Holy bloody freakin' incredible hell. Or Hades. Whatever. I'm... I have no words. Seriously. This was beyond brilliant. I don't know who took Dan Simmon's brain, drugged it up, sprinkled it with colours and glitter to come up with THAT but please do it again. Often. Ilium is a wild mixture of science-fiction, fantasy, a history (or should I say literature?) lesson, and awesomeness. And it's only the first part - don't think you can get in other books between Ilium and its sequel Olympos (I wanted to, but now I can't). In Ilium, you follow three different, but somehow converging story lines. The first one is that of scholar Hockenberry, Ilias expert, originally from the 20th/21st century, dead and revived by the old Greek Gods and taken to the Olymp - or at least the Olympos Mons on Mars. Yes, you've heard right, the old Greek Gods. Zeus, Hera, Athene, Aphrodite, Apollo, and the whole rest, augmented by nanotechnology, quantum teleportation, and lots of other interesting stuff. And why would the Greek Gods want Hockenberry and other scholars to live? Because the Ilias is happening right at this moment, and Zeus wants them to look for any discrepancies between Homer's opus and the real life happenings. And it IS real life. You get Achilles and Hector and Helena and the rest of the whole bunch - and they fight and slaughter and kill to the best of their abilities.The second story line starts pretty far away from all these events - to be precise on the Jupiter moon Europa. There, a few biomechanical, intelligent, technologically highly advanced, conscious Moravecs - further enhancements of robots brought by humans to the outer Solar System - are worried because of the massive quantum disturbances they detect on Mars. So, they send out a small group of Moravecs to have a look at what's going on there, and to stop it if necessary. Part of the four-Moravec-crew are best friends Mahnmut, a little Moravec originally stationed in the deep sea on Europa and Shakespeare fan, and Orphu, a high vacuum Moravec from Jupiter's moon Io and Proust aficionado. While their journey is peaceful, their welcome committee isn't so much, and soon Mahnmut and Orphu have to put together every creative shred of their mostly synthetic bodies to get their mission done.The third story line is earth-bound and deals with humans as we know them. Or almost. Served by servitors and voynixes (I have no idea about the English names, since I've read it in German, but that's not really important anyhow, is it? ;-D), the human race has become complacent and dull. The few human exemplars still living have forgotten how to read, how to care, and how to ask questions. Living lives focused on party, sex, and food, freed of the fear of any sudden and permanent death, and fed with stories about their afterlife and the eternal normalcy of their behaviour, they know nothing about the world they live in. But Harman, on the verge of reaching the age of 100 and therefore destined to die soon, is not satisfied. Hungry for life, he cannot accept his close demise and looks for answers in a world that doesn't know questions. On his quest, he takes with him Ada, Daeman, and Hannah - and finds Savi, the only human existing who is old enough to still remember a different world. Who can guide them along on a dangerous path to see for themselves what this world of theirs is made of. Where are the "Post-humans"? Why do humans live to a hundred and no longer? Why are they cared for like children? And who or better what are these voynixes?Aside from the craziness of the story itself, here is what I loved the most about it: the character portrayals and the perfectly thought through details. I loved Mahnmut and Orphu who, probably deliberately, defy their inhuman and synthetic exterior and have the most touching, human, and incredibly caring conversations (and show the behaviour and actions to match them) in the entire book. I enjoyed Daeman's development - a complete ignorant and arrogant idiot at first who in the fight for his own life and the life of others finds a strength in himself that he - and I as the reader - would have never thought him capable of. I loved how the Greek fighting scenes sounded so very Greek because they always began with a minute listing of who was where and said and did what. I enjoyed the fact that so much wasn't explained, that I had to just accept all the details at first and only later started to understand what they meant, how things worked together. How the whole world functioned. I had so many hypotheses while reading about where it was really set, what the time course might be, and I still have no idea now, but I LOVED all that. That I had to work, too, didn't only consume, but tried to interpret all the clues I got and still didn't manage to make up a coherent picture. And I still always felt that there WAS a coherent picture, I just didn't/couldn't see it. This is so very much recommended to anyone who thinks he/she could enjoy such a story, really let go and dive in. Because this book is brilliant. Especially the last 50 to 100 pages. Seriously. And now I'm off reading Olympos.
