Ilium

I often enjoyed patting myself on the back for catching Nabokov references. The story was ambitious for a big adventure romp. Simmons mostly pulled it off -- ending was a little bumpy. But, I liked it. Recommended.

Author Dan Simmons takes the reader on an interest-holding journey through time and solar system. Really no slow spots in this 700 plus page volume. Good range of original SCFI concepts. My only complaint is that the end comes to a halt rather abruptly, obviously setting up for a sequel.

Having read the Hyperion saga I got Ilium with expectations of the highest order. The book did not disappoint me. The story is gripping and the writting have the Simmons mix of epic drama, high-end Sci-Fi and fantasy.

Best book I've read in a long while...

action-filled read, many "unapproachable" charactersf for me - more than I expect from Simmons. I'll read anything he writes, though :) I wish the ending was a little more explanatory - maybe I just missed the point. Left hanging for the sequel, big time.

I really enjoyed this book, but I would not recommend it to anyone. The ending is a cliffhanger, and if you enjoy this book you will feel compelled to read the sequel, Olympos. The sequel is a complete disappointment -- read the reviews and see what people say about it. Although reading Illium was fun (although it dragged in the beginning), the overall experience of the two books was negative. I wish I'd spent my time and money on something else.

A clever conceit that gets old. It feels like Simmons had a good idea and then didn't know where to take it. By about page 600, when the gratuitous 9/11 references started, I lost interest. The rest of it from there just got more and more ridiculous and incoherent (people only live to 100 because they get eaten by Caliban from The Tempest??), and the final 50 pages were a clear setup for a mediocre sequel. All in all, a disappointing effort and nowhere in the same league as his earlier masterpieces. I may not be reading Simmons again for a while.

This is a fabulously realized page-turner of a book that is reminicent of Roger Zelazny's less known works involving post-human Hindu pantheons in outer space. I recommend it if you want something gripping, thoroughly escapist and hard to put down. The glaring problem is the pitfall of failing to "write what you know," and Simmons certainly doesn't know or understand women. His main narrator is downright misogynistic in his ignorance of women's interiority (apparently they have none). but lest you think it is the character and not Simmons himself, the rest of the women characters, with one exception, (a wandering Jew on a mission) are equally vacuous and inscrutable. Did you know prostitutes can't be lesbians, because they obviously enjoy sleeping with men so much? Simmons knows this.

This book came to me highly recommended and, as a big fan of Homer, I was excited to read it. The experience, however, left a lot to be desired. Certainly Simmons has set himself an ambitious task, by trying to incorporate the works of Homer, Shakespeare and Proust into what seems, initally, an interesting sci-fi plot. While I don't know much about Proust, I consider myself well versed in Shakespeare and I have a PhD in Classics, so I know my Homer pretty well. Simmons brings these authors to life in different ways, and Homer's "Iliad" provides the main basis, but there are many problematic assumptions underlying what he lays out as a basic plot. In essence, the Trojan War is being refought on Mars, and Simmons has created a group of people (scholics) who are Homeric scholars brought back to study the war as it's unfolding and its relation to Homer's account. While Simmons doesn't fall into the common trap of trying to explain away the role of the gods in Homer (far from it, in fact), he does have a naive view of the poem and its relation to other early Greek epics (mostly lost now save for fragments and later summaries). So, while he claims to be following the "Iliad," he is, in fact, also reliant upon other, later myths -- some of which were meant specifically to contradict Homer's account. In short, the treatment of Homer is clumsy and ill-informed. This is not to suggest, however, that Simmons did no homework, for he certainly did. Parts of his treatment are clever, but one thing that bothers me is that his main scholic character, a fictional Greek professor from the late 20th century, often seems to be suggesting interpretations of Homer as if they were his own, whereas they belong to REAL 19th and 20th century scholars. A minor annoyance is that this scholar seems to think of the lines of the "Iliad" in English, rather than in Greek. While I understand the expediencies of such a concept for an author and audience who don't know Greek, it is somewhat disingenuous, especially as Simmons at times quotes copyrighted translations of Homer without always attributing (though he does have a note in his preface about these translations). While much of this could be seen as academic quibbling, none of it changes the fact that the book is very dull and bloated. One indication of how dull I found it is that I had no desire to read the sequel, even though this book doesn't draw to any full conclusion. I got to the end and found that I just didn't care, and I wasn't even professionally curious enough to waste any more time on a second book of this nature.

This novel was a frustrating journey through classical greek literature with three seemingly unrelated plot lines finally converging into an unbelievable climax that left all three plot lines unresolved. Numerous characters, most one-dimensional, appear from no where and disappear again without explanation or resolution. A frustrating read. The author's Hyperion series, while complex, at least was understandable - this novel is just the literary equivalent of showing off.

I just finished Olympos, the second of the Illium saga. This review is for both books, because in truth, much like the Hyperion Cantos, this is one book divided into two. Dan Simmons imagination is quite simply staggering. How does a science fiction story hinge on Homer's Illiad, Shakespear's The Tempest, and of course the poetry of John Keats and still manage to a rip-roaring, fill tilt action piece with more carnage than most war novels? I have no idea. I'm just immensely glad that Mr. Simmons and his imagination exist to give us these wonderful stories.
Please don't make the mistake of getting a sample of this book and basing your desire to read it or not to read it on that. I did that and put off reading the book for a couple of years because the sample seemed uninteresting.
I'm amazed that this book is not held up as one of the great works of science fiction and fantasy. It belongs with the work of George R.R. Martin (is he ever going to finish Game of Thrones?), Tolkien, Heinlein, Clark and all the greats.
I've read some of the 3 or 2 star reviews of this book and I had to laugh. They complain about the lame ending of book one. Fear not dear reader, all will become clear in book 2.

I started off not really wanting to like this book. Years ago I liked Hyperion, and on the strength of that read Phases of Gravity, which I found irritatingly disappointing (setting up some interesting questions then sliding into cliché). Illium initially bugged me, with Simmons seeming to me all too keen to preen himself with the display of classical references: “Look at me. *My* characters discuss Proust, and Shakespeare’s sonnets.” It seemed at least as important to him to be known to be aware of these texts as to actually engage with them. It reminded me of Michael J. Straczynski (I tried, man, I tried – pushed my way through two full seasons of wooden acting and appalling dialogue in Babylon Five – with the promise of a series arc, and the vague hope of some deepening of character, but could not bring myself to watch any more after some last straw of stupidity early in series 3), who revealed way too much about his lack of self-awareness in his self-important DVD extra monologues, and, say, in Midnight Nation, wanting us to be bowled over that he can reference Milton, rather than by the inspired echoes/insights reflected in the actual writing. Even Gaiman can sometimes slip into this. It doesn’t have to be that way. There are lots of very well-read writers out there who have no need to seek validation by name-dropping, even though sometimes they may even drop them. Somehow there’s a clear tonal distinction: David Lodge, for example, regularly mentions classics, but there’s no sense of this being a pose, and far more that he’s more genuinely interested in conveying something meaningful and relevant from the text. It parallels my experience as a player: there are those who love music and share it in performance, and those who love the adulation of performance, and music is primarily a means to that end.

Anyway… given that I was already a bit biased against him, this aspect of particularly the opening third of the book was really putting me off. As was that supremely irritating practise of setting up grand, mythic contexts and register for someone, perhaps a god, to ironically break the mood to say, “Oh s*it” instead of, “This fills we with dismay,” or whatever. Sure, that was genuinely effective a few times perhaps when cyberpunk was new, but now it’s so hackneyed if attempted as humour. And Simmons also unashamedly used some crowd-pleasing tropes: have three separate, vaguely linked, narratives – keep jumping between them leaving each in a cliff-hanger; heavens above, what were the chances, that new female character happens to be a moderately voyeuristically described hottie (although I suppose he can be excused for Helen and Aphrodite); countdowns.

