Ilium - by Dan Simmons (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

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.

From the Back Cover

The Trojan War rages at the foot of Olympos Mons on Mars -- observed and influenced from on high by Zeus and his immortal family -- and twenty-first-century professor Thomas Hockenberry is there to play a role in the insidious private wars of vengeful gods and goddesses. On Earth, a small band of the few remaining humans pursues a lost past and devastating truth -- as four sentient machines depart from Jovian space to investigate, perhaps terminate, the potentially catastrophic emissions emanating from a mountaintop miles above the terraformed surface of the Red Planet.

Review Quotes

"[Ilium] will leave most readers waiting breathlessly for the next installment...utterly addictive." - Kirkus Reviews

"Ilium is Simmons's best book in years, wonderfully complex but compulsively readable. Only Simmons could mix together Homer, Shakespeare, and Proust with black holes, Turing machines, little green men and big honking robots to come up with a tale of high adventure that's also an engrossing meditation on humanity's past and future. A book that crackles with energy and invention." - Joe Haldeman, author of The Forever War