Ilium

Rating:
Summary: Fun and imaginative far-future SF
Review: Review: Ilium, by Dan Simmons (2003)

a review by Rich Horton

On the whole, I was pretty pleased. Ilium is full of SFnal imaginative brio (if not always very plausible), and it's also full of pretty absorbing action. My main complaints are a) that it's only the first half of its story (though it does come to at least a somewhat satisfying stopping point; and b) that so far it doesn't seem to be about much -- it's fun and has lots of interesting ideas but it seems somewhat slight.

The story is told on three main threads. The most prominent centers on Thomas Hockenberry, a 20th century college professor who specialized in Homer. He has been mysteriously resurrected in this far future, and he is one of a number of "scholics" employed by the gods (yes, Zeus, Aphrodite, etc.) to observe the progress of the Trojan War, which is being fought (reenacted? refought for real? fought for the first time somehow? who knows?) on what seems to be Mars. (The gods, of course, live on Mt. Olympos -- that is to say, the great volcano Olympus Mons.) The scholics keep track of how closely the war tracks Homer's poem, which turns out to be pretty closely. But the gods' arbitrary violence, and a general despair at the bloody-mindedness of everyone, drive Hockenberry to rebellion -- at first just a night with Helen (!), but soon a plot against the gods themselves.

Meanwhile, the AIs called moravecs who live in the Jupiter system have detected unsettling activity on Mars, and they send an expedition. One member of this expedition is Mahnmut, who lives on Europa and drives a submersible exploring the Europan seas. He is also an expert on Shakespeare's sonnets. His best friend is Orphu of Io, a Proust enthusiast. The two are marooned on Mars when the expedition comes to disaster, and they head for Olympus Mons on their own to try to complete the mission.

And finally, in Earth, Daeman is a foolish young man living in the rather stale society of the few remaining humans on the planet after the long past exodus of the "posthumans" to Earth orbit. The Earth humans live lives of idle eroticism and sloth, unable to read, unaware of geography as they "fax" (i.e. teleport) everywhere, served by robotic "servitors" and the alien Voynix. Every 20 years they are "faxed" to orbit and repaired, but they live only five "Twenties". Daeman visits a beautiful young woman named Ada in hopes of seducing her, and finds himself all unwilling drawn into the schemes of Ada, her friend Hannah, an ancient Jewish woman named Savi, and a 99 year old man named Harman who wants to avoid extinction when he reaches his fifth "twenty". This group ends up wandering the Earth: Antarctica, Israel, the dry Mediterranean Basin, in hopes of finding a way to the home of the posthumans in orbit.

Which is pretty much it for this book. Which isn't to say that nothing is resolved -- lots happens, and there is a lot of change. There are bloody battles, rampaging Allosauruses, some weird technology, aliens, gods of various sorts, heroism, fooling around, disasters. It's lots of fun, and the scene is well set for what could be a pretty exciting concluding volume.

Rating:
Summary: A worthy book
Review: This is another very enjoyable book from Mr Simmons. He comingles three interesting story lines very well and heaps a dose of imaginative yet unplausible technologies and scenarios on top to boot.

I think this book is reflective of his style of writing, although perhaps it shows a little less character development than the Hyperion Four. Given the quantity of characters, he makes the necessary investments in detail approriate for each. His fantastic imagination is reflected both in the characters and the worlds in which they live--a true Hyperion effort--but he borrows fairly heavily from past ideas and concepts. However, one story in particular, that of the moravecs, is rich enough in SF ideas to easily make another novel for which I will wait patiently.

I could have done without the references to current events. It felt like CNN splashed down right in the middle of a world so unfamiliar to ours that the references to our world detract from the story rather than add to it. Subtract half a star.

Rating:
Summary: Good read, though it lost some Thunder....
Review: Ilium begins -- through approximately half of its volume-- as a most excellent, 5-star book set, at least partially, in a future environment with the Trojan war, Greek gods and goddesses, and semi-sentient logo- and bio-spheres. The stage is intriguing, the characters are well-done, and the 'what's going on here' factor is at its foremost.

At that point, however, Ilium loses some thunder and dips into 'standard mass fiction fare'. The characterizations are tossed out the window, if you will, in lieu of (at least partially implausible) scenarios involving nuclear explosions, and one antagonist that appears directly lifted from the LotR (Gollum), albeit with a different name. *However*, despite dipping into the lighter fare of pulp-fiction, it's still a good read (by those standards).

Now, with that being said, it presents the reader (and this reviewer) with a conundrum: do I review with the more abject, and 'stodgy' science fiction genre or with the fluffy, pulp-fiction popcorn fare? With the former, it's a 3-star book; the latter? a 5-star book.

So, I'll take the middle-road and rate it with 4 stars and this caveat: I hope, in volume 2, Dan Simmons adheres more closely to the style and implementation of the first portion of Ilium. That portion was-- is-- legendary.

Rating:
Summary: A great book, worth reading
Review: There are mainly two reasons why I am not giving a five star rating. Compared to Hyperion Dan Simmons has this annoying tendency to end any chapter with a cliffhanger a la Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. It wouldn't be a problem if there weren't only a few chapters. I almost have the feeling that Simmons already wrote with the movie version in mind (coincidentally the rights are already sold, even that the story hasn't found an end yet.) This is in my opinion a cheap method compared to Hyperion, which consists mainly out of 6 complete short stories.