So I really have to give grudging praise that despite all this there was enough positive stuff, and then some really positive stuff, to get me past this and enjoying the book. Dammit, there are some pretty cool ideas in here, and novel ways of combining them. Occasionally Simmons even reminded me of Banks in the way he played with scale and action, and for me that’s about as high praise as I can give. At that point about half-way through the story where
[Spoiler]
Hockenberry – a suitably desperate character – takes that almost unimaginable decision to roll the dice against the gods – the story really kicks in and powers along. Hats off to Simmons for really capturing the idea (cf. Martin’s Tuf Voyaging) that whether it’s through technology or divine birth, if you’ve got enough power you really are a god. Simmons deliciously conveyed that if you link enough power even to vanity and pettiness, it becomes awesome: the early scene where Hockenberry has to interact with as minor a deity as an unnamed muse really captures genuine terrified veneration. That’s also Hockenberry’s personal epiphany: with the weapons he’s given to serve a god’s will, he can actually become a player in the pantheon himself – albeit a skin-of-the-teeth, madly improvising one. Moreover Simmons’ context of larger than life immortals and immortalised heroes is actually pretty impressive. Anyone one could come up with an idea to mix these characters into their story (and often do), but not so many could pull it off as well. At some point he lifts off from his attention-seeking trainspotting to take us along with some seriously badass and terrifying deities. The chaotic element is really well handled: Hockenberry’s wild gambit sets off all sorts of things – and this fits with the equally impetuous Greek gods, who themselves are up for ten different types of crazy (I enjoyed brushing up on some of this stuff with https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-o4qTmEad4).

An odd deliberate theme that informs much of the story is that of rediscovering masculinity. Simmons openly acknowledges his time machine influence, but Odysseus’ call to Simmons’ Eloi is largely for the men. Women aren’t called to take up arms so much as to inspire and be prized by their heroes (because they are, of course, hugely sexy). Both Hockenberry and especially Daemon are transformed through combat – they discover themselves, become more human – while Ada and Hannah wait pining to be impregnated and/or rescued. But the role of women is complicated: Hockenberry is utterly overpowered and humiliated by the stone-cold group of Trojan women, who show extraordinary ruthlessness in what they are prepared to do to manipulate their men, and they are ahead of the game in conceiving of a war against the gods.

Oh, and I haven’t even particularly mentioned the other major characters, R2 and C3PO. Hang on. Anyway, you know who I mean, and it’s been a couple of weeks since I finished it, and new names make about as much of an impression on my stupid brain as writing in sand. Cool that Simmons gave them unhuman bodies and a context where humans were incidental, but their personalities were too anthropomorphic for me, particularly in their obsessions with, coincidentally (ahem), the sorts of things of interest to an early 21st C. writer. Once they got away from name-dropping they were likeable enough and even heroic, but felt like humans with accessories more than a different lifeform. I think Simmons even shows awareness of this, having them speculate that their human-ness may have something to do with their original designers. I suppose that’s the problem with having aliens but writing for a human audience: how different can you make them while maintaining interest? At least the LGMs were suitably weird and unexplained.

So, sure, despite some quibbles, this was an undeniably strong book – particularly in the crazy ride, but also the potent characters and intriguing context.

I started off not really wanting to like this book. Years ago I liked Hyperion, and on the strength of that read Phases of Gravity, which I found irritatingly disappointing (setting up some interesting questions then sliding into cliché). Illium initially bugged me, with Simmons seeming to me all too keen to preen himself with the display of classical references: “Look at me. *My* characters discuss Proust, and Shakespeare’s sonnets.” It seemed at least as important to him to be known to be aware of these texts as to actually engage with them. It reminded me of Michael J. Straczynski (I tried, man, I tried – pushed my way through two full seasons of wooden acting and appalling dialogue in Babylon Five – with the promise of a series arc, and the vague hope of some deepening of character, but could not bring myself to watch any more after some last straw of stupidity early in series 3), who revealed way too much about his lack of self-awareness in his self-important DVD extra monologues, and, say, in Midnight Nation, wanting us to be bowled over that he can reference Milton, rather than by the inspired echoes/insights reflected in the actual writing. Even Gaiman can sometimes slip into this. It doesn’t have to be that way. There are lots of very well-read writers out there who have no need to seek validation by name-dropping, even though sometimes they may even drop them. Somehow there’s a clear tonal distinction: David Lodge, for example, regularly mentions classics, but there’s no sense of this being a pose, and far more that he’s more genuinely interested in conveying something meaningful and relevant from the text. It parallels my experience as a player: there are those who love music and share it in performance, and those who love the adulation of performance, and music is primarily a means to that end.

Anyway… given that I was already a bit biased against him, this aspect of particularly the opening third of the book was really putting me off. As was that supremely irritating practise of setting up grand, mythic contexts and register for someone, perhaps a god, to ironically break the mood to say, “Oh s*it” instead of, “This fills we with dismay,” or whatever. Sure, that was genuinely effective a few times perhaps when cyberpunk was new, but now it’s so hackneyed if attempted as humour. And Simmons also unashamedly used some crowd-pleasing tropes: have three separate, vaguely linked, narratives – keep jumping between them leaving each in a cliff-hanger; heavens above, what were the chances, that new female character happens to be a moderately voyeuristically described hottie (although I suppose he can be excused for Helen and Aphrodite); countdowns.

So I really have to give grudging praise that despite all this there was enough positive stuff, and then some really positive stuff, to get me past this and enjoying the book. Dammit, there are some pretty cool ideas in here, and novel ways of combining them. Occasionally Simmons even reminded me of Banks in the way he played with scale and action, and for me that’s about as high praise as I can give. At that point about half-way through the story where
[Spoiler]
Hockenberry – a suitably desperate character – takes that almost unimaginable decision to roll the dice against the gods – the story really kicks in and powers along. Hats off to Simmons for really capturing the idea (cf. Martin’s Tuf Voyaging) that whether it’s through technology or divine birth, if you’ve got enough power you really are a god. Simmons deliciously conveyed that if you link enough power even to vanity and pettiness, it becomes awesome: the early scene where Hockenberry has to interact with as minor a deity as an unnamed muse really captures genuine terrified veneration. That’s also Hockenberry’s personal epiphany: with the weapons he’s given to serve a god’s will, he can actually become a player in the pantheon himself – albeit a skin-of-the-teeth, madly improvising one. Moreover Simmons’ context of larger than life immortals and immortalised heroes is actually pretty impressive. Anyone one could come up with an idea to mix these characters into their story (and often do), but not so many could pull it off as well. At some point he lifts off from his attention-seeking trainspotting to take us along with some seriously badass and terrifying deities. The chaotic element is really well handled: Hockenberry’s wild gambit sets off all sorts of things – and this fits with the equally impetuous Greek gods, who themselves are up for ten different types of crazy (I enjoyed brushing up on some of this stuff with https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-o4qTmEad4).

An odd deliberate theme that informs much of the story is that of rediscovering masculinity. Simmons openly acknowledges his time machine influence, but Odysseus’ call to Simmons’ Eloi is largely for the men. Women aren’t called to take up arms so much as to inspire and be prized by their heroes (because they are, of course, hugely sexy). Both Hockenberry and especially Daemon are transformed through combat – they discover themselves, become more human – while Ada and Hannah wait pining to be impregnated and/or rescued. But the role of women is complicated: Hockenberry is utterly overpowered and humiliated by the stone-cold group of Trojan women, who show extraordinary ruthlessness in what they are prepared to do to manipulate their men, and they are ahead of the game in conceiving of a war against the gods.

