Is there a contemporary writer more at home in a multitude of genres — not to mention geographical locales and historical eras — than Dan Simmons? Since the appearance of his first novel, “Song of Kali,” in 1985, Simmons has written award-winning horror (“Carrion Comfort”) and first-rate science fiction (“The Hyperion Cantos”), along with such unclassifiable works as “Phases of Gravity” and “The Hollow Man,” with its alternating echoes of Dante and T.S.