth, it seizes and devours Sheads. Iverson attempts to escape on his horse and kill the Scout, but he hurls a lantern at Iverson, distracting him. The pits take Iverson and his horse, and the Scout eventually becomes a historian specializing in Gettysburg.
"Shave and a Haircut, Two Bites"
"Shave and a Haircut is a horror short story. It was published in Masques III (edited by J. N. Williamson) in 1989.Two boys, Kevin and Tommy, have become convinced (mostly Kevin) that the two barber
Barber
A barber is someone whose occupation is to cut any type of hair, and to shave or trim the beards of men. The place of work of a barber is generally called a barbershop....
s who run the unpopular and obscure old barbershop in town are actually vampires. Despite failing most vampire tests (like disliking garlic
Garlic
Allium sativum, commonly known as garlic, is a species in the onion genus, Allium. Its close relatives include the onion, shallot, leek, chive, and rakkyo. Dating back over 6,000 years, garlic is native to central Asia, and has long been a staple in the Mediterranean region, as well as a frequent...
, running water
Running Water
Running Water may be:* Running Water, Tennessee, former name of Whiteside, Tennessee* Running Water, South Dakota, a community in Bon Homme County, South Dakota* "Running Water" from the 1983 album The Present...
, crosses
Crosses
Crosses may refer to:* Cross, the symbol* Crosses , the fourth album for the Belgian rock band Zornik* Crosses, Cher, a French municipality* Crosses, a musical project featuring members of Deftones and Far...
etc.) the two break into the barbershop's basement. They are captured and the truth revealed: neither barber is a vampire. Rather, they harvest blood for their resident vampire; vampires have changed over the centuries into gigantic things more akin to 1000-pound leech
Leech
Leeches are segmented worms that belong to the phylum Annelida and comprise the subclass Hirudinea. Like other oligochaetes such as earthworms, leeches share a clitellum and are hermaphrodites. Nevertheless, they differ from other oligochaetes in significant ways...
es than anything that could pass for a human. They bargained with the barber guild: if the guild would hide and feed them, then the barbers would be allowed to harvest a sort of purified blood which grants partial immortality to humans. The two are forcibly inducted into this grim fraternity.
"The Death of the Centaur"
"The Death of the Centaur" is a short story which is peculiar to Prayers to Broken Stones. It uses the frame storyFrame story
A frame story is a literary technique that sometimes serves as a companion piece to a story within a story, whereby an introductory or main narrative is presented, at least in part, for the purpose of setting the stage either for a more emphasized second narrative or for a set of shorter stories...
device: the main story is about the friendship between a literary-inclined teacher (based on Simmons himself) and a poor boy named Terry whom he teaches. The teacher begins telling his class every recess a portion of a fantasy story ("The Story"). This fantasy story is the tale of a centaur named Raul (compare Raul Endymion of Endymion), a neo-cat, and a sorcerer-ape who seek to reconnect their world to the "Web of Worlds" by re-connecting a farcaster and seek the humans' help in overthrowing the lizard-ish Wizards who oppress their world. This story is the earliest and first story set in what would become the Hyperion cantos
Hyperion Cantos
The Hyperion Cantos is a series of science fiction novels by Dan Simmons. Set in the far future, and focusing more on plot and story development than technical detail, it falls into the soft science fiction category...
universe, preceding even "Remembering Siri". Many elements and similarities survived into the later stories (from the name of the centaur Raul, to the concepts of farcasters and the WorldWeb, to the Shrike or the levitation barge or the Sea of Grass). Although the stories did evolve and differ from "The Death of the Centaur" over time there are a number of dissimilarities: in the Cantos, the centaurs of Garden have been exterminated in a genocide by the Hegemony, and the world The Story is set on is not cut off from the farcaster network. There are shared elements with other stories in this volume: the neo-cat Gernisavien shows up as regular cat in "Eyes I Dare Not Meet in Dreams".
Plot summary
Mr. Kennan apparently entered a master's degreeMaster's degree
A master's is an academic degree granted to individuals who have undergone study demonstrating a mastery or high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice...
program in Missouri
Missouri
Missouri is a US state located in the Midwestern United States, bordered by Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. With a 2010 population of 5,988,927, Missouri is the 18th most populous state in the nation and the fifth most populous in the Midwest. It...
, but on completing it found himself too poor to move back to the Northeast, and so is forced to take a job there teaching for a year.
In The Story, Raul and Gernisavien have discovered in the "Man Ruins" a map to the location of the long-forgotten farcaster portal. Hunted by the Wizards, they travel to the city of Carnval. In that city's ancient archives, they discover the key to re-activate the portal. Once activated, they can draw on the expertise of Dobby, the sorcerer-ape. The Wizards trap them in Carnval, and they can only afford to escape aboard the Sky Galleon because Raul risks his life in the Death Game fighting the "genetically-engineered" relic of the Wizard Wars, the fearsome and unbeatable Shrike. Raul survives the requisite three minutes, and wins. After they leave the Sky Galleon, all but Raul are captured by the Wizards and taken to their fortress in the cold mountain fastnesses. There Gernisavien is about to be dissected by a Wizard to get the key which she had swallowed. Kennan plans the grand finale to coincide with the end of the school year; Raul will sacrifice himself in glorious combat with the Wizards while his friends frantically reactivate the farcaster. They will succeed, and return with an army of Humans, freeing their world. But Kennan unexpectedly lands an excellent position in the East at a college, but the exigencies of the situation are such that he must cut short the school year and leave almost immediately. He would be unable to finish The Story. Terry, when Mr. Kennan tells him that he is leaving, rejects him; the details of their discussion are not given. Kennan never sees him again.
In the last days, Terry lets it be known that he knows the ending to The Story. But the tale he tells during the final recess is different from the one Kennan outlined in his letter: Raul successfully breaks into the Wizard fortress, but half-frozen and overwhelmed by their technology, cannot overcome them. He is forced to escape aboard one of their flying craft. Dobby manages to wrench one arm free, but no more, while Gernisavien is securely fastened. They know their only course of action with Raul's defeat is to have Dobby smash some chemicals together. The resulting explosion levels the mountain. Raul is safely away when it happens, but he knows that the explosion means that the quest is dead, for his friends perished with the key and knowledge necessary to reactivate the farcaster.
"Two Minutes Forty-five Seconds"
"Two Minutes Forty-five Seconds" is a very short story in "high-tech horror" vein. It was published in OMNI Magazine in April 1988.It concerns an engineer of explosives who, through remorse over bowing to his co-workers' blithe dismissal of technical glitches and thereby contributing to a thinly-fictionalized Challenger Incident, places explosives on the plane carrying himself and the culpable co-workers, thus killing them and committing suicide. The title is a reference to how long it would take the plane to fall to the ocean far below and to how much time's worth of oxygen
Oxygen
Oxygen is the element with atomic number 8 and represented by the symbol O. Its name derives from the Greek roots ὀξύς and -γενής , because at the time of naming, it was mistakenly thought that all acids required oxygen in their composition...
was expended of the breath-packs found in the wreckage of the Challenger.
"Carrion Comfort"
"Carrion Comfort" is a novellaNovella
A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative usually longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000...
serialized in OMNI Magazine between September and October 1983. It was later expanded into the novel Carrion Comfort
Carrion Comfort
Carrion Comfort is a science fiction/horror novel by American writer Dan Simmons, published in 1989 in hard cover by Dark Harvest and in 1990 in paperback by Warner Books.-Plot Summary:...
.