Oh, and I haven’t even particularly mentioned the other major characters, R2 and C3PO. Hang on. Anyway, you know who I mean, and it’s been a couple of weeks since I finished it, and new names make about as much of an impression on my stupid brain as writing in sand. Cool that Simmons gave them unhuman bodies and a context where humans were incidental, but their personalities were too anthropomorphic for me, particularly in their obsessions with, coincidentally (ahem), the sorts of things of interest to an early 21st C. writer. Once they got away from name-dropping they were likeable enough and even heroic, but felt like humans with accessories more than a different lifeform. I think Simmons even shows awareness of this, having them speculate that their human-ness may have something to do with their original designers. I suppose that’s the problem with having aliens but writing for a human audience: how different can you make them while maintaining interest? At least the LGMs were suitably weird and unexplained.

So, sure, despite some quibbles, this was an undeniably strong book – particularly in the crazy ride, but also the potent characters and intriguing context.

You might expect a novel that recapitulates the Iliad of Homer and that prominently features debates between a pair of robots about the meaning of Shakespeare's sonnets, Proust's novels, life, love, and truth to be a snoozefest appealing mainly to literature and classics nerds. Instead, Dan Simmons' "Ilium" is exciting, fast-paced, occasionally goofy, and not at all stuffy.

The novel takes place 3,000 or so years in the future. The outer solar system, and particularly the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, are inhabited by sentient machines called moravecs (named after Hans Moravec, a contemporary roboticist and futurist at CMU). When the moravecs, who mostly keep to themselves, notice that Mars has been terraformed with impossible suddenness and that strange and dangerous energies appear to be emanating from the planet, they send an expedition to investigate.

Professor Thomas Hockenberry, an academic from Indiana who died in 2006, already knows what the moravecs will find; he has been resurrected by superbeings who make their home on the great Martian volcano Olympos Mons. Though they claim to be Greek gods like Zeus, Hera, and Athena, these beings' powers seem to be more technological than divine in nature. The primary entertainment of the "gods" is meddling in what appears to be the historical Trojan War of circa 1200 BC; Hockenberry's job is to monitor the war and note any deviations from Homer's account. When a god enmeshes him in a plot that will certainly get him killed, however, Hockenberry decides the only way to survive is to change the course of history.

Meanwhile, back on earth, there are no more than one million humans left. In the aftermath of environmental destruction, biological warfare, and the advancement of a handful of people to post-human status, the remaining humans live empty, ignorant, indolent lives exactly 100 years in length. When 99-year-old Harman decides he wants more, he leads a group of friends on a search for "the Wandering Jew", an old woman named Savi who may have access to the world's secrets.

The novel has a number of strengths. Simmons' vivid portrayals of the mythical and historical figures from Homer's Iliad bring the ancient epic to wonderful, vulgar, bloody, life. Simmons rarely goes overboard in displaying the extent of his historical, literary, and scientific background research, a welcome contrast to authors who think that excessive detail is a route to the reader's heart. Simmons' moravec protagonists Mahnmut and Orphu may be smarter and more intellectual than Hope and Crosby, but with their good hearts, adventurous spirits, and comradely banter about Shakespeare, Proust, human nature, and quantum physics, they may be one of the best couple-of-buddies-on-a-road-trip in fiction. Finally, Simmons keeps things moving; few 300-page novels go as fast as this 700-pager.

Although "Ilium" is the first in a pair of novels, it has a satisfying conclusion that doesn't feel like a cliffhanger. On the other hand, "Ilium" broaches many mysteries and sets up many conflicts that are only resolved in its sequel, "Olympos". Although "Olympos" is a significantly weaker book than "Ilium", the only reason not to read the two books in immediate succession is that you have a life or don't have a DVR -- reading 1,600-plus addictive pages of sci-fi is going to take a pretty good chunk out of your week, after all.

In theory, Ilium is one of the coolest, most original ideas for a book that I have ever heard of. When it was being recommended to me, a lot of people said "it's the Trojan War, but in the future." Well, that is and isn't true. The book is definitely not that simple in any way. The Trojan War is going on, and the book does take place in the future, but the context of the war is so convoluted and complicated, that it wasn't even fully explained in the 570 pages of Ilium (thankfully, there is always the sequel).

Ilium's narrative consists of three main story lines. Dr. Thomas Hockenberry is a scholic (expert on the Iliad), who is currently observing a "reenactment" of the Trojan War. His job is to report back to a Muse as to how accurately this version of the war lines up with Homer's version in The Iliad. Hockenberry's job is simple until Aphrodite recruits him to spy on and eventually kill Athena for unspecified reasons. Meanwhile, on Jupiter, a group of humanoid cyborgs known as Moravecs are being sent on a mission to Mars, due to a large increase in quantum activity on the planet that is putting the whole solar system at risk. We mainly follow Mahnmut and Orphu, who are experts on Shakespeare and Proust, respectively, as their mission to Mars goes horribly wrong and are left to improvise their survival in a hostile world. Finally, we follow a group of "old-style" humans on their quest to find a spaceship in order to get to the rings orbiting Earth, which is supposedly where the post-humans ran off to 1400 years ago. All these stories, as unrelated as they may seem, eventually all come together to form the main crux of the novel, which really cannot be described in a somewhat brief the store review.

This long, detailed novel is full of amazing moments, but also full of many moments where I felt almost completely clueless as to what was going on. Simmons makes a valiant effort to describe completely all the alien technology involved in the story, but his descriptions sometimes fall flat, leaving the reader with a fuzzy idea of what is going on, and how exactly it is happening. But for each of those moments, there is at least one moment of pure sci-fi brilliance, in which foreign objects, people, and entire worlds are laid out before the reader in all their beauty or ugliness.

Maybe most importantly about the novel is Simmons' obvious love and respect for the works of Homer, Shakespeare, and Proust. When first hearing about the novel, I kind of grimaced in fear that some low-ability sci-fi writer was about to take what is more than a simple classic, and turn it into low-brow, cheap science fiction. That is the total opposite of what Dan Simmons accomplished with this book. His attention to detail about The Iliad is simply amazing, even to the point where, much like Homer, Simmons makes sure to introduce the reader to just about every character involved in the battle, this time in more than one context (the character's backstory plus what happens to them in The Iliad). There are some parts of The Iliad that are basically transcribed, but once events start occurring that make this Trojan War start to differ from the one written of in The Iliad, Simmons stays completely true to the essence of each and every character from The Iliad, including the gods, which, thankfully, get a lot of time in the limelight.

The best thing about the novel was the lack of knowledge about the big picture of things in the world Simmons has created. The first 200 pages of the book, I had basically no idea what was going on or what I was in for, but once the dominoes start to fall, Simmons is at his best and never loosens his grip on the reader.

Let's hope Olympos at least matches this.

Crazy. Joyous.

Those are the first two words which came to mind, upon finishing Dam Simmons' Ilium a couple of weeks back. I read most of the book in a straight shot, on my recent flight from San Francisco to Tokyo/Narita a couple of weeks ago....I couldn't put it down.

To set the scene...well, it's the future, and something has happened to mankind. Over the many years, mankind mastered many technologies, sending sentient robots out to Jupiter and the asteroids, developing quantum teleportations, developing the Internet into a sentient being, and surrounding the Earth with settlements in orbit. Then, those technologically and otherwise evolved beings disappeared from Earth, leaving behind less than one million "survivors", who are in the dark as to the true state of affairs, and who are technologically backwards. Some of those advanced beings re-appear on Mars, terraforming the planet rapidly, bringing into existence the people and events of Homer's the Iliad, and monitoring the events as they unfold through the use of long-dead, re-animated historians and experts on Homer's epic tale.

Why? Why has all this happened? Why are people being pushed through the Iliad as a kind of science experiment? Why are the people on Earth so caged, unknowingly, by their own ignorance? These are the questions that drive the main characters of Ilium, into rebellion against their fates and against the Fates, a drive for answers and for freedom.

