Ilium

Review by Booklist Review

The author of the popular and highly praised Hyperion books returns to sf in his usual manner, applying a variety of raw materials to a very large canvas with a free hand. There is the cast of the Trojan War--warriors, women, gods, and all. There is a terraformed Mars. There are robotic scholars resurrected from literature, a pastoral but poisoned Earth (genetic engineering was overdone), and Savi, the Wandering Jew. The action in and around Troy is the easiest to follow, provided one is familiar with the Iliad. The action on Earth and the terraformed Mars develops more slowly because of the vast changes in human beings and the widespread development of artificial intelligence, which tends to follow its own rules, which Simmons must elucidate. Fortunately, Savi serves as a bridge between the past and the future. The book concludes with a cliffhanger, to be resolved in the forthcoming Olympos. Simmons has entered the ranks of those writers--a distinguished company, beginning with Euripides--who are disgusted by the gods' behavior in the Iliad. Broadly literate sf fans with a high tolerance for uneven pacing will be the readers who are best able to orient themselves. An impressive if not transparently accessible novel, and as such no surprise coming from Simmons. RolandGreen.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Hugo and Stoker winner Simmons (Hyperion) makes a spectacular return to large-scale space opera in this elegant monster of a novel. Many centuries in the future, Earth's small, more or less human population lives an enjoyable, if drone-like existence. Elsewhere, on some alternate Earth, or perhaps it's the distant past, the battle for Troy is in its ninth year. Oddly, its combatants, Hector, Achilles and the rest, seem to be following a script, speaking their lines exactly as Homer reported them in The Iliad. The Gods, who live on Olympus Mons on the planet Mars, may be post-humans, or aliens, or, well, Gods; it isn't entirely clear. Thomas Hockenberry, a late-20th-century professor of the classics from De Pauw University in Indiana, has, along with other scholars from his era, apparently been resurrected by the Gods. His job is to take notes on the war and compare its progress to Homer's tale, noting even the smallest deviations. Meanwhile, the "moravecs," a civilization of diverse, partially organic AIs clustered on the moons of Jupiter, have been disturbed by the quantum activity they've registered from the inner solar system and have sent an expedition to Mars to investigate. It will come as no surprise to the author's fans that the expedition's members include specialists in Shakespeare and Proust. Beautifully written, chock full of literary references, grand scenery and fascinating characters, this book represents Simmons at his best. (July 22) Forecast: An 11-city author tour, plus the anticipation over Simmons's first new SF epic in years, will fuel sales. The conclusion to this two-part saga, Olympos, is due in 2004. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

The first in a new series drawing on The Iliad and The Tempest, no less. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

