This book is such a mess. Here is how I imagined Simmons talking to himself when coming up with the ideas for it:
"I want to write another science fiction story. Something truly ground-breaking; clever science fiction which shows the world how clever and knowledgeable about literature I am. Hmm... what should I write? Hmm... something that shows I know Great Literature...
I could write Homer's Iliad... in space! No; the Iliad... on Mars! A far-future terraformed Mars, with the Greek gods as super technologically advanced post-humans living on Olympus Mons, who for some reason are recreating the events of the Iliad.
Yes, that's fucking great.
The protagonist could be a 20th century Iliad scholar whose consciousness has been artificially preserved, and whose task is to monitor the Iliad events on Mars and compare them to Homer's account, for some reason. This way the reader will know that when I'm deviating from Homer's version, I'm fully aware of it and doing it deliberately. The scholar protagonist can also quote the Iliad while watching the events and talk about the merits of different translations and interpretations; fuck, that'll show 'em how clever I am!
SF fans reading it may be reminded of Roger Zelazny's 'Lord of Light', in which super technologically advanced post-humans recreate Hindu mythology on a colony planet in order to keep the masses under strict control. But I'll go one further than Zelazny and have my post-humans recreating Greek mythology for no obvious or believable reason except FOR TEH LOLS, and cos I'm clever.
That would certainly show people that I know my classical literature - but would they know I love more modern stuff too?
Hmmm... I've done "Canterbury Tales in Space" and "John Keats in Space", and soon "Iliad on Mars"... Hmmm... What else to do?
Nabokov... in space? No; 'Lolita'... on the Moon? No.
'Ada, or Ardor'... on a far-future earth? YES: on a far-future Earth reminiscent of Michael Moorcock's 'The Dancers At The End of Time' - because Moorcock's story also features incest. Fucking yes - I am on to a winner with this one!
I will retell Nabokov's story of incestuous lovers struggling to reconcile their feelings for each other with the social taboo... on a far future earth in which that social taboo no longer exists!
So while Nabokov's story is an intense and uncomfortable psychological study, and Moorcock used incest - once - for shock value, to highlight the decadence of End of Time society, I will do none of that. My incestuous character shall not be conflicted or feel guilty about lusting over his cousin; he must comment in every chapter on how sexy his cousin's tits are, to the point where the reader finds him tedious and wishes for him to have any psychological depth whatsoever, yearns for him to have any motivation beyond seducing his cousin. I shall make the reader bored of his incestuous lustings, to show that incest is a normal, boring part of this far-future society, or at least that's what my fans might say, I dunno. I'm so clever.
That would show I know and appreciate 20th century literature, but what about all the good stuff between Homer and Nabokov?
Readers must know I am well-read in this too.
I've got it.
There will be super intelligent, biomechanical constructs who live on the Moons of Jupiter.
One of them will be an amateur Shakespeare scholar; another shall be an amateur Proust scholar. These constructs can chat to each other about how great Shakespeare and Proust are, and refer to the theories of various 20th century literary critics. They can quote extensively, perhaps even whole pages of Proust to show the reader I really know my shit.
Later on I can probably work in a retelling of Shakespeare's 'The Tempest' or something, to really hammer it home. I'll figure something out.
All that will show people how well-read and clever I am.
I'm a fucking genius."
This book is so bad in so many ways. I was tempted to give up on it multiple times, but I was interested enough in the story to keep going. Had I found a decent online summary, I would probably have happily given up; alas, I found none and persevered. My review will therefore summarize the whole story, perhaps saving some people from the effort of reading its 500+ pages. Spoilers ahead.
So, 'The Iliad on Mars'. Thomas Hockenberry is a scholic, a 20th century scholar whose job is to monitor the recreated Iliad events and report to the gods on how accurately they match Homer's descriptions. Perhaps there is an explanation in the sequel as to why this job is a thing. Hock is an extremely bland character, an observer not a doer. For most of his story he feels like an empty space for the reader to insert himself: he watches the story, or has it imposed on him, and doesn't start to drive it until one pivotal scene, which I shall describe later. When he starts to have character, he becomes quite unpleasant: he remembers his old 20th/21st century life, and moans about the 'Political Correctness Brigade' having so much sway back then. I'm fine with unpleasant protagonists, but he's unpleasant in an extremely boring way.