Dan Simmons is one of our current generation's best writers, as he's demonstrated in adventurous and inventive works such as Hyperion. He has a love for literature, and here not only does Homer's Iliad feature into the work, but also The Tempest, Shakespeare's sonnets, and the work of Proust. His characters are flawed, believable, and they grow...and grow on you. He uses several science fiction motifs as weapons, enabling him to speed along the story without making the technology necessarily the focus.

Simmons' work often features concepts that are evolved from the work of H.P. Lovecraft, in a sense. There are Cthulhu-like beings which occupy this story: amoral by our standards, because these beings have a morality which doesn't line up or intersect with our own; vast; impenetrable; and seemingly beyond our ability to damage. In the Hyperion novels, these roles were fulfilled by the UIs. Here, these roles are fulfilled by...well, I won't spoil it for you, but clearly Zeus is one of those cast of characters, but not the only one.

The tale does not end with the end of this book. We will have to await the release of Olympos to see the end of the struggle here. In the meantime, while I patiently wait, I can certainly recommend this work. At 731 pages in paperback, it'll keep you busy for a while!

"Surrender now," says Achilles, " and we'll spare your goddesses's lives so they can be our slaves and courtesans."

- Dan Simmons' Ilium, chapter 63.

Some time far in the future, science has taken all number of strange turns. Sentient robots study Shakespeare and Proust, the Iliad is reenacted at the foot of Olympus Mons on Mars observed by scholics revived from twenty-first-century Earth, and back on Earth humans live with no memory of their own history. These three story lines are united as human history is investigated and revealed. Literary illusions run rampant from Shakespeare (the sonnets and The Tempest) the Iliad with a bit of the Greek tragedy, Odyssey, Aeneid, and Proust. It's a sci-fi book for geeks, but not, I would say, for the avidly critical geeks--because what Simmons has to say about characters in The Tempest is less than fulfilling.

I enjoyed Ilium and, I'll admit, as a Shakespeare student it's nicely narcissistic to have one's geeky side catered to within an already geeky text. The premise of the book is a tried and true one: an epic text with a number of literary predecessors and influences. The writing style reeks of pulp fiction (not necessarily a bad thing, but tiring to read): the plots run concurrently and every chapter ends at a non-quite-tasteful cliffhanger, making the book compelling and making the 730 pages feel shorter than they are. All in all, the books achieves what it wants to achieve--a geeky, introspective, literary adventure into science-fiction that's still compelling and readable. On that level I really enjoyed it. The cliffhangers quickly become annoying, but I will admit that the author attempted to use them tastefully. The book is an escape, keeps the reader interested, and revels in its literary allusions.

Despite this, Ilium is by no means perfect. Simmons isn't content to merely base his story on preexisting plots or characters--he also feels the need to use his text to create commentary on and interpret those precursors. That's a wonderful goal but there are many holes in his analysis. It's easy to get wrapped up in the text and to take his analysis as fact instead of fiction, but that's a dangerous temptation. Much of the latter half of the book bases itself in the characters of The Tempest, but Simmons's interpretation of the characters is incredibly limited. He may have his reasons (as The Tempest continues to have a role in the book's sequel), but as the book stands the analysis of Shakespeare in general and The Tempest in particular verge on the edge of limited, underdeveloped, unexamined, and even insulting. I can't speak for the other literary allusions because I am less familiar with those texts. Nonetheless, in a book that relies so heavily on literary allusion, the failed commentary is a major drawback.

I'd still recommend the book, and it is enjoyable at times despite the literary commentary. However, the book may still prove interesting to those that study the original sources--just remember to take Simmons's words with a grain of salt. All in all, the book premise is interesting, the text reads quickly, and there's more than enough going on to keep the reader interested.

You'll likely spend most of "Ilium" wondering how (or if) the individual stories that comprise it will come together. At least, that describes what happened to me as I was reading it.

There are at least three distinct storylines in "Ilium" as it begins. One takes place on Earth, another on Mars, and still another begins on Jupiter. Each story arc includes some compelling characters, from "old-style" humans to intelligent robots obsessed with human literature to Ancient Greek heroes and even gods, there's a great deal of different personalities here to work with, and how they come to interact is at least one of the enthralling things about the book as a whole. Simmons spends a long time in establishing the characters and their stories, but it really pays off in the last hundred or so pages, when we see all the story threads start to get tied together into a relatively unified whole.

Simmons has always had a talent for story and for character, no matter which genre he's chosing to work in, and it's as evident in "Ilium" as in any of his other books. The characters are interesting and have some depth to them, and the story hints at a great deal of history behind the story, without spending a lot of time on establishing it. The world Simmons creates for us in this book is alien in ways but has recognizable elements in it, as befits a story which takes places well over a thousand years from our time, but hearkens back to our history (and present) heavily. Along with heavy literary sources, you'll find in these pages oblique references to the tragedy on September 11 and the Holocaust, among many other "current" events. Simmons' world is one which explores imaginative places and ideas, but it is also one grounded in reality.

The literary nods in "Ilium" are truly clever. In these pages we find not only the obvious source of Homer's "Iliad," but also strong references to Shakespeare's sonnets, "The Tempest," and some of the works of Marcel Proust. Simmons use of these works in combination flowed well, and I found a lot of enjoyment in how he incorporated some of these seemingly disparate ideas. Also, more than once, I found myself wanting to go back and read (or, in many cases, re-read) some of the works he makes reference to. It is by no means a requirement to have read the works Simmons gives his nod to, but I believe that it does add to the enjoyment of the book as a whole.

Perhaps my only complaint of "Ilium" is that it takes a while to get going, and Simmons risks losing the audience before really grabbing their attention. However, that is more than made up for as the book races towards its compelling end. I started reading it slowly, but I finished it at a breathless, breakneck pace, and as I turned the final page (with one of the finest cliffhanger hooks ever, to rival the end of King's "Waste Lands"), I found myself hungry for the second volume in the series, "Olympos."

Put simply: highly recommended!

Simmons' latest novel is a complex, fascinating novel that focuses on a trio of interrelated stories. The first and most important concerns the Trojan war. The catch here is that there are civilian observers all from the 20th and 21st century. They're to report what happens word for word during the most important conflicts and compare it to what Homer wrote. If they're not careful, these resurrected scholics will be torn apart by their masters. Who are their masters you ask? Why the Greek Gods with a capital G. They're alive and quite real and not just part of Greek culture's imagination.
In other interesting developments the entire population of normal humans with the exception of a few selected individuals, have vanished. They can't read or write but live a lazy life with no ambitions. They're served by the Voynix and various mechanical servers. Life is perfect unless you venture too far out from the estates where you can be picked off by a T-Rex or other recreated life form. Where did all of humanity go? Are they occupying the orbiting rings with the posthumans? Why did they leave?
In the third part of the story cyborgs bred for various tasks by long vanished humanity have discovered wormholes opening all over Mars. Mars isn't the red planet anymore. It's been terraformed and has life on it. It's not human life. An expedition is sent out to discover who is responsible and to put a stop to them wormholes before they corrupt the space time continumm.
All three distinct separate stories that share a central theme. All of them tied into the fate of Illum (or Troy)during the Trojan war.
Simmons manages to create a rich tapestry that actually cites Proust, Shakesphere, Homer and Virgil. He also manages to do so without becoming pretentious or preachy and weaves these literary references into a science fiction tale that promises to be as epic as his classic Hyperion novels. I say promises because this is the first book in a series of novels. Unlike most novelist, Simmons rarely milks a series for all it is worth. He creates a story and once it is resolved, he moves on to create something else. This approach leaves Simmons novels all the richer. While It certainly would behoove Simmons to create more novels linked directly to his Hyperion books (or the Night triology), he recognizes that once the story is told well and complete, it's time to move on. In this case, Simmons has moved on to create a number of stunning (and occasionally average) novels in a variety of genres. Illum promises to be comparable to the Hyperion novels in terms of scope, characters and themes.
Where have all the normal humans gone? How did the Greek gods become "real"? What are the voynix and why are they trying to keep the remainder of humanity docile? All of these questions will most probably be answered in Simmons' next book (set to be published sometime next year according to Locus). I'm hoping the conclusion will be as strong as the set up. Knowing Simmons and his track history (with the Hyperion books among many others), I don't doubt that he'll create a rip-roaring conclusion worthy of his concepts.
Why not five stars if this novel is so darn great? It's because it's a story only partially told. Illum ties up a number of loose threads but there's a second and third novel just waiting to be written (or perhaps like Hyperion he's already written them)to complete the story. Just because the complete story isn't told doesn't mean you shouldn't purchase and read this rich novel. It deserves to be read now. The second and third acts are in the wings. Consider the time between this and the second novel to be a brief intermission. It'll give you time to catch up or re-read some of Simmons other dazzling novels. There's a reason that Simmons has won the Hugo, Bram Stoker and Mystery Writers of America awards. He's that good. I can only think of a handful of writers that compare to him in any genre. Pick up Illum and enjoy the trip to these three foreign worlds. You won't regret it.

