Ilium (2003)

Ilium opens with Thomas Hockenberry, a twenty-first century professor, observing the Trojan War on behalf of a Muse. He has been reborn into this world of heroes and gods at the whim of a god or goddess and exists purely on their sufferance. His job, to watch the happenings in the war and report back on whether or not they follow the path he is familiar with from [a:Homer|903|Homer|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1192834024p2/903.jpg]’s [b:The Iliad|32785|The Iliad|Homer|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1168393672s/32785.jpg|3293141]. The second chapter is from the point of view of Daeman, a youngish man at some point in the future, who is visiting his cousin’s house with the sole purpose of seducing her. The next storyline we are introduced to is that of Mahnmut, a sentient machine of sorts, who has been asked to attend a meeting for some mission, although his mind is more occupied with Shakespeare and his sonnets

Full review: http://www.susanhatedliterature.net/2010/06/11/ilium/ ( )

Simmons is without a doubt unapologetic in anything he does. This book is no exception. Pure SCI FI opera and drama. There is a moral to this story. Never underestimate the human desire to survive and move forward. You may be able to staunch it for a while. But some outside force will always allow it to correct itself. This is a wonderful story about interesting people with egos, hopes and desires that exceed the bounds of the earthly realm. Some want to only to live.....some want to live and survive and others want to die. ( )

Simmons seems to have tried to recreate the magic of Hyperion here, with subplots from different genres yolked together by a grand plot inspired by elements from famous literature. The result is three totally separate plots with some really good writing, and too much space opera and transhumanist SF stuff that has been done better before. The backstory mostly exists to justify a recreation of the siege of Troy, link it to the other unrelated plots, and finally arrange a climax that was so contrived that it lost all impact for me.

In my opinion, the sections on Troy were the highlights - Simmons depicts Homer's characters and their world so perfectly that I wished that he had written a whole book on this. I thoroughly enjoyed the Moravecs and their literary discussions as well. As a bonus, towards the end of the book we have a well crafted horror story of Caliban and the explorers that could also have stood on it's own. ( )

Ilium is another name for the ancient city of Troy, whence the name of Homer's Iliad. But it's also part of the intestine, so it'd be appropriate if Dan Simmons' Ilium was full of crap. But no, that's the sequel, Olympos. Very inconsiderately, Ilium is actually really good.

Don't get me wrong, it's a mess. A glorious, wobbly mess. But perhaps that's what you'd expect from a novel best summed up as “a science-fiction version of the Iliad”. That's only one of the sub-plots, but it's a major one, with nanomachine-enhanced Greeks and Trojans battling under the gaze of quantum-technology-wielding “gods”. (Cue that quote by Arthur C. Clarke.)

There are other sub-plots, although not all of them are created equally. There's the story of the post-post-humans left behind on Earth after the singularity. Simmons' version of the Eloi are unlikeable, shallow humans who live in a state of perpetual youth for a hundred years. During their century they hop around the planet via a floo network, never exchanging ideas but regularly exchanging bodily fluids. The characters in this sub-plot are not really meant to be likeable, and so the storyline, for all its twists and action, is perforce not that fun.

Much more fun, oddly, is the sub-plot about two bionic robots trekking across the solar system then Mars's surface, all the while critiquing the sonnets and Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu. Given the size of the novel this sounds like needless filler, but the two characters are far more human and likeable than the actual human characters, be they in Troy or future-Earth.

Then there's the super-plot: the overarching story that, about eight-hundred pages after the end of this book, ties up all the storylines. There are reasons why the Greek gods are actually at Troy, why characters from The Tempest are popping up all over the place, why the Earth is full of deadly yet benevolent robots, and reasons for all the other mysteries that Dan Simmons drops over the pages like a popular drum and bass musician drops beats (or a clumsy greengrocer drops beets (or a talkative sheep drops bleats)). I reached the end of Ilium rather content with it, and not – as is often the case with series – frantic to read the next part in order to resolve these mysteries. More's the pity, then, that the sequel just didn't live up to this rather wonderful beginning. ( )

Ilium is another name for the ancient city of Troy, whence the name of Homer's Iliad. But it's also part of the intestine, so it'd be appropriate if Dan Simmons' Ilium was full of crap. But no, that's the sequel, Olympos. Very inconsiderately, Ilium is actually really good.

Don't get me wrong, it's a mess. A glorious, wobbly mess. But perhaps that's what you'd expect from a novel best summed up as “a science-fiction version of the Iliad”. That's only one of the sub-plots, but it's a major one, with nanomachine-enhanced Greeks and Trojans battling under the gaze of quantum-technology-wielding “gods”. (Cue that quote by Arthur C. Clarke.)

There are other sub-plots, although not all of them are created equally. There's the story of the post-post-humans left behind on Earth after the singularity. Simmons' version of the Eloi are unlikeable, shallow humans who live in a state of perpetual youth for a hundred years. During their century they hop around the planet via a floo network, never exchanging ideas but regularly exchanging bodily fluids. The characters in this sub-plot are not really meant to be likeable, and so the storyline, for all its twists and action, is perforce not that fun.

Much more fun, oddly, is the sub-plot about two bionic robots trekking across the solar system then Mars's surface, all the while critiquing the sonnets and Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu. Given the size of the novel this sounds like needless filler, but the two characters are far more human and likeable than the actual human characters, be they in Troy or future-Earth.

Then there's the super-plot: the overarching story that, about eight-hundred pages after the end of this book, ties up all the storylines. There are reasons why the Greek gods are actually at Troy, why characters from The Tempest are popping up all over the place, why the Earth is full of deadly yet benevolent robots, and reasons for all the other mysteries that Dan Simmons drops over the pages like a popular drum and bass musician drops beats (or a clumsy greengrocer drops beets (or a talkative sheep drops bleats)). I reached the end of Ilium rather content with it, and not – as is often the case with series – frantic to read the next part in order to resolve these mysteries. More's the pity, then, that the sequel just didn't live up to this rather wonderful beginning. ( )