Ilium
2003
- gods, greek
- greek mythology
- greek gods
- fiction
- science fiction
- imaginary wars and battles
- mythology, greek
- fiction, science fiction, general
- fiction, fantasy, historical
- science fiction, fantasy, horror
The story
From the author of the Hyperion Cantos -- one of the most acclaimed popular series in contemporary science fiction -- comes a powerful epic of high-tech gods, human heroes, total war, and the extraordinary transcendence of ordinary beings. The first book in a two-part epic. "I am in awe of Dan Simmons." -- Stephen King. From the towering heights of Olympos Mons on Mars, the mighty Zeus and his immortal family of gods, goddesses, and demigods look down upon a momentous battle, observing -- and often influencing -- the legendary exploits of Paris, Achilles, Hector, Odysseus, and the clashing armies of Greece and Troy. Thomas Hockenberry, former twenty-first-century professor and Iliad scholar, watches as well. It is Hockenberry's duty to observe and report on the Trojan War's progress to the so-called deities who saw fit to return him from the dead. But the muse he serves has a new assignment for the wary scholic, one dictated by Aphrodite herself. With the help of fortieth-century technology, Hockenberry is to infiltrate Olympos, spy on its divine inhabitants ... and ultimately destroy Aphrodite's sister and rival, the goddess Pallas Athena. On an Earth profoundly changed since the departure of the Post-Humans centuries earlier, the great events on the bloody plains of Ilium serve as mere entertainment. Its scenes of unrivaled heroics and unequaled carnage add excitement to human lives devoid of courage, strife, labor, and purpose. But this eloi-like existence is not enough for Harman, a man in the last year of his last Twenty. That rarest of post-postmodern men -- an "adventurer" -- he intends to explore far beyond the boundaries of his world before his allotted time expires, in search of a lost past, a devastating truth, and an escape from his own inevitable "final fax." Meanwhile, from the radiation-swept reaches of Jovian space, four sentient machines race to investigate -- and, perhaps, terminate -- the potentially catastrophic emissions of unexplained quantum-f
What it’s like
Dense, ornate prose that layers classical Greek epic diction over far-future sci-fi, so the page feels crowded with marble, bronze, and gleaming machinery at once. Long chapters of sweeping vistas alternate with close, scholarly interiority: sunlit Aegean plains and wine-dark seas beneath the enormous rust-red sky of Mars, the glitter of Olympos Mons, the cold dark of Jovian space. Its vibe is grand, erudite, and melancholy, a little like reading an ancient war poem beamed in from a dying future. The moods suit a slow weekend with a dictionary close by, or a long flight when you want to be fully absorbed. Pacing is deliberate and digressive, with frequent shifts between the battlefield, the divine council, and the sleepy human world that watches the war as entertainment. Its people are scholars and seekers slowly confronting their own limits, from a professor drawn back into his beloved epic to an adventurer racing toward a fate he cannot escape. Violence is frequent and often graphic: the Trojan battles bring extended, bloody carnage, with dismemberment and grim deaths, and some passages turn dark and horror-tinged. Gentle readers should steer clear. This is for readers who love myth retold at epic scale, classicists curious about a speculative twist, and fans of ambitious, sprawling science fiction.
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