In the not-too distant future, humanity is extinct. Post-humans have colonized the solar system but even they have changed or vanished. What they have left behind are semi-human Earth-dwellers who have forgotten all knowledge and live only for pleasure; a terraformed Mars where the battle of Troy is being replayed and where the Greek Gods squabble and urge the Greek and Trojan heros to greater killing and death; and an outer system (asteroid belt/Jupiter's moons) inhabited by intelligent self-aware androids.
ILIUM weaves three separate story lines--a group of Earth-dwellers who dream of ascending to the sky, a twentieth century scholar brought back to life to chronicle the Trojan war, and a pair of androids who make their way from the Jovian moons to the Mars of Zeus and Hera.
Author Dan Simmons writes a powerful and emotionally satisfying adventure. Initially the Trojan war sequences grab the reader and these remain the most action-packed and interesting of the three story lines, but the other two quickly become fascinating as well. Simmons offers a convincing view of a future earth torn by RNA terrorists, inhabited only by a remnant population of lotus-eating human descendents (and by a version of wily Odyseus), and of scientific Gods who share the original Olympian indifference to the fates of men and their joy in destruction. By the time scholar Hockenberry decides to wage a war on the Gods, I was ready to support him.
Simmons' view of the future is dark, but tinged with hope--that humanity can prevail even though humans, as we know them, are virtually extinct. His writing is so strong that you truly care. Fans of classical literature (whether Homer, Shakespeare, or Proust) will also delight in the way that Simmons mixes in characters and devices from these authors--in ways that extend rather than distort the meanings of the original works. But then, if you aren't a fan of old-dead-authors, I think you'll still get a lot of enjoyment out of ILIUM.
This one is a definite keeper.

Dan Simmons is not an easy writer to pigeon-hole. Fantasy, horror, science fiction, mystery; he refuses to let himself be stuck into a particular category. As an abstract thing, I admire that very much. However, for a lover of SF, it's sometimes frustrating. I loved Simmons' "Hyperion;" it was without question one of the best, most moving science fictions novels I have ever read. And yet I like this one better.
Please note that I don't necessarily think this is a "better" novel than "Hyperion" by some objective standard of "better;" I just enjoyed it more. "Citizen Kane" is unquestionably a better film than "The Matrix" (despite "The Matrix'" good qualities); I enjoy "The Matrix" more.
Enought preamble. This is a wonderful read. It moves fast, it has interesting characters, and the various story lines and allusions are blended in to the main action of the novel with wit, fun, and style. And the book has dimension; if you are familiar with Greek history, or with Homer's "Iliad," you will get even more from this book. There's history, science fiction, sociology; it's a blast.
And what was most interesting for me: (very minor spoiler ahead) my favorite characters were not even people. I just loved the picture of the future history of the artificial lifeforms occupying the asteroids and outer portions of our solar system. They are drawn with care, sympathy, and great good humor.
If you like Simmons, and if you like science fiction, I think you'll love this book. Interesting characters (with the unfortunate but typical usual collection of science fiction cardboard characters--you can't have everything), a quick-moving, interesting plot, interesting settings...I really couldn't ask for more. I was looking forward to this book from Simmons, and I was not dissapointed. Buy, read, and enjoy.

Mr. Simmons is arguably one of the best genre-hopping authors around, having pulled down awards for SciFi, Horror, Fantasy, etc. But this massive book (700+ pages in the paperback) makes me wonder exactly how does he think this excellent stuff up?

Ilium mixes the Trojan War (is it the real Trojan War, or a setup re-creation?), future humans (who are so pampered that they have forgotten or have been forced to forget their history, basic skills like reading and cooking, etc.), post-humans (evolved in some fashion) and Jupiter/Asteroid Belt organic-plus-Artificially Intelligent miner/workers into a story that is part future, part past. Combining these characters with literary references to Shakespeare, Proust (the Jupiter miners have all of ancient Earth in their databases and a weakness for literature), Homer and others, would in the hands of a lesser writer, make for a slogfest of a read.

Simmons masterfully blends these characters, time-shifting settings and science fiction creations into a plot that is a page turner for the majority of it's bulk. The plot opens up, little by little, letting the reader slowly but surely put these pieces together, while keeping us engaged with what's happening. The science of the science fiction is added to make this complexity quite possible, which is what good science fiction is all about.

The only issue I have with this novel is that (without giving away any spoilers) one has to read the next novel, Olympos. But it is a small issue, and, given the quality of Ilium, I will happily dive into Olympos.

Highly reccommended!

I picked up this book mostly because of the title and the fact that it featured "The Iliad", not sure what to expect. I found it to be enjoyable, but probably only worth reading for extremely hard-core Greek Mythology, Shakespeare, or science fiction fans. "Ilium" is 700+ pages, so be willing to spend some time reading about literary robots from Jupiter, a re-enactment of the Trojan war taking place on Mars, and a far-future earth that is practically unrecongizable. If all this and discussion of quantum teleportation sounds like your cup of tea, "Ilium" is probably the book for you.

I found that the Homeric elements of the story were accurate, if modernized. Dan Simmons clearly has great reverence for "The Iliad", even though his story soon leaves the original plot behind and goes into uncharted territory.

The characters were likeable, and I found myself becoming fond of them. Especially amusing was Daeman, a pudgy, butterfly-collecting womanizer who is eaten by an allosaurus in the first chapter he appears in (but, never fear, soon resurrected). He and other characters from various planets find themselves in over their heads, trying to understand and then change their universe.

"Ilium" resolves nothing by the end--it reads like more of an introductory volume. So be prepared to pick up the next book if you want to know what happens.

