Dan Simmons

Ilium, Mild Spoilers, mainly trivia:


He is a genius with Ilium Pattirose and I've only read to page 42. It's a well rounded reading "experience." I've been having fun doing light research on the Iliad, Shakespeare's The Tempest, Ada or Ador: A Family Chronicle by Nabokov, and Marcel Proust's theories on memory because Simmons uses these works as literary allusions in the Ilium. I also enjoy how he attributes the Greek gods' powers to Quantum physics and nanotechnology. I read up on the Voynich Manuscript that Simmons derived the term Voynix from and that was very interesting. Those e-rings are a "ring world" and I had no idea what that meant until I saw it on the cover of Larry Niven's Ringworld book. That was cool.

This book is full of these type of things. I haven't begun to cover them all. I love it. I'll probably be going back and forth from the book to researching stuff the entire read. This is fun. I really like Thomas Hockenberry but I think his appearance is limited. That's sad.

It's