Product Description

Taking the events and characters of the Iliad as his jumping- off point, Dan Simmons has created an epic of time travel and savage warfare. Travellers from 40,000 years in the future return to Homer's Greece and rewrite history forever, their technology impacting on the population in a godlike fashion. This is broad scope space opera rich in classical and literary allusion, from one of the key figures in 1990s world SF. Ilium marks a return to the genre for one of its greats.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #46206 in Books
• Published on: 2004-03-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 656 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Genre-hopping Dan Simmons returns to science fiction with the vast and intricate masterpiece Ilium. Within, Simmons weaves three astounding story lines into one Earth, Mars and Jupiter-shattering cliffhanger that will leave readers aching for the sequel.

On Earth, a post-technological group of humans, pampered by servant machines and easy travel via "faxing," begins to question its beginnings. Meanwhile, a team of sentient and Shakespeare-quoting robots from Jupiter's lunar system embark on a mission to Mars to investigate an increase in dangerous quantum fluctuations. On the Red Planet, they'll find a race of metahumans living out existence as the pantheon of classic Greek gods. These "gods" have recreated the Trojan War with reconstituted Greeks and Trojans and staffed it with scholars from throughout Earth's history who observe the events and report on the accuracy of Homer's Iliad. One of these scholars, Thomas Hockenberry, finds himself tangled in the midst of interplay between the gods and their playthings and sends the war reeling in a direction the blind poet could have never imagined.

Simmons creates an exciting and thrilling tale set in the thick of the Trojan War as seen through Hockenberry's 20th-century eyes. At the same time, Simmons's robots study Shakespeare and Proust and the origin-seeking Earthlings find themselves caught in a murderous retelling of The Tempest. Reading this highly literate novel does take more than a passing familiarity with at least The Iliad but readers who can dive into these heady waters and swim with the current will be amply rewarded. --Jeremy Pugh, Amazon.com

About the Author
Dan Simmons won the World Fantasy Award for his first novel, SONG OF KALI,. inspired by his travels in India. In the 1990s he rewrote the SF rulebook with his Hyperion Cantos quartet. He has also written thrillers. Alongside his writing he maintains a career as a college lecturer in English Literature in the USA.

Customer Reviews

Be warned - the sequel is rubbish
This is a good book - the first half of a complex story, with a great cliff-hanger ending. The bad news is that the sequel - Olympos - is a massive let down and not worth reading. So, best to read this book and then forever wonder what might have happened next - just don't bother to read Dan Simmons' sequel.

Intelligent and surprising.
This is a strange book with an unusual mix of viewpoints and characters.

The idea of post-humans and the exploration of a variety of futuristic concepts is interesting with a good pace and with idea after idea being dropped in.
We see a variety of future races as concepts as they interact with lots of surprises and mini dramas along the way.

We get to see a version of the Iliad with the very human reactions of Hockenberry who is remembering his past and being trapped into actions he would prefer to avoid by the gods.

There is also some humour injected by the two literary robots who are probably the most human characters in the book.

It is quite a dark book with a bleak future in many ways but with so many ideas thrown together that you never dwell on the possible extinction of humanity.

The sequel to Hyperion was a let down never being better than average and it only remains to see if the sequel to this book can keep to the high standard set here.

Excellent, eclectic, fascinating
This book made me late for work.
I kept reading it late into the night.

The three themes come together in an unusual way, well researched (Troy) and a few open plotlines left for the sequel -which i hear is called Olympus.
I shall be ordering that ASAP.

The idea of an altered Earth is fascinating; I always love trying to figure out how the historical changes happened and what I would do to survive in such an environment.

The 'Gods' are a mystery and remain so - the question to Zeus, "Who are you and where did you come," from is never answered - hopefully the sequel will. likewise the big question - why the hell does an advanced culture want to play Greeks and Gods is never answered; I assume they like the bloodshed of crude battle.

I rather liked the little Moravec, sentient machine from the moon Io, although his harping on about Shakespeare's sonnets did get on the mammaries after a bit. I suppose the author wanted to educate us a bit - but the classical scholars never read the Sc-Fi books at University, just us geeks -the same ones they now need to advise them on Technology. Ha!