Dan Simmons is the most consciously literary of science fiction writers. He not only borrows ideas for stories; he uses the forms of the great stories of western civilization and even quotes from them in the story. If there really are memes, anyone reading "The Hyperion Cantos" risked infection with John Keats' poetry and John Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress."
With "Ilium," the infectious risk is Homer's "Iliad" and "Odyssey;" Shakespeare's sonnets and "The Tempest;" and - gulp - Marcel Proust's "Remembrance of Things Lost." Yowza.
"Ilium" is three seemingly unrelated stories from the 40th Century, stories from three different possibilities of what man might become. There are the Moravecs, inhabiting Jupiter's and Saturn's moons, man-machine hybrids, with a lingering taste for the works of Shakespeare and Proust. There are the Eloi - an appreciative nod to H. G Wells here - who turn out to be all too horrifyingly Eloi, a "post-literate" and possibly degenerate normal human race. And there are the gods of Olympus - Mons Olympus - who may be post-humans, engaged in a bloody re-enactment of the Trojan War.
We see the story through the eyes of Moravecs, a few of the humans and one of Scholi, the observers of the gods, re-constructed college classics professors, sent to report to the gods on the re-enacted Trojan War. And we watch as the Scholi - one in particular - are dragged from their roles as observers to participants, and as the three stories merge into one. It's a superb piece of plotting and narration.
There are resonances from "The Hyperion Cantos," but they do not distract. There are no emotional bombshells equivalent to F. Paul Dure's experience - for my money, nothing in science fiction touches the story of F. Paul Dure - but there are stunning surprises. You *will* cheer Achilles' final line.
The final message, or one of the final messages, may be a little grating: that even as late as the 40th century it is and will be a case of kill or be killed, eat or be eaten. But you can't fault the story-telling. Simmons is in line for another Hugo nomination.
This is the first book of a projected two book series (note to those new to Simmons: the four-book Hyperion cantos was also projected to be two books). A lot of the mysteries are left unanswered at the end of this book. We'll have to hope the second book resolves them. I can't wait.
Highly recommended.

The Iliad serves as the starting point here ("Sing, O Muse, of the rage of Achilles..."), and from there Dan Simmons proceeds to amaze you with some of the most literate science fiction you'll ever read. The story unfolds in three parts, which are skillfully woven together to increase dramatic tension as the plot lines spiral closer to each other. The end of Ilium is a soft stop, there is some closure but it leaves you begging to read the next book Olympos.

The science fiction is the good stuff that sci-fi fans want and need. We're talking quantum teleportation, nanotechnology, sentient cybernetics, a light hint of time travel... the works. The literature references are numerous and impressive. You don't have to get all the references to make this book enjoyable; but getting some of them will make you feel quite well read. When you get a little Proust, a lot of Shakespeare, a dash of Browning, mixed in with twists on Homer, Aristophanes, and Virgil, you know this isn't lightweight stuff.

Rather than rehash the plot, I'll simply say that this book was a pleasure to read. It is told from some very inventive points of view with vivid descriptions of people and places. There are moments of "chuckle out loud" humor, and surprised disbelief (one of those, "Wait, did I read that right?" moments). The one sense I came away with from every chapter ending is that while the author may not explain everything all at once; there is a method behind his madness. Dan Simmons knows exactly what he's doing, and that is providing readers with some thought-filled reading enjoyment. Oh, that and making me go buy the sequel.

First things first - Book 1 of a Simmons series which just sets up the action in the next book. Fits the Simmons pattern I guess. It can be annoying at times, but its not like this book had no action
Plot Summary: Maybe someone can help me with this. There are 3 main plotlines followed in this book. First is the ongoing "re-creation" of the Iliad where the gods live on Olympus Mons on Mars. I am not entirely sure where the human players are though, I believe it is Earth but I do not know what Earth and when (and they are most likely on Mars anyway). There are other humans re-created to observe the war, scholics. Scholic Hockenberry being the main character of this plotline. There is very much Quantum Teleportation from Ilium to Olympus and back by the gods and all that activity is getting the attentioon of the humanlike robots (moravecs) working out around Jupiter. These guys decide to send a contingent plus a "device" to Mars to investigate and report back. Back on what is modern Earth, there are only a few thousand humans left living on the planet. They are modified at the molecular level but live a sheltered life where the post-humans left them some technology and now no one knows how to build or repair or do anything. Harman is that odd human that craves adventure, and has even walked places where there are no fax portals (faxing is the mode of transportation). He does not want to go up into the rings after he turns 100 years old as is the custom. There are also some alien undertones and some godlike characters moreso than the Greek gods. Eventually all these plotlines meet up and then leave you hanging
Opinion: Well, like Hyperion, this is the first half. Tension building, drama escalating, etc. I liked what was going on and the complexity of the relations between everyone in the book. I'm not sure I've figured out the whole thing yet though. Much of the early book action is to build the characters and what I suspect is the real plot is not touched upon until much later. This is not a bad thing. Everything was pretty believable to me. I enjoyed the moravec plot the least but I saw in a few other Ilium posts that others really liked that one best. I will enjoy this book more after I know what happens to everyone I'm sure, but it was pretty damn enjoyable anyway. Now that I have started reading the actual Iliad, I am seeing just how well that was integrated into the story. Simmons has always been good at this.
4 out of 5 stars
Recommendation: Read it. Especially if you like Hyperion.

A number of people have observed that the science fiction of the 1960s and 1970s was, at its core, optimistic. Although nuclear war lurked in the background, there was an optimism in the work of writers like Arthur C. Clarke and Theodore Sturgeon. Mankind was evolving toward something better. Our current stage of aggression and war was a childhood that, if we survived, we would outgrow. In the 1980s science fiction started to turn inward. William Gibson's Neuromancer was set is a distopian future, the work of an angry young man (according to Gibson's description). Dan Simmons became famous with his book Hyperion, in which millions of humans were enslaved in a distant future, while in the current time of the plot people were hunted by a killing machine called the Shrike.
Dark futures could be seen as a hallmark of Dan Simmons work. Literary allusion is another theme. In Hyperion there are allusions to the work of the romantic poet Keats. Dan Simmons book Ilium is heavily based on Homer's Iliad, the story of the Trojan war. The Iliad is itself a dark tale. Troy is destroyed, many of its men killed, its women raped and sold into slavery. The war did not turn out well in the end for many of the Greeks. Agamemnon, the Greek king who defeats Troy, returns home, fated to be murdered by his wife, Clymenestra (although this is not part of Homer's tale).
Ilium is beautifully written and Simmons' story is compelling. In Ilium the Greek Gods watch (and sometimes meddle) as the Trojan war unfolds. The Gods have resurrected various classic scholars from the twentieth and early twenty-first century whose job it is to record the Trojan war. The war as it plays out on the plains of Troy largely follows the story Homer related, but the scholars are forbidden to tell anyone, even the Gods, of Homers account before the events have come to pass. The book weaves together three plots lines. The story of the Trojan war is told by an early twenty-first century classics scholar named Hockenberry. In Ilium much of humanity has been wiped out by the "Rubicon virus" while other humans have evolved through technology into post-humans. "Old-style" humans remain on earth and one plot line in Ilium relates to them. The final plot line involves Moravecs (biomechanical sentient beings, named after Hans Moravec). The Moravecs have been "seeded" throughout the Jupiter system and the asteroid belt. A group of Moravecs has been sent on a mission to Mars by their government, which is concerned that massive quantum disturbances on Mars imperil the solar system.
Ilium is set in the same "universe" as Simmons short story The Ninth of Av which was published in his story collection Worlds Enough and Time. One of the characters in this story, a woman named Savi, plays an important part in Ilium.
Ilium is a book for the patient reader. The constant switching back and forth between the three story lines can take concentration and at times I found that I had to flip back to a previous section to find a detail I had forgotten. The structure and reasons behind the story line are revealed slowly as well. The Greek Gods reside on Olympus Mons, on Mars. At first I thought that Troy and the Greeks were somehow also on Mars. It was not until the end of the book that I understood the spatial and temporal relationship between the Gods and the Trojan war. Ironically, some of the later arriving characters in the story were confused as well ("How did we end up on Earth?").
In reading Simmons' work I have sometimes wondered if he knew in advance how the story would unfold. In reading the Hyperion books I wondered if Simmons knew, even in broad outline, how this long complex story would evolve when he wrote the first book.
Ilium is the first book of a two part story, which is supposed to be finished in Olympos, so the complete story cannot be judged at this point. As with most Dan Simmons books the story is compelling, but there have been cases were the plot of a compelling Dan Simmons story fell apart at the end (for example, his book Summer of Night). If Olympos is as good as Ilium and Simmons manages to pull all the plot lines into a profound whole these books will be some of Simmons best work.

