[.ca] Ilium (ISBN 2221094522)

From Amazon.com:
Genre-hopping Dan Simmons returns to science fiction with the vast and intricate masterpiece Ilium. Within, Simmons weaves three astounding story lines into one Earth-, Mars-, and Jupiter-shattering cliffhanger that will leave readers aching for the sequel. On Earth, a post-technological group of humans, pampered by servant machines and easy travel via "faxing," begins to question its beginnings. Meanwhile, a team of sentient and Shakespeare-quoting robots from Jupiter's lunar system embark on a mission to Mars to investigate an increase in dangerous quantum fluctuations. On the Red Planet, they'll find a race of metahumans living out existence as the pantheon of classic Greek gods. These "gods" have recreated the Trojan War with reconstituted Greeks and Trojans and staffed it with scholars from throughout Earth's history who observe the events and report on the accuracy of Homer's Iliad. One of these scholars, Thomas Hockenberry, finds himself tangled in the midst of interplay between the gods and their playthings and sends the war reeling in a direction the blind poet could have never imagined. Simmons creates an exciting and thrilling tale set in the thick of the Trojan War as seen through Hockenberry's 20th-century eyes. At the same time, Simmons's robots study Shakespeare and Proust and the origin-seeking Earthlings find themselves caught in a murderous retelling of The Tempest. Reading this highly literate novel does take more than a passing familiarity with at least The Iliad but readers who can dive into these heady waters and swim with the current will be amply rewarded. --Jeremy Pugh

Confused & incomplete:
As a lover of the Trojan myth cycle & Greek mythology in general, I read this book with a great deal of expectation. I was aware there were going to be several stories told at once & that some of them were from way out there, without even human protagonists. And by "way out there", I mean way, way out there. I give two stars overall, but I could have given four stars for the long stretches when I lost myself in the narrative. However, those stretches are constantly interrupted by a jolt back to another narrative that is much less intriguing & seems to have nothing to do with the first. Indeed, this is the major problem of book. By the end, I still had no idea what had happened to Earth & its people & how things came to be as they are: I closed the book in frustration. I realize this is part one of a planned two part opus, but, still, some loose ends need to be tied, some subplots need to be linked more completely, & some sort of conclusion (even temporary) has to be reached at the end of a 576 page book. Maybe if I read part 2, I would find it all fitting together & concluding with satisfaction. However, I still wouldn't give it five stars. The writer is extremely proficient & moves things along in places with breathtaking rapidity, but -- like Homer -- he repeats catch-phrases & epithets & his style does not change much from plotline to plotline. It seemed to me he was himself identifying with a few of characters to the point of irritation. These were characters of unlikely heroism, even cowardice, who grew heroically in the course of the novel. I speak here of Hockenberry, the twentieth century classicist, Daeman, the effete human voluptuary, & Orphu, a sentient robot. (Sentient robots are called "Moravecs", which I admit is a nice nod toward robotic visionary Hans Moravec.) His female characters tend to be underdrawn, verging on stereotypes. Their motivations seem to shift with contradictory behaviour often the result. (Then again, maybe he's on to something here.) Worse, though he claims Homer & Homeric scholarship among his research sources, he changed (or reversed in the case of Diomedes) the character of some of my beloved Homeric heroes. So, despite adventures & complexities beyond reason ranging from a very distant future Earth (with the ancient past of the Trojan War still present) to Olympic gods on Mars to Moravec colonies on the moons of Saturn & beyond (or maybe because of all this strained overreaching), I feel no inclination whatsoever to read the apparently forthcoming conclusion of this two-part "epic" to be called *Olympos*. When curiosity gives up, two stars are the appropriate response.

Combines The Tempest and The Iliad:
The Greek Gods prefer human fodder to serve as scribes rather than wasting energy by doing it. Thus they send Dr. Thomas Hockenberry and several scholarly peers from the future into the past to study the war at Troy that "launched a thousand ships". Though the years of rebirth were painful, Thomas expects to have a grand old time of comparing reality to Homer. However being enslaved to the Greek Gods and a Muse is no fun, but worse is the reality on the Plains of Ilium. The romanticism of Homer and others seem out of place as Thomas sees the atrocities of the war and the idiocy of the legends. In fact he dreams of a B-52 dropping the A-bomb on these Plains to end the insanity. If that is not enough, adding to his dismay is that Aphrodite orders him to help her kill Athena. While Thomas finds reality monstrously disappointing, robots research the terra-like created atmosphere of Mars and selfish people reside on a genetically different future Earth. Time means nothing in this universe. Combine The Tempest and The Iliad into a strange well-written speculative fiction and what you have is ILIUM. The story line takes some adjustment with the anachronisms of Thomas and his transplanted peers discussing A-bombs while the pre BC Trojan War occurs. The cast is a delight and the three subplots blend together into a tremendous science fiction novel with fantasy elements that will elate the audience. However, don't tell your English teacher about Dan Simmons' chutzpah messing with the classics even if it is quite entertaining and successfully achieved. Harriet Klausner

Mind Tapestries Woven and Spun:
Saddened by the end of the Hyperion journey, waiting for a return to the weavings of D.Simmons mind, I found myself relieved with the arrival of Ilium. Getting through the first few chapters is a task in itself, all those Greek Heroes names, a plot filled with twists within twists, the mental gymnastics of following the three narratives and all the while trying to make some sense as to how they are relevant and related. But as he had done with Hyperion, once the stage is set...the adventure promised to be grand. Gladly the promise was kept. Rich in mosaïc logic and imagination, D. Simmons is a master of connecting three narratives into one storied tapestry. By the time I put the book down, I was so engrossed in the story that I now find myself returning regularly to the local book store in hopes that the continuation has arrived. How long can someone wait before loosing the story's imaged texture and fresh flowing story line? Not too long I hope.

