Ilium

Author: Dan Simmons

Do you like original, intelligent fiction, with a hard sci-fi slant? No? Well, clearly there's something wrong with you. Google your symptoms, and get to a doctor! Personally, our prescription would be a library, an Amazon store, and a list of Locus Award novels, but I acknowledge I'm not exactly a doctor. Ilium is the first part in Dan Simmons' literary science fiction doxology telling the Iliad story, set in an alternate history Earth and Mars. The novel follows three groups of beings: Hockenberry - a 20th century scholar, Greek and Trojan warriors, Greek gods from the Iliad, humans, and the "moravec" robots. A Zeus family influenced Trojan War boils on the foot of Olympos Mons on Mars, and the moravec robots doing their own thing in the Jupiter moon system note anomalous amounts of quantum activity on Mars, and launch a mission to find out what is going on. The novel is written from Hockenberry's point of view mostly, but gives the reader peeks of third person past tense narrative along the way. The novel relies heavily on intertextuality, referring to Homer, Shakespeare, Proust, and Nabokov's Ada or Ardor. The entertainment value comes from the literary feel mixed with mythology and science fiction. Sci-fi nerds clearly agreed, with Ilium winning the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel in 2004 and being nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Novel that same year.

Books in Ilium Series (1)

Olympos