While observing, the scholics use 'Morphing Bracelets' to disguise themselves as a Greek or Trojan character of their choosing. There is a bullshit quantum science explanation as to how this works.
Hock's story is narrated in first person. He spends his first few chapters simply watching events, introducing the Greek and Trojan characters to the reader, and reflecting on his life as a scholic.
Aphrodite, Goddess of Love, chooses Hockenberry for a special task: to kill Athena, Goddess of Wisdom, for some reason. Perhaps the reasons (a) why she chose Hockenberry in particular, and (b) why she wants Athena dead, are given in the sequel. We are given nothing convincing in this book; we accept and move on. To aid him, the goddess gives him three useful magic-science items: a levitation harness, a Quantum Teleportation (QT) Medallion, and the Hades Helmet.
The gods use Quantum Teleportation to travel around Earth-Mars, to instantaneously go from Olympus Mons to Troy - now Hockenberry has this power, and, because this medallion is special, his "QT trail" can only be tracked by Aphrodite. There is a bullshit quantum science explanation as to how this works.
The Hades Helmet makes the wearer invisible to everyone except Aphrodite (we can assume she stole it off Hades and changed the settings). The fact that the gods have invisibility technology, and the means to select who it doesn't work with, makes me wonder why the gods didn't just make the scholics invisible to humans but not gods. The scholics are supposed to observe and report, not interfere, yet we are told that because of the bullshit quantum science behind morphing, this can and does interfere with events - so why not just make them invisible? I suppose the morphing is important for plot reasons.
Aphrodite is seriously wounded in combat by the Trojan warrior Diomedes. She is out of action, cooped up in a healing tank in the Infirmary of the Gods.
The gods can't track or see him; Hockenberry is free to do as he pleases.
And what shall his first act of freedom and self-determination be?
He teleports to Helen of Troy's apartment, morphs into Paris, and has sex with her.
Yep, he rapes her.
Post-rape, Helen confronts Hockenberry with a dagger, asking who he really is. "A woman may forget the color of her lover's eyes, the tone of his voice, even the details of his smile or form, but she cannot forget how her husband fucks." Hock reveals his true form, feels pathetic, and...
"Your penis is larger [than Paris']."
And after rebuking him for raping her via deception, Helen... invites him to bed again for more sex.
Let's just go through that scene again. Hock, a gawky scholar character, is now invisible and untraceable to divine authority, free to do as he pleases. So he disguises himself as the husband of the Most Beautiful Woman in the World and tricks her into having sex with him. While she rebukes him for raping her, Helen compliments Hock's big cock and says he was 'earnest' and 'sincere' during sex - she then invites him to bed for more sex. This is so crass and awful it sounds like a rape-fantasy porn scene.
Hock doesn't feel very guilty about deceiving Helen. He rapes her and feels alright about it afterwards. I know rape occurs a lot in Greek mythology, and it's probably been included here to echo the Greek gods raping mortals so often, but it's handled so badly. It feels more like a creepy adolescent fantasy than a wry comment on the prevalence of rape in classical myths.
And Helen becomes his quasi love interest for the remainder of the book.
After this act of male empowerment, after his rape victim decides she does want to have sex with him anyway, Hock feels like he should do other things with his power to evade the gods. He is upset by the thought of Helen's fate in the Iliad, so decides to change events to save her and all of the people who will suffer because of the fall of Troy.
He decides to unite the Greek and the Trojans against a common enemy: the Gods of Olympos.
We will return to Hockenberry & Co later, but now we must turn our attention to "Ada in the Future".
Ugh.
Daeman is a womanizing knobhead, off to a party where his objective for the evening is to seduce his cousin Ada. That's his motivation for the whole story. After a few chapters it seems even Simmons got bored of one-note incest Daeman and relegated him to a background character role. It is quickly established that incest is not a taboo on this future Earth - Daeman even comments at one point along the lines of "it's weird to think incest used to be taboo" - so there is nothing interesting about Daeman, no psychological conflict or guilt or shame. As far as he is concerned, he is just lusting after an attractive female - her being his cousin makes literally no difference to him. It feels like the whole point of 'Ada in the Future' thing is ruined within a few chapters, and Simmons moves on and almost forgets about it - Daeman's incestuous ambitions are barely mentioned for the remainder of the book.