Intricate plot, excellent book. How does Simmons think this stuff up?:
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!

Dan Simmons goes (Ancient) Greek!:
Readers familiar with Dan Simmons' Hyperion Cantos will no doubt have been waiting with baited breath for his return to epic SF and his sizable new novel Ilium is certainly epic in both size and scope. The novel contains three very different narrative threads, which slowly intersect in provocative, if not necessarily revealing, ways. The first tale, as the title suggests, is based on The Iliad; we meet what appear to be the Ancient Greek Gods who are (subtlety) directing the action of the Trojan War, complete with a full cast including Helen, Paris, Achilles, Agamemnon and ill-fated Odysseus. For some reason the Gods have also 'resurrected' scholars from Earth who are experts on Homer's epic poem; these 'scholics' are charged with watching the Trojan War and ensuring that events are unfolding as narrated in The Iliad. The protagonist in this thread is Thomas Hockenberry, Ph.D. At first glance, Hockenberry seems to be living the classical scholar's ultimate fantasy of actually seeing the real Trojan War unfold. However, we quickly discover that his masters, the Ancient Gods, are every bit as childish, selfish and manipulative as suggested in ancient mythology. Hockenberry is the bound and bitter servant of a Muse, and after a parody of the opening of The Iliad, Hockenberry laments: 'On second thought, O Muse, sing of nothing to me. I know you. I have been bound and servant to you, O Muse, you incomparable bitch. And I do not trust you, O Muse. Not one little bit' (1). In complete contrast, the second narrative thread introduces Moravecs, organic-machine hybrids who were 'seeded' across the solar system by human beings hundreds of years earlier. The central Moravec is Mahnmut, who spends his time piloting the submersible The Dark Lady through the waters of the Jovian moon Europa, and obsessively analysing Shakespeare's sonnets. When other Moravecs discover massive and very dangerous amounts of quantum shift energy emanating from Mars they decide they must investigate. Mahnmut joins Orphu of Io (who prefers Proust and argues literature with Mahnmut at the drop of a hat) and two others in order to investigate and possibly eliminate the cause of the extremely hazardous quantum energies. With the Moravec characters, Simmons is again exploring ideas of artificial life. In the Hyperion Cantos, artificial life and artificial intelligences play a huge role; in the first two books they appear almost omniscient, while by the conclusion of Rise of Endymion, artificial lifeforms play a far more complex role as both part of humanity's survival and their ultimate threat. The Moravecs are far less empowered in Ilium and spend the majority of the novel trying to figure out exactly what is happening on Mars. The name Moravec is a nod toward Hans Moravec, the head of robotics at Carnegie Mellon University, who argues in his book Mind Children (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1988) that the next stage of evolution is robotic and digital life which will supersede ordinary organic human beings. Simmons' Moravecs are less interested in replacing humanity than in making sure the solar system is not destroyed by experimentation which reeks of human arrogance. The final narrative thread is set on Earth itself, at least a few millennia in the future. The narrative perspective is Daeman's, an ignorant twenty-six year old who prides himself on being a 'lady's man' and little else. Daeman is a typical of the few hundred thousand humans remaining on Earth: he cannot read, is generally content and uninquisitive, spends most of his time at social gatherings, travels instantaneously across the world via 'faxnode', and leads a pampered life with slavish servitor robots and slightly more mysterious Voynix creatures maintaining his indulgent lifestyle. However, when Daeman is at a party trying to seduce the alluring Ada, he finds himself mixed up with Ada's friend Hannah and the ninety-nine year old Harman who has rediscovered the ability to read; probably the only human being able to do so. Harman is living his final year, as all humans leave the Earth an one hundred years of age, possibly to join the 'posthumans' or 'posts' who left the Earth for the orbital habitats (and elsewhere) centuries earlier. Harman's quest to find a spacecraft, visit the posts, and discover what's really going on with the Earth lead the reluctant adventurers on a journey which uncovers many of the mysterious happenings on the planet Earth, and raises far more questions than it answers. Just as Simmons used the style of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in Hyperion to draw together six separate stories and then end the novel just as they intertwine, the three narrative strands of Ilium slowly approach one another and the novel ends as they finally intersect. However, unlike Hyperion, where the novel stood well by itself and the stories all held readers with their own energy, the three stories in Ilium are only just finding their own momentum as the novel ends. The very disparate cast of characters are harder to empathise with than characters in many of Simmons' other novels and the shear weight of so many different story elements, settings and intrigues threaten to overwhelm the coherence of the novel; so much is going on, it's hard to enjoy any one story. So, too, are there many shared elements with the Hyperion Cantos which felt fresh and engaging a decade ago, but somewhat less so as they are rehashed in Ilium. However, I must confess not having read Hyperion until I owned its sequel, which made some of the story much clearer. Despite its shortcomings, Ilium has many powerful passages and reworks historical and literary material in quite creative and sometimes amazing ways. The next novel Olympos is already being written and I have high hopes that reading the two in tandem will clarify some of the loose ends from Ilium and produce a far more rounded and satisfying read.