Christmas 2010: I realised that I had got stuck in a rut. I was re-reading old favourites again and again, waiting for a few trusted authors to release new works. Something had to be done.On the spur of the moment I set myself a challenge, to read every book to have won the Locus Sci-Fi award. That’s 35 books, 6 of which I’d previously read, leaving 29 titles by 14 authors who were new to me.While working through this reading list I got married, went on my honeymoon, switched career and became a father. As such these stories became imprinted on my memory as the soundtrack to the happiest period in my life (so far).In 2004, Ilium won the Locus Sci-Fi award. In my opinion, if the award had been a motor race, the other contenders would have got their asses lapped. That’s not to say there weren’t some good books in the running that year, Quicksilver is epic and I’ve heard good things about Pattern Recognition, The Speed of Dark and Singularity Sky – but Ilium is so far up my alley that it’s sitting on my lap and fiercely tonguing my tonsils.When I embarked upon my Locus Quest, I picked the Locus Sci-Fi Award over other more highly regarded genre awards (Hugo, Nebula, BSFA, Arthur C. Clarke) for one simple reason: Ilium . I looked at my bookcase, saw this book and thought “I want to read more books like that”. Glittering on the cover was a little silver sticker ‘Winner of the Locus Award for best Sci-Fi novel’. I looked online and discovered that none of the more prestigious awards had recognised and rewarded Mr Simmons' mind-blowing madcap genius. “If the good people at Locus share my sensibilities regarding Señor Simmons,” I thought to myself, “then perhaps I’ll share theirs regarding other books.” Just like that, the decision was made and I committed myself to reading every winner of the Locus Sci-Fi award – a reading list that has taken me best part of two years to complete.My introduction to Ilium set my spider-sense a-tingling. My Mum popped her head round the door and said ‘I’ve got one for you, I couldn’t get into it – it was all a bit much’. Now, that may not sound like an encouraging description, but where my Mum’s tolerance for high-concept sci-fi drops off a cliff my personal sweet-spot begins. Previous authors to elicit this response that it was ‘all a bit much’ included Stephen Baxter, Greg Egan, and Alistair Reynolds – a warm welcome to the new chairman of the 'bit much' club, Dan Simmons!Jayaprakash Satyamurthy has already done a superb job of summarising the story-strands so I advise you to pop over to his review to wrap your head around them.This mash-up of classic literature with razor sharp sci-fi is audacious and inspirational. It’s the kind of book that I wish I could write. It’s the kind of book I wish I could trace back to the creative spark that initiated it to try and spin in a new direction. I read the book with a delighted grin stretching my cheeks throughout. The kind of book I’d risk walking into lampposts for because I simply could not tear it away from my face. I’ve read it multiple times and it never fails to delight me. I suppose you could call me a fan?Off the back of Ilium I read its sequel Olympus (obviously) and then ventured further into Simmons’ work – The Hyperion Cantos, Song of Kali, the Joe Kurtz Trilogy, The Terror and The Hollow Man were all good reads and I’ve got Drood on my shortlist and Carrion Comfort and Summer of Night on my longlist to read as soon as the chance arises. It’s fair to say I’ve become a big fan of his work – he consistently pushes my buttons.I am happy to acknowledge that Ilium wont be for everyone (like my Mum) but whenever anyone asks me if it’s worth a read I can’t help but gush. If you have even a passing interest in sparkling, original, intelligent, playful sci-fi – give it a try!After this I read: Hyperion
What do You think about Ilium (2005)?
"Literary science fiction". One of the words in this phrase struggles and strains against the other two like an 18-month old who doesn't want to be picked up. It doesn't want to be associated with a genre that often is long on ideas and short on quality prose and sharp and distinct style. It often succeeds in escaping the pull of science fiction's weak gravity. Occassionaly, an author creates a story that is so dense that the word is held in place in an unstable orbit. Ultimately many of those fail under their own weight and implode into the speculative fiction black hole. Rarely, very rarely, O Muse, an author has the incredible imagination, literary style and guts to weave together a story with just the right mix of literary competence, adventure, science and kickassedness to balance needed to sustain the phrase. Dan Simmons did it with Hyperion with inhuman aplomb.And yes, he does it again with Ilium. It's freaking awesome. While Hyperion gave us a structure loosely based on the classic Chauceresque frame story, Ilium is straight up Homeric Trojan War. On Mars. With robots from Jupiter obsessed with Shakespeare and Proust. With the Greek gods and quantum teleportation. On Mars. Oh and dinosaurs. We take in a lot of the action from the point of view of a formelly dead scholar. Oh yes, Simmons has taken his favourite weapon of intertextuality and speared himself doosy.I have yet to read how Sai Simmons came up with this idea but I would not be shocked if it involved a bet and a half-empty bottle of whiskey. I can just imagine him waking up on the bathroom floor in the morning with some indecpherable napkin notes ending with the phrase "good luck with that". Stack on top of this Achillian challenge three seemingly unrelated plot lines that span the solar system and you have what I like to call, the unpossible.But that's what makes this book so good. Simmons takes the unpossible and shapes it with Zeus like vision into something that I read in a little over a week, smiling the entire time. The pace will have you gasping in the thin air of Olympus Mons.There is absolutely no way I can give this less than 5 stars considering the pure effort it must have required to conjure up this opus and for the resulting amusement park for your brain. However, if I had any critique, it might be the same as I had for the Fall of Hyperion and it's only in (an unfair) comparison to their predecessor: many characters in Hyperion are so unique and familiar that it's difficult if not impossible to reproduce that feeling in subsequent works. I did identify with Hockenberry fairly well though and even with the damn robots.To continue my theme from my review of Carrion Comfort, five Dan Simmons books into it and I can say he remains at the top of my list.
