Ilium (Gollancz S.F.) (Paperback)

The gods of Greek Mythology have chosen to exist on a newly terraformed Mars. To pass the time, they have brought Homer's Iliad to life, featuring real warring Trojan and Greek armies. As a side-project, the gods have brought back scholars who specialise in Homer's epic poem, with the aim of recording how accurate Homer's account was to the real thing. Thomas Hockenberry is one such scholar, and he's been in the thick of it for nearly 9 years. Tired and jaded with the constant witnesses to carnage, along with the very real threat of being killed by his Muse at a whim, Hockenberry is close to throwing it in. But the gods have another plan for him, one which will throw Mount Olympos into utter chaos.

At the same time we have a consortium of 5 robots who are about to leave Jupiter for Mars. They are on a mission to investigate the strange happenings on Mars - the recent terraformation of the once red planet, and a disturbingly high number of quantum teleportation which might just tear a big enough hole in space to swallow the whole universe.

Having just finished the novel, I am still unable to get over the sheer ambitious act of creating a world where Greek Mythology walks hand in hand with quantum/nano-technology. But it is not just the originality of the idea that makes it so great; it is Simmons' delivery that adds to the "wow" factor. Simmons avoids "showing off" and making the myth/technology idea into a one-trick pony. Using it as his basis, Simmons carefully builds upon this idea into a full-blown epic of a tale. WIth such gigantic deals at stake, it is obvious that we will know what is going to happen: that we will see the full wrath of Zeus, god of all gods. But that doesn't matter: what matters is that Simmons places us into the thick of it and carefully guides us through the three seperate story lines of Ilium, and delivers us to a climatic cliff hanger.

Simmons' style is as reader friendly as ever. Having a very basic knowledge of Greek Mythology, Homer's original poem, and some Shakespeare (all coming from primary and juniour high school), I found I had no problems in picking out the various inter-textual references that Simmons throws into an already heady mix. Add to this the main theme of Ilium - the idea of fate and who is ultimately in control of it? - and you have a very smart novel.

This book will redefine space opera. It could've so easily been just another sci-fi/alternate history adventure (ala Eric Flint and Harry Turtledove). Instead, it upps the ante for all sci-fi novels with its sheer idiotic ambitiousness, and its ability to deliver on what it has promised. Ilium reads like it is part one of one big novel, rather than a seperate entity to an eventual follow up. But by the time you finish Ilium, you will be in so much awe of Simmons, that you will forgive him for leaving you half way of this literary roller coaster ride. Ilium brings to the science fiction genre much deserved respectability and recognition. In the midst of popcorn entertainment and overblown excesses within the genre (not that it is a bad thing) Ilium is truly a work that will win over the critics (of the literary kind as well) and the masses. Truly magnificent.

The Trojan War is being reenacted on Mars by a race of metahumans who have assumed the roles of the Greek gods of classical mythology. Our vantage point to this exercise is Thomas Hockenberry, a scholar who is pretty sure he is dead and remembers little of his life on earth, but knows Homer's epic poem chapter and verse, and along with the rest of his colleagues is cataloguing where the action diverges from the "Iliad." It seems that Homer played around with the chronology when he wrote his epic thousands of years ago, which begs the question of why Hockenberry is now watching it played out and getting involved in a way that goes well beyond academic interest, beginning with a night in the bed of Helen of Troy herself. Meanwhile, a couple of robots with a propensity for quoting Shakespeare and Proust are leaving Jupiter to head to Mars to check out the strange readings they are picking up and back on Earth a group of humans living in a post-technological world where mechanical servants take care of their every needs are starting to rethink the way things are. When the latter meets up with Odysseus, we have another substantial clue that (surprise, surprise) these three plot threads are all parts of the same puzzle.

I have to admit that my interest for the non-"Iliad" parts of "Ilium" took a while to be kindled, mainly because my fascination with how the Trojan War was playing out was so great. Hockenberry has been studying the Trojan War for nine years and as the novel begins he and his colleagues are excited because they have finally reached the start of the "Iliad," when Agamemnon, King of the Acheans, arrogantly insults the great warrior Achilles over Briseis of the lovely arms. However, this becomes almost a minor consideration for Hockenberry the Muse he serves brings him to the goddess Aphrodite, who wants the scholar to kill the Athene herself.

From the opening paragraph, where Simmons does a pointed take off on the famous beginning of Homer's epic, Simmons dances his story in and around the "Iliad." The question of how a mere mortal such as Diomedes could dare to attack the gods themselves on the battlefield, and actually wound then, is not answered: he is injected with nano-technology by another deity. However, it is when we get to the fateful point where Homer's story is effectively derailed and Hockenberry makes the inevitable declaration to Dorothy's little dog that we are no longer in the "Iliad" and are now charting new ground.

Ultimately Simmons is more like Euripides than Homer. It was the Greek dramatist who set up the ironic foreshadowing of the conflict between Agamemnon and Achilles in "Iphigenia at Aulis" and who created an emotional counterpart in "The Trojan Women" to the end of the "Iliad," where Hector's corpse is brought back to the city. Homer's epics were not holy writ for the ancient Greeks, and the tragic poets could use his characters to tell their own stories, which is exactly what Simmons is doing (there is one part that struck me as a deadly serious twist on Aristophanes’ “Lysistrata”). I have the feeling that the conclusion will be more like the "Odyssey," especially since the "original" fate of Troy, Achilles, Hector, and the others are well over the rainbow, but now I am curious to see not only what happens next, and who wins the new war that has begun, but also because I want to find out who is behind the curtain.