At the party, he fails to seduce Ada, but meets Harman and Hannah. Harman is an older man approaching the maximum lifespan allowed: he wants to fly a spaceship to the space stations in orbit where the post-humans who govern the Earth supposedly live, so he can beg for a longer lifespan. Hannah is so bland I could have forgotten she was in this book.
The 4 of them - Harman, Hannah, Daeman, and Ada - go on a little trip to try to find a spaceship, They meet Savi, the Wandering Jew, a mysterious old woman who seems to know a lot about what's going on, and Odysseus, the Greek hero. The group of 6 travel around Future Earth in Savi's 'sonie' - an aerial vehicle - to look at things and have boring conversations.
The general population of Future Earth have no culture or literature or education, and are completely ignorant of how the technology they use works. Harman is the only person in the society who can read, and he can only read slowly, mouthing the words as he goes.
So, as they're travelling around and having conversations, the four ignorant people often ask Savi or Odysseus about their world and the technology in it. They invariably reply in a vague way which leaves the four just as confused and ignorant as before, but allows the reader - who can understand big words and has been reading the novel's other two storylines - to get a better idea of the world and what's going on. When one of the ignorants respond with "I don't understand" - a phrase repeated so often it seems to have become a joke even to Simmons by the end - the knowledgeable one replies with some variant of "Ah, but you will soon!" or "Yeah I know but it's fun talking in this vague way lol". They are so blatantly talking for the reader's, not their companions', benefit. The conversations are painfully artificial.
What's more, when an ignorant one asks about something which the reader will already know about - how a compass works, for example - the knowledgeable one will not bother explaining, simply saying "It doesn't matter" or "By magic", because the reader needs no explanation. So Savi will give a long bullshit quantum science explanation for some technology they encounter, which goes completely over the heads of her companions but may benefit the reader, but refuses to explain simpler things which may actually be understood by her companions. (Given how thoroughly bullshit the quantum science explanations are, "By magic!" would also be a more honest and accurate answer.) It left me wondering why any of them trust her when, as far they're concerned, she is talking complete nonsense. Harman wants a spaceship and thinks she's the means to find one. Ada fancies Harman. Hannah...? And Daeman... fancies Ada? You could almost forget Daeman was still with them, so little he contributes to the group's adventures and conversations.
After plenty of conversations and the occasional action set-piece, the group splits. Ada, Hannah, and Odysseus return to Ada's home - Odysseus begins preaching and teaching, becoming a sort of cult figure. Harman, Savi, and Daeman fly to the 'Mediterranean Basin' (the inland sea has been drained), to find a way to get to the orbital space stations. Daeman's reasons for joining Harman and Savi are very weak: he is afraid of the Allosaurs living in the forests by Ada's home, and doesn't want to teleport from Ada's home to his own because now he understands the technology a little more: Savi had explained it involves destroying his old self and creating a copy elsewhere - Daeman finds this disconcerting. He decides to join the crazy quest rather than ask to be dropped off at his own home on the way to the Mediterranean (Ada lives in North America, Daeman in Paris).
Now we must leave the Earthlings and turn to our third storyline.
Mahnmut and Orphu are moravecs, autonomous biomechanical beings living on the moons of Jupiter (there are also moravecs living on asteroids). They are recruited by the Five Moons Consortium, along with a bunch of other moravecs, to go on a mission to terraformed Mars. Their objective: place and activate a mysterious Device on Olympus Mons.
Mahnmut is roughly humanoid in shape and is an amateur Shakespeare scholar. Orphu is like a giant crab, and is very enthusiastic about the works of Marcel Proust. The two of them converse about their literary heroes, discussing 20th century critics, quoting huge passages, and generally having a great time nerding out together. (I wasn't joking earlier when I said whole pages of Proust are quoted.)
