"FEW EQUALS FOR SHEER, LARGE-SCALE SENSE OF WONDER": FIRST EDITIONS OF THE AWARD-WINNING HYPERION SERIES, INSCRIBED BY DAN SIMMONS

SIMMONS, Dan. Hyperion. WITH: The Fall of Hyperion. WITH: Endymion. WITH: The Rise of Endymion. New York: Doubleday, (1989, 1990) and Bantam, (1996, 1997). Four volumes. Octavo, original half navy, brown, blue and grey cloth, original dust jackets. $5800.

First editions of the Hugo Award-winning tetralogy, a modern science fiction classic, all four title pages signed by the author and three additionally inscribed.

Hyperion, awarded the prestigious 1990 Hugo Award, is the first in Simmons' four-volume series known as the Hyperion Cantos, a work that invokes literary giants such as Keats, Chaucer, Milton and Yeats to tell the story of pilgrims on a dangerous journey across worlds and time. "For vastness of scope, clarity of detail and seriousness of purpose, Simmons' epic narrative is on a par with Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, Frank Herbert's Dune books, Gene Wolfe's multipart Book of the New Sun and Brian Aldiss' Helliconia trilogy… taken together, these four volumes represent one of the finest achievements of modern science fiction, a convincing demonstration of how liberating, in the hands of a masterly practitioner, genre conventions can be" (New York Times). On publication of Hyperion, Simmons became "one of the half-dozen central figures of the 1980s" (Clute & Nichols, 1111). His tetralogy has "few equals for sheer, large-scale sense of wonder" (Barron, Anatomy of Wonder II:1033). Books I and II inscribed to Pat; book III signed only; book IV inscribed "For Michael—And here ends the tale forever… Dan Simmons 10/11/97," with an accompanying sketch in ink.

Very faint toning to dust jacket flaps of second book, corners of third book slightly bumped; otherwise a fine, bright signed set.