The Hollow Man - Softcover

Dan Simmons

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0747238146 ISBN 13: 9780747238140

Publisher: Headline Book Publishing, 1993

Synopsis

Jeremy Bremen has a secret. All his life he's been cursed with the ability to read minds. He knows the secret thoughts, fears, and desires of others as if they were his own. For years, his wife, Gail, has served as a shield between Jeremy and the burden of this terrible knowledge. But Gail is dying, her mind ebbing slowly away, leaving him vulnerable to the chaotic flood of thought that threatens to sweep away his sanity. Now Jeremy is on the run—from his mind, from his past, from himself—hoping to find peace in isolation. Instead he witnesses an act of brutality that propels him on a treacherous trek across a dark and dangerous America. From a fantasy theme park to the lair of a killer to a sterile hospital room in St. Louis, he follows a voice that is calling him to witness the stunning mystery at the heart of mortality.

About this title

About the Author

DAN SIMMONS is a recipient of numerous major international awards, including the Hugo Award, World Fantasy Award, Bram Stoker Award, and the Shirley Jackson Award. He is widely considered to be one of the premier multiple-genre fiction writers in the world. His most recent novels include the New York Times bestsellers The Terror and Drood, as well as Black Hills. He lives along the Front Range in Colorado and has never grown tired of the views.

From Kirkus Reviews

Psychic fantasy science novel with a touch of horror, just enough to allow Simmons (Children of the Night, p. 564; Summer of Night, etc.) to keep his foot in that field as well. A promising device goes amiss into routine thuggishness and ends in ``probability reality.'' Gail and Jeremy Bremen are telepaths who met and married ten years ago. Together, they find relief from the psychobabble of voices around them, the minds of people they meet and a larger psychobabble grounded in the whole ``wave'' of human intelligence. When Gail dies of an inoperable tumor behind her eye, Jeremy freaks out, burns down their house, abandons his professorship, and goes on the road. In Florida, he witnesses a mob murder, is kidnapped by the mob, later escapes. Taken up by Miz Morgan, a rancher, he finds himself facing razorblade dentures over his important parts and escapes from her too. In Las Vegas, his mind-reading stands him well at the poker table; he's a huge winner, but the mob is back. After saving his life still again, he winds up in the hospital, enters the closed- off mind of a retarded blind boy, and finds Gail alive in a probable reality that the boy has put together from particles of Jeremy's mind. Throughout, in flashback, we are treated to far-out wave-particle theory about a unified wave of human consciousness that allows for transfer of mind or being. From this description, you might expect a lyrical novel featuring great psychic leaps of imagination. Simmons leaps, but where he lands in a parallel probability is far less vividly experienced than possibilities allow. The nostalgic opening chapter of Summer of Night is better than this whole novel. Nearly everyone whose mind gets read is sour and meanspirited. Big brainy equations, small rewards. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Headline Book Publishing
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0747238146
• ISBN 13: 9780747238140
• Binding: Paperback