The other moravecs are given no personality - which is lucky for the reader because they may otherwise have cared when they all died when the ship gets shot down as it approaches Mars. M&O crash into the Tethys Sea on Mars, and spend several chapters trying to make it to shore while also chatting about human literature. Although Simmons tries to amp up the tension here, the whole 'Trying To Get To Shore' section is overlong and dull. Since Simmons clearly enjoys writing their smartypants Shakespeare-Proust conversations, and has invested in the characters by giving them personality - they are perhaps the best characters in the novel - there is no real sense of danger in their story. I didn't believe Simmons would be willing to kill either of them off, especially not so early in the story, so this section just drags on and on. 'WILL THEY MAKE IT TO SHORE?' the narrative asks, again and again. Of course they will, and they do.
Once ashore, they encounter a photosynthetic species, the Little Green Men, who conveniently have a fleet of ships and can spare one for the moravecs' journey to Olympos. A storm hits while they sail, and the two moravecs quote The Tempest at each other, and Simmons explains some of the unfamiliar terms for the reader's benefit.
Oh, the Little Green Men are servants of Prospero, the wizard from The Tempest.
During this story we are treated to the Most Thoroughly Bullshit quantum science conversation in the whole book, and possibly in all literature. Ey m8, says Orphu (I'm paraphrasing heavily), you know cos consciousness is a quantum wavelength, what if the literary greats of the past, with the force of their quantum consciousness imagination, created new quantum universes? What if quantum technology is the reason the Greek Gods, and Shakespeare's characters, are coming in to the world? The barriers between this world and quantum universes are weakening and allowing the fictional to become the real. I reckon that is totes what's hapnin.
Not only is this thoroughly bullshit, it makes the book feel so much cheaper, like cheesy crossover fanfic or The Pagemaster for adults.
Eventually, M&O board a fancy hot air balloon and start flying to Olympos. They are captured by the gods and taken to Zeus for questioning.
This all covers the first 300 pages; now the 3 stories start to converge and get more exciting. Or rather, it now feels like the stories are actually beginning. The chapters covering Hock's efforts to unite the Trojans and Greeks are done relatively well. Conveniently for M&O, Hock turns up at Olympos just as Mahnmut is being questioned, so helps them escape. Mahnmut borrows the Invisibility Helmet in order to plant the Device secretly, then joins Hock in Troy. The gods learn of the Greek-Trojan alliance and decide to bomb Troy to show off their power; Hock compares the carnage during the bombardment to news footage he remembers of 9/11 and the Iraq War - these paragraphs felt very jarring, like they were thrown in for topicality.
Once the extremely slow build-up is over, Ilium feels like a trashy yet very entertaining action movie. During the chaos, with explosions and screaming civilians around them, Helen finds Hock and kisses him goodbye and good luck before he teleports away, in a scene that would definitely be accompanied by suddenly emotional music in a movie adaptation, and would perhaps be in slow motion.
(I forgot to mention earlier, there is a scene where Hock gets captured and interrogated by a group of women. One of them holds a knife to his testicles to get him to talk. Hock describes this knife as a 'feminist blade'.)
The Device activates. Imagination supplies the soundtrack 'I am the Doctor' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7VmOZ4Ppj8
In Troy, portals open up in the sky and on the ground, through which Olympos is visible. The converse occurs around Olympos. We learn that Troy was not on Mars after all - it is a version of Earth, connected to Mars with quantum tunneling or something. (No doubt the sequel will confirm Troy's Earth is in the quantum reality created by Homer.)
Strange tripods emerge from some of the portals.
"I think I know who these guys are," says Orphu.
At this point I'm ready to throw the book across the room if the tripods are Martians from a quantum reality created by H.G. Wells. Thankfully they are not: it is an army of moravecs, here to lay siege to Olympos. They join with the Greek-Trojan alliance, and march through the portals towards the home of the gods. The Little Green Men also show up and join the alliance. Zeus erects a huge force field to protect Olympos.
The stage is set for the sequel, the siege of Olympos.
Meanwhile, back on Earth, Daeman & Co visit Jerusalem, where the sonie is captured by strange robotic things called Voynix. The group escape in a vehicle called a crawler. In the Mediterranean, they find strange chairs which enable them to travel up to a space station, and then break.
The reader is treated to an extended horror sequence, which is done rather well but is overlong. The group explore the space station, floating zero G past bodies and severed limbs and ruined technology.
