Ilium
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4.6 • 29 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
From the Hugo Award–winning author of the Hyperion Cantos, the first book of a breathtaking duology (with Olympos) based on the themes of Homer’s The Iliad and Shakespeare’s The Tempest—a groundbreaking work from a “magnificently original” (Denver Post) writer.
Dan Simmons’s Hyperion created a sensation among readers worldwide. The New York Times called the four Hyperion novels “an unfailingly inventive narrative that bears comparison with such classics as Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series, Frank Herbert’s Dune, and Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun.” In this return to epic science fiction, Simmons begins a new saga based on the themes of The Iliad and The Tempest.
With events set 3,000 years in the past and 2,500 years in the future, with action leaping from the volcanoes and terraformed oceans of Mars, to Jupiter space, to the Plains of Ilium during the Trojan War, to the wildly changed Earth of the distant future—in a story filled with characters like Caliban and Achilles and Helen of Troy, with immortal gods who may be neither immortal nor gods, with all-too mortal humans who might be much more than human—Ilium celebrates science fiction’s sense of wonder in a way few other tales have attempted. Full of action, passion, and intelligence sure to appeal to a diverse range of readers, Ilium explores the themes of fate, courage, friendship, duty, and death on a heroic scale.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