Nobody could ever accuse Ilium of lack of ambition. From Shakespeare quoting robot-based life, to Troy recreated on Mars, to Earth having been recreated as a kind of Logan's Run utopia of youth-- there are more themes in here than you can shake a stick at. And the different themes are done gloriously-- they are compelling and interesting and as a reader I could not wait to find out how they all tied together.

The trouble with the book was that Simmons seemed more interested in developing the separate elements than in tying them together. This may still happen in Hyperion, the sequel, but left me scratching my head a little bit. Still, it wasn't enough for me to dislike the book, which I found genuinely fascinating and engaging.

I can imagine that if you are not a wide reader, some of the sections with the moravecs will feel long and boring. I was an English Lit major, so I actually really enjoyed the debates about Proust and Shakespeare-- but probably not for everybody.

If you like inventive science fiction and particularly if you have a taste for historical fiction mixed in, I would not hesitate to recommend Ilium. I will be looking forward to reading Hyperion with interest.

Long before I had any formal idea of what literary "classics" were and how they came to be so revered, an imaginative public school teacher told (not read, but told --- from memory) the story of Odysseus, a kingly hero of Greek mythology who took years to get home after the Trojan War. But once back in Ithaca, what riveting tales he had to tell! Episode by episode, our Grade Five class spent weeks traveling alongside Homer's epic character, and despite the length of the voyage (parcelled out just a few minutes at a time between regular subjects), we were almost sorry to see it end.
Oddly enough, all these years later, I've experienced Dan Simmons's ILIUM (drawn from the same subject matter) in a very similar way. It's a tremendous tale of astonishing breadth and complexity that held its shape and rhythm, despite my months-long journey through nearly 600 pages, stolen a few at a time from the wee small hours when I could read only for myself. And yes, my old friend Odysseus made an appearance, along with scores of others from the vast family of gods, goddesses and superhumans of classical mythology. But the bold difference is in how Simmons took me and these once-familiar beings on a strange, surreal dance through time, space and interplanetary dimensions that even Homer could scarcely have imagined.
With the daring that only a skilled classicist could pull off, Simmons managed to transplant his larger-than-life protagonists of the ancient Trojan War into a timeframe so fluid that it becomes simultaneously the distant past and far future, for those of us brought up on linear thinking. Along the way, ILIUM weaves in two additional and distinct storylines --- one about a slowly extinguishing race of "post-humans," another about an unlikely but charming pair of alien artificial life-forms literally shipwrecked in space. But why would Simmons spend chapter after chapter visiting each of these story-strands in turn and enticing us to identify separately with their characters?
Like all stories worth reading and all journeys worth the travel, the connections braiding the strands of ILIUM together are built slowly and often subtly, even when the rest of the universe seems to be dissolving around them in temporal chaos. Adventures are lived, lives lost (both human and divine), great battles fought and profound relationships are forged, all setting the stage for an ending of promised epic proportions in Simmons's forthcoming sequel, OLYMPOS. Like the fabled travels of Odysseus, getting back home again can be a long and arduous journey, but this is one in which Dan Simmons, sci-fi artist extraordinaire, is sailing under the full power of creative momentum. As long as it took me to navigate ILIUM, I can't wait to embark on OLYMPOS for another memorable voyage beyond time itself.
--- Reviewed by Pauline Finch

Review: Ilium, by Dan Simmons (2003)
a review by Rich Horton
On the whole, I was pretty pleased. Ilium is full of SFnal imaginative brio (if not always very plausible), and it's also full of pretty absorbing action. My main complaints are a) that it's only the first half of its story (though it does come to at least a somewhat satisfying stopping point; and b) that so far it doesn't seem to be about much -- it's fun and has lots of interesting ideas but it seems somewhat slight.
The story is told on three main threads. The most prominent centers on Thomas Hockenberry, a 20th century college professor who specialized in Homer. He has been mysteriously resurrected in this far future, and he is one of a number of "scholics" employed by the gods (yes, Zeus, Aphrodite, etc.) to observe the progress of the Trojan War, which is being fought (reenacted? refought for real? fought for the first time somehow? who knows?) on what seems to be Mars. (The gods, of course, live on Mt. Olympos -- that is to say, the great volcano Olympus Mons.) The scholics keep track of how closely the war tracks Homer's poem, which turns out to be pretty closely. But the gods' arbitrary violence, and a general despair at the bloody-mindedness of everyone, drive Hockenberry to rebellion -- at first just a night with Helen (!), but soon a plot against the gods themselves.
Meanwhile, the AIs called moravecs who live in the Jupiter system have detected unsettling activity on Mars, and they send an expedition. One member of this expedition is Mahnmut, who lives on Europa and drives a submersible exploring the Europan seas. He is also an expert on Shakespeare's sonnets. His best friend is Orphu of Io, a Proust enthusiast. The two are marooned on Mars when the expedition comes to disaster, and they head for Olympus Mons on their own to try to complete the mission.
And finally, in Earth, Daeman is a foolish young man living in the rather stale society of the few remaining humans on the planet after the long past exodus of the "posthumans" to Earth orbit. The Earth humans live lives of idle eroticism and sloth, unable to read, unaware of geography as they "fax" (i.e. teleport) everywhere, served by robotic "servitors" and the alien Voynix. Every 20 years they are "faxed" to orbit and repaired, but they live only five "Twenties". Daeman visits a beautiful young woman named Ada in hopes of seducing her, and finds himself all unwilling drawn into the schemes of Ada, her friend Hannah, an ancient Jewish woman named Savi, and a 99 year old man named Harman who wants to avoid extinction when he reaches his fifth "twenty". This group ends up wandering the Earth: Antarctica, Israel, the dry Mediterranean Basin, in hopes of finding a way to the home of the posthumans in orbit.
Which is pretty much it for this book. Which isn't to say that nothing is resolved -- lots happens, and there is a lot of change. There are bloody battles, rampaging Allosauruses, some weird technology, aliens, gods of various sorts, heroism, fooling around, disasters. It's lots of fun, and the scene is well set for what could be a pretty exciting concluding volume.

Dan Simmons' "Ilium" is an impressive, complicated epic of a science fiction novel. I didn't know what to think when I first heard about "Ilium". The way it was described to me was that "Ilium" is a science fiction telling of Homer's "The Iliad" and it had something to do with Mars. That was really all I knew and to be honest, that description still doesn't do much for me. That description is true, but it doesn't quite convey what "Ilium" is. More than just giving the read "The Iliad" in space, Dan Simmons has created the first part of an epic masterpiece which is nothing like what I expected. I don't use the word "masterpiece" lightly.

"Ilium" tells three different stories that are at first completely unrelated. The first is that of the Iliad. The ancient Greeks are waging their epic war against the Trojans and this war was all started when Helen of Sparta left her husband Menelaus to join with Paris of Troy. That was the face which launched a thousand ships. Since we are talking about a Greek epic here, there are gods a plenty showing up and getting involved the war. But "Ilium" isn't a simple retelling of Homer. "Ilium" is something completely different. Thomas Hockenberry is a late 20th Century/Early 21st Century scholar (here called a scholic) who has been revived thousands of years after his death to observe this Trojan War and see how closely the events match with Homer's "Iliad".