They encounter Caliban, a strange lizard monster who speaks in a vaguely Shakespearean way. Savi is killed but we don't care because she was little more than a mouthpiece for Simmons to explain things to the reader. Daeman and Harman wander round the space station, eating little, growing their facial hair, and wondering if they'll be killed by Caliban or find some way to escape.
The spacestation is Prospero's island - we are now at The Tempest in Space.
Prospero, an AI hologram, explains that Ariel, a mysterious entity on Earth, saved Savi's Sonie from the Voynix and programmed it to rescue them from the space station. It is parked outside. Turns out the sonie was a spaceship after all and if Savi had been aware of this they could have skipped a lot of the wandering around. The characters accept this revelation calmly, not freaking out at all at the pointlessness of their earlier travels. It feels a very lazy way to get them to escape. Prospero even jokes that it is "another deux ex machina."
They plan to destroy the space station - but wait, what about all the people in the infirmary!? For when a human on Earth gets ill or injured, they are sent up here for recovery!
So rather than a fast escape sequence we get a long admin sequence in which Daeman and Harman travel to the infirmary, fiddle around with the functioning technology to send the recovering people back to Earth. The power cuts out - Caliban is out to get them - and there's one person still in the healing tanks: Hannah. The bland character from earlier returns as the bland damsel in distress. This sequence becomes even longer.
So yeah, eventually they all escape and return to Earth. Odysseus vaguely and ominously speaks about the need for everyone to prepare for the Ultimate War spreading to this Earth. Obviously none of the characters have a clue what he's on about, but the reader does.
In the final chapter, Hock visits a character in hiding who he knew earlier in the story and updates him on the Troy-Olympos situation, about the Greek-Trojan alliance, about the Moravecs and the Little Green Men, about the War Against The Gods.
"Are you shitting me?" the character asks.
"I shit thee not," Hock replies.
END OF BOOK
The mostly action-packed final 200 pages of this book almost, almost made me want to read the sequel. However, there are plenty of negative reviews of Olympos from people who thought Ilium was a masterpiece, so I won't be bothering.
There is a decent, entertaining novel hidden within Ilium, which could be revealed by a determined editor. In an interview I heard Dan Simmons say that when you're starting off as an author you can't publish big tomes; they can only come once you're established. Ilium has led me to believe that many editors must give up once an author is established enough to sell by name alone; the quality of the product doesn't matter so much once author's brand is well known.
Much of the first 300 pages could be removed. The long multi-chapter travel sequences (Mahnmut and Orphu travelling to shore, Daeman & Co wandering round the Earth) could be more effectively told in one or two chapters. Hock doesn't need to spend so much time watching the Iliad events before gaining agency. The incest aspect could be entirely removed; Daeman could be removed, leaving Harman as a more interesting protagonist. Unnecessary Nabokov references are unnecessary.
I like literary allusions and references, but I don't like them smashed into my face while I read. Simmons seems to throw in as many quotes and references as he can to pad it out. I wonder whether he does this when he isn't confident in his own story, or when he's overconfident and is feeling super clever. This was one of the problems I had with The Fall of Hyperion, and it is far worse in Ilium. The Shakespeare-Proust conversations could be cut heavily, as could Hock's Iliad scholarship talk.
Ilium is blatantly soft science fiction, science fantasy. The technology is magic. I like soft science fiction; I am quite happy for a story to use 'By science!' instead of 'By magic!', as long as it accepts that that is what it is doing. Ilium does not do this; with the bullshit quantum explanations, Simmons is trying to convince you it is serious, hard science fiction. With the aggressive literary references and allusions, Simmons is trying to convince you Ilium is serious, Great Literature.
It all has an air of desperation about it. Ilium obviously invites comparison to Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light, mentioned earlier. Zelazny does not try to explain how his gods' technology works; he confidently states what the technology does, trusts the reader to accept it, and gets on with the story. Zelazny is also not aggressive with his allusions; the focus is on his own story and characters. Read Lord of Light; give Ilium a miss. There are better ways to spend your time and money.
I loved Hyperion, and persevered through its disappointing sequel. After reading Ilium, I probably won't touch another Dan Simmons novel. Maybe, just maybe, I'll read Song of Kali, his shortish debut novel sometime, from back when his editor probably cared more about the quality. Maybe.