—Kane
The plot of this book is to complex to even attempt to go into but it has a dead historian recording events of the Trojan war for the gods, strange humans on a seemingly distant future earth, a machine race of explorers living on the outskirts of the solar system, and Shakespeare. Believe it or not they all go together in not such a surreal way as you might think. The characters are well rounded and evolve with the story. I don't know that it has important moral implications in the world but it was very entertaining to read.
—Matt
An alternate future earth where humans have forgotten how to read. Living robots who share a love of classic literature. An ancient Greek battle where iconic heroes do battle with the gods of Olympus. Mix these all up in a space opera novel (or two) and you get the novels Ilium by Dan Simmons. This complex, lengthy tome is quite the journey, spanning two books (the second is Olympos, but I’m just writing one review for both novels). tThe plot lines are so complicated and detailed (indeed, each book is over 700 pages long!) that I’m surprised he used a two-book format rather than the usual trilogy series. Set in the far future, with three disparate plots, seemingly unconnected to each other, one wonders what they’re doing in the same book. One storyline includes man-made robots “living” throughout the solar system. They actually have organic parts in their bodies, and have been programmed to have human curiosity, and a fascination with the arts. Two robots in particular, a small biped named Mahnmut and a large, horseshoe crab-like moravec called Orphu, are from moons of Jupiter, and are fascinated with human culture and feelings. They develop a strong bond as they are recruited to investigate an astonishingly rapid terraforming of Mars.tAnother story involves humans living an idyllic life, their entire existence focused on superficial, meaningless activities, casual sex, shallow parties, etc. In fact, they’ve lost a basic curiosity of life and science, and don’t care about anything beyond the current fashion or trends. However, a few of them develop a fascination with ancient skills and trades, and start learning how to melt and pour metal, actually read from books, travel without the use of fax nodes or being pulled along by servitors. Their amusing hobby soon turns into necessary skills of survival.tAlso, there is a story involving the siege of Troy, or Ilium, as the author puts it. A scholar (scholic) who was re-assembled after his natural death on earth is covertly asked by the goddess Aphrodite to use magical (actually, advanced technological) devices to kill Athena. The scholic, Hockenberry, is an expert on the Trojan War, and knows how it’s supposed to play out. However, with this wrench (or should I say, ‘knife’?) thrown into the battle plans, how will the war between the Greeks and Trojans conclude?tAgain, three seemingly different and independent plotlines that gradually (at a snail’s pace!) come together and form a larger picture of an epic story that transcends time and space, literally. There are some bizarre characters that play the same roles as their namesakes from Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Not being familiar with that story, I Googled it just to get a better understanding of Caliban, Prospero, Sycorax, et al. I found Simmon’s use of these Shakespearean characters in his extraordinary setting interesting, but absurd. A lizard-like humanoid named Caliban? Really? I found these Shakespearean references somewhat jarring and abruptly removed me from the depths of the story. However, experiencing the ancient Greek gods and goddesses plotting against each other and playing their games with the lives of men (just as in the classic myths) was refreshing and satisfying. tThere is some heavy science in this fiction. Quantum teleportation, string theory, nanotechnology, and other technological ideas are used plainly and easily by the characters. Though a bit confusing initially, the context of the story allows the reader to gain a workable grasp of the more complex physics that are mentioned in the books. Ilium and Olympus are actually two acts of one story. The books are dense and in need of further editing, but the story is engaging for the most part, despite its daunting length. If you’re adventurous enough to give it a try, be prepared to spend more time on these books than your usual literary fare. Be warned, however: the journey is much more enjoyable than the final destination.
—Lewis