I have to admit, that is quite an idea for a book. But that is only a third of the story here. Next we have a setting which is definitely on the planet Earth, our Earth, but is thousands and thousands and perhaps even thousands of years in the future. Taking a cue from H.G. Wells' "The Time Machine" the remaining humans have such advanced technology and society that there is no work, no manual or physical labor. Instead humans live only for their own personal pleasure. Think of these humans as the Eloi from the mind of Wells. But if there are eloi, there must also be morlocks. Here the analogy breaks down a bit as the servants of these humans are robots. Into the lives of Daeman, a human male, and Ada, a human woman comes Harman. Harman is a man who is in the final year of his Final Twenty. What this means is that he only has one year left to live before he is allowed to spent an eternity with the "Post Humans", a race of superhumans who created all of this technology and luxury but who have since left the planet. Harman is eager to learn about the past and what the truth might be since nobody living has any idea of the past or can even read.

The third part of the story of "Ilium" is completely different. Still in some distant future and seemingly unconnected to the other two storylines (which are also seemingly unconnected), this storyline concerns a quartet (initially) of mechanical creatures called moravecs which are set on a mission to explore Mars and see why exactly the planet has been Terraformed to have an atmosphere and possibly some sort of life and dare I say civilization. I call the moravecs a mechanical creature rather than robot because even though they are robotic, they seem to also require some sort of oxygen to function. I can't explain it. Have I mentioned that two of these moravecs also have a running conversation about the sonnets and Shakespeare and end up discussion Proust?

Somehow, and I couldn't quite imagine how at first, Dan Simmons manages to tie all three storylines together in a way that feels far more natural than it possibly should. Even more amazing, Simmons manages to make all of this interesting and intelligent. In the hands of a lesser writer, this book would have been a big mess. Then again, a lesser author might not have attempted this. As Simmons reveals more and more of each storyline, it becomes more and more gripping. This epic story is only the first part of a two book series. The second book, "Olympos", will be published in the summer of 2005.

Describing "Ilium" is difficult because to go too far in depth with the various plot threads would likely take thousands of words. Suffice it to say that after Simmons gives the reader an adequate introduction to each storyline, he takes it in a direction the reader will likely not expect. That this sprawling, nearly 600 pages novel is very readable and accessible to even somebody who doesn't know a thing about the Iliad (me), "The Time Machine", or science fiction, is remarkable. But "Ilium" succeeds at all of this and by the end of the book I was disappointed that "Olympos" wasn't already in stores or in my local library.

-Joe Sherry

Usually, when one reads the praise of other authors on the back jacket, you take it with a grain of salt. On the back of Ilium, is a quote from Stephen King which reads, "I am in awe of Dan Simmons." After reading this book, so am I. For once, the praise of another author is well-deserved and accurate. I truly loved this book. It's just as good. if not better, then Hyperion, which is one of my all time favorite Sci-Fi books and a true classic in the genre. Finally, a science fiction book which takes into account the reader's intelligence, which puts together an interesting and original plot and hooks you from the first chapter. I will say this about the book. It does require a passing familiarity with the events of Homer's epic poem, the "Iliad" and it helps to know a little Shakespeare and Proust, as well. However, just as he did for Keats in Hyperion, Simmons will make the reader long to explore the works of these great authors. It is rare that you can find a book that pays homage to great authors of the past, yet clearly does not rely on that praise in order to tell a great story.
If you want a plot description, read what's written above. However, this will not do the book justice. The book has three seemingly unrelated subplots, which merge into a single story, more or less, in the end. To Simmons credit and skill as an author, the most "human" of his characters are two robots (for lack of a better word) that spend their time discussing the relative merits between Shakespeare and Proust, all the while displaying emotions and character traits that the other actual human characters in the novel must learn as they go along. This subplot is the link between the other two, which makes the entire story flow right along to a very satisfying and exciting ending.
There will evidently be a sequel, for which I eagerly await. If it's half as good as this one, it'll still be quite a book.

Dan Simmons wrote the greatest sci fi novel of all time, Hyperion. I am starting to think that this guy is a one hit wonder. Maybe for the first time ever I was reading the end of this book (page 650) and said to myself "why the heck am I reading this? Simmons uses a lot of cheap tactics in this book. Honestly this book turns to complete drivel in the end.

Reviewing Ilium without mentioning Hyperion is unthinkable to me. Both take great works of literature (Canterbury Tales, Iliad) and use them to stunning effect in a far future SF setting. Both are compulsive page turners. But Hyperion, for its greatness, still had flaws in the overall series architecture, and I am hoping Simmons is not going to fall into a similar trap with Ilium.

Ilium is a superb book, taking one of the greatest works of literature and riffing off of it like a great jazz musician. I have read the Lattimore Iliad, and it's great - nearly the definition of tragedy. This background greatly enhanced my pleasure during the book as Simmons makes some hilarious commentary on the characters, but I have not read Proust or The Tempest, so there's certainly stuff I'm missing. But I enjoyed the book with and without the background, so don't let the gaps of your reading list keep you away.

The fecundity of the ideas, the originality, the depth and texture, just all of the angles this book come at you with is wonderful. Like jazz, and Hyperion for that matter, there's a ton of stuff floating around and it doesn't always get resolved. There are robot civilizations, a photosynthesizing slave race, murderous literary mutations in orbit, a creepily thoughtless utopia, and beings with the power (literally) of Gods. That's an impressive list, but none of them are jarring within the context of the story. It's just that amazing. This is most certainly the first of two books and should not be considered complete, but an act one hopefully to be wrapped up in Olympos.

Simmons fell into the trap with Hyperion of trying to coherently bundle all of his ideas into one great arcing narrative with three more books. It didn't quite work, with Fall of Hyperion being great but spending too much time explaining Hyperion. The next two books tried to wrap up the whole shebang and did, but it felt a little forced, like a chore that needed completion rather than a story that needed telling. All four were good, but the whole is not nearly as great as the first and second parts.

Ilium is a great first part of the overall story to be told with Olympos. Let's hope this project is as carefully sculpted overall as the first installment. This is a great intellectual achievement as SF goes, so enjoy Ilium for its solid plotting, and original thoughtscape. I'm betting an older and wiser Simmons is going to write pure dynamite with Olympos and finish this work with the dignity it deserves - a dignity denied the Hyperion series.

I considered giving Ilium five stars - it is a truly wonderful read - but just couldn't justify the rating when Olympos will reshape my understanding of Ilium. It will probably seem better, but five stars are reserved for books with no reservations.

I managed to snag an advanced copy of "Ilium" several months ago. I can't say I was too enamored with the book back then. As with "Hyperion", you are immediately immersed in the conventions of the world long before those conventions make sense to you (ie - how long did it take you to figure out what the "fatline" was in the Hyperion Cantos?).
So the hardcover came out and being a Dan Simmons fan, I simply had to have it. And because it was just sitting there on the shelf, I just had to read it again. And like "Hyperion", I came to love this book.
I know a good many sci-fi fans that hold the Hyperion Cantos close to their hearts. I go back into my collection and read those four books at least once a year. Dan Simmons exhibits so much affection for his characters, you can't help but follow suit. While I cannot say I've been as big a fan of his horror and mystery novels, Simmons is back in true sci-fi form with "Ilium".
I'm not going to discuss the plot except to say it involves ancient greek gods, highly "evolved" demi-humans, a resurrected 20th century history teacher, a band of Eloi-like humans undertaking a trip of discovery across a shattered Earth, and a group of sentient machines traveling through the solar system to investigate some strange signals on the planet Mars. Again, Simmons makes his characters familiar to us. No matter if the plot sometimes goes haywires, the characters archor us to the story despite implausablilities.
I do have to wonder if this book isn't an addition to the Hyperion Cantos. ARNists are mentioned in both series. You got instant teleportation through what might be Planck space, again in both series. The plot somewhat involves some malfeasence involving Earth. Another character is called "The Wandering Jew". Where is Simmons going with all this?
With that, I'm eagerly awaiting the second volume in this series.