Dan Simmons, the science fiction, horror, and crime writer best known for his Hyperion Cantos series of novels, has died at 77, the Guardian reports.

Simmons, a native of Peoria, Illinois, worked as a grade school teacher before making his literary debut in 1985 with the horror novel Song of Kali. Four years later, he published Hyperion, a Canterbury Tales–inspired science-fiction novel; the book won the Hugo and Locus awards. It was the first installment in the Hyperion Cantos series, which continued with The Fall of Hyperion, Endymion, and The Rise of Endymion.

His other works include Series of Horror, which launched in 1991 with Summer of Night; the Joe Kurtz series, which kicked off with the 2001 novel Hardcase; and a duology of science fiction novels, Ilium and Olympos. His most recent novel, The Fifth Heart, was published in 2015.

Simmons’ admirers paid tribute to him on social media. On the social platform X, Stephen King posted, “Very sad news about Dan Simmons. My whole family read CARRION COMFORT. I think [that] was the only novel all 5 of us read.”

And author Adrian McKinty wrote, “I met Dan Simmons a couple of times in Denver. He was a man who LOVED writing and reading. He couldn’t get enough of history, science, literature, music, film. He was bubbling [with] ideas. His books defied genre norms & were always a crazy experiment.…RIP mate.”

Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.