A three-pronged start to another gigantic series from Simmons (the Hyperion Cantos) that will leave most readers waiting breathlessly for the next installment. Ilium, of course, is another name for ancient Troy, and the tale opens on the blood-soaked plains of that besieged city as the Greek armies carry on their nearly decade-long attack, while Thomas Hockenberry, Ph.D.--"the unwilling Chorus of this tale"--studies the whole affair. Reassembled from scraps of DNA thousands of years in the future, Hockenberry and a host of other scholars were gathered up and sent to the past by a race of creatures with awesome powers and fickle tempers (the Greek gods) to serve as their recorders for what they saw as this grandest of games. Hockenberry is a past master of the Homeric epics, so the job has its rewards, namely comparing Homer's poetry to the specifics of the battle taking place in front of him. It's a harrowing affair, since ancient warfare is more horrific than he imagined (the Greek and Trojan "heroes" are often just overmuscled nitwits), and since one of the "gods," Aphrodite, has just enlisted him to help kill Athena. The two other story arcs (which link up later) take their cues from The Tempest (and more than a touch of The Time Machine) rather than from The Iliad. In one branch of the story, a band of research robots dives into the terraformed atmosphere of Mars, while in the other, a small race of impossibly spoiled people putter about in the genetically altered, gardenlike playground that is Earth far in the future. Just as unwieldy and pretentious as it sounds, but Simmons (Worlds Enough & Time, 2002, etc.) never lets the story get away from him, using copious amounts of wit to keep the action grounded--and utterly addictive. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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Ilium Chapter One The Plains of Ilium Rage. Sing, O Muse, of the rage of Achilles, of Peleus' son, murderous, man-killer, fated to die, sing of the rage that cost the Achaeans so many good men and sent so many vital, hearty souls down to the dreary House of Death. And while you're at it, O Muse, sing of the rage of the gods themselves, so petulant and so powerful here on their new Olympos, and of the rage of the post-humans, dead and gone though they might be, and of the rage of those few true humans left, self-absorbed and useless though they may have become. While you are singing, O Muse, sing also of the rage of those thoughtful, sentient, serious but not-so-close-to-human beings out there dreaming under the ice of Europa, dying in the sulfur-ash of Io, and being born in the cold folds of Ganymede. Oh, and sing of me, O Muse, poor born-again-against-his-will Hockenberry--poor dead Thomas Hockenberry, Ph.D., Hockenbush to his friends, to friends long since turned to dust on a world long since left behind. Sing of my rage, yes, of my rage , O Muse, small and insignificant though that rage may be when measured against the anger of the immortal gods, or when compared to the wrath of the god-killer, Achilles. 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. If I am to be the unwilling Chorus of this tale, then I can start the story anywhere I choose. I choose to start it here. It is a day like every other day in the more than nine years since my rebirth. I awaken at the Scholia barracks, that place of red sand and blue sky and great stone faces, am summoned by the Muse, get sniffed and passed by the murderous cerberids, am duly carried the seventeen vertical miles to the grassy summits of Olympos via the high-speed east-slope crystal escalator and--once reported in at the Muse's empty villa--receive my briefing from the scholic going off-shift, don my morphing gear and impact armor, slide the taser baton into my belt, and then QT to the evening plains of Ilium. If you've ever imagined the siege of Ilium, as I did professionally for more than twenty years, I have to tell you that your imagination almost certainly was not up to the task. Mine wasn't. The reality is far more wonderful and terrible than even the blind poet would have us see. First of all there there is the city, Ilium, Troy, one of the great armed poleis of the ancient world--more than two miles away from the beach where I stand now but still visible and beautiful and domineering on its high ground, its tall walls lighted by thousands of torches and bonfires, its towers not quite as topless as Marlowe would have us believe, but still amazing--tall, rounded, alien, imposing. Then there are the Achaeans and Danaans and other invaders--technically not yet "Greeks" since that nation will not come into being for more than two thousand years, but I will call them Greeks anyway--stretched mile after mile here along the shoreline. When I taught the Iliad , I told my students that the Trojan War, for all its Homeric glory, had probably been a small affair in reality--some few thousands of Greek warriors against a few thousand Trojans. Even the best informed members of the scholia --that group of Iliad scholars going back almost two millennia--estimated from the poem that there could not possibly be more than 50,000 Achaeans and other Greek warriors drawn up in their black ships along the shore. They were wrong. Estimates now show that there are more than 250,000 attacking Greeks and about half that number of defending Trojans and their allies. Evidently every warrior hero in the Greek Isles came running to this battle--for battle meant plunder--and brought his soldiers and allies and retainers and slaves and concubines with him. The visual impact is stunning: mile upon mile of lighted tents, campfires, sharpened-stake defenses, miles of trenches dug in the hard ground above the beaches--not for hiding and hunkering in, but as a deterrent to Trojan cavalry--and, illuminating all those miles of tents and men and shining on polished spears and bright shields, thousands of bonfires and cooking fires and corpse fires burning bright. Corpse fires. For the past few weeks, pestilence has been creeping through the Greek ranks, first killing donkeys and dogs, then dropping a soldier here, a servant there, until suddenly in the past ten days it has become an epidemic, slaying more Achaean and Danaan heroes than the defenders of Ilium have in months. I suspect it is typhus. The Greeks are sure it is the anger of Apollo. I've seen Apollo from a distance--both on Olympos and here--and he's a very nasty fellow. Apollo is the archer god, lord of the silver bow, "he who strikes from afar," and while he's the god of healing, he's also the god of disease. More than that, he's the principle divine ally of the Trojans in this battle, and if Apollo were to have his way, the Achaeans would be wiped out. Whether this typhoid came from the corpse-fouled rivers and other polluted water here or from Apollo's silver bow, the Greeks are right to think that he wishes them ill. At this moment the Achaean "lords and kings"--and every one of these Greek heroes is a sort of king or lord in his own province and in his own eyes--are gathering in a public assembly . . . Ilium . Copyright © by Dan Simmons. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold. Excerpted from Ilium by Dan Simmons All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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