The other negative aspect is that he had combined the story lines only of two out of three stories yet. The tale of the old-fashion humans are still detached to the other twos. But this is a minor point and I guess that in the upcoming sequel this will not be an issue any more.

Despite these (minor) negative points I still rate this book as a great SF novel. The reason is the same as with Hyperion, that he refers to works of other authors. In Hyperion it was Chaucer and Keats, here it is mainly Homer, Shakespeare and Proust, but there are subtle references to others as well. Besides the obvious (Homer's Ilium as the major plot line and the discussions on Shakespeare and Proust), he also uses it on a different level. So it is no coincidence that the LGM are working for Prospero, when helping the shipwrecked bio-robots. And of course the storm while they are on board of the Marian ship is a more than subtle reference, although I am not going so far to say that Simmons uses as a symbol.
And again Simmons gives you enough space for your own thoughts, because he leaves a lot unexplained (at least in this novel). As in Hyperion you are stimulated to think ahead and to try to understand the pieces of informations Simmons gives you (such as the wandering Odysseus or the Voynix concentration in Jerusalem)

I enjoyed reading Ilium and looking forward for the conclusion, coming out next year).

Rating:
Summary: Doesn't shake a stick at Hyperion stories
Review: This book is Mr. Simmons getting a big ego and feeling some need to bring back a greek fable interwoven into a sci-fi book so that we all kow-tow to his litarary mastery.

We'll I LOVED the Hyperion stories and I just wish he'd stick to writing them. Picasso did just fine hanging out as a cubist and I don't know why Mr Simmons feels the need to go jumping all over the damn place. He is a master sci-fi writer, but his forays into horror and ancient greece come up short.

I did read the whole thing, and there are certain wortwhile parts to this book, but on the whole, it was better then nyquil for getting me to sleep.

Rating:
Summary: Couldn't put it down!
Review: I hold Dan Simmons completely responsible for the exhaustian I felt the day after I finished reading Ilium. I started reading the book on a Saturday afternoon and couldn't put it down. I read halfway through the night, in as many snatches as I could on Sunday (that is, when the kids and the dogs weren't making demands on me) and then halfway through the night on Sunday-til I finally finished! Like Hyperion, this book is so creative, so unusual and so fast paced that you can't put it down. Hurry up with that sequel Dan.

Rating:
Summary: Awesome!
Review: This was a great book, it has a little of everything. From battles with the greek gods to quantum physics. A great read can not wait for the next.

Rating:
Summary: Compelling, then overextended, and finally, truly ridiculous
Review: In this novel, Simmons begins strongly, with a vigorous multi-stranded narrative, a vivid sense of atmosphere and drama spread across a colorful solar system. But instead of two long volumes, *Ilium*/*Olympus* clearly needed to be a single, spare 300 page book. At around the halfway point, Simmon's plotwheels begin spinning in place. His obsession (remarked upon in other reviews) with the future relevancy of dead Male Western writers, yields dull, increasingly unlikely conversations, mostly between the two robots who bear resemblances, infrequently, to R2-D2 and C3PO, but more often to the robots from *The Black Hole* or, even worse, the Buck Rogers TV show (admittedly with Master's degrees in Shakespeare and Proust). Characterization grows thinner and thinnner. The situation deteriorates into a *truly* ridiculous cliffhanger ending, with a turgid B-movie monster and Zeus hurling atom bombs at the Greeks. I can't imagine that the forthcoming volume will recover.

Rating:
Summary: Freakin' Great
Review: It may be impossible to top the mind stretching that Hyperion and it's sequel
gave us. But Ilium does a give a run for it's money. Simmons again takes a
core story, near and dear to Western civilization's heart, and heavily modifies
it then flings it into an unimagined future. Be ready for a wild ride.

Rating:
Summary: Competent SF/Fantasy, with some points for original thought.
Review: Writing about anachronistic characters is, at least for me, a cardinal sin in the sf/fantasy world, especially since so few can manage to pull it off convincingly. Illium, therefore, presented more than a few problems for me at the outset: a modern classicist, who's consciousness is hurled into the future to document a restaging of the Trojan War, with all the "real" gods and heroes intact. Of course, in true Einsteinian fashion, observing the war results in changes to the Homeric model, and events gradually spin out of control. The first few chapters annoyed me. It's a long book, and I wasn't really excited about spending a week or so with a book that seemed to be developing into something truly hokey.

Well, it is hokey, almost completely so, but it's to Simmons' credit that he pulls such a ridiculous plot off with a minimum of groans. The prose is competent, often rising to very good, and he pays a decent amount of time (by sf standards) to developing the main character, the unfortunately named, "Hockenberry." Most other characters get very little, the exception being two artificially intelligent life forms from one of the moons of Jupiter, who reveal much about themselves in their conversations about historical Earth literature.

The other sticking point is that this is the first book of two, thought the second book will not be so much a sequel as simply the second portion of the novel. Don't expect a satisfying conclusion to this book, as it ends very awkwardly.

All in all, Illium is decent. It's a cut above most sf/fantasy, with some interesting big ideas. It's mostly set-up for a bigger conflict, though, to be seen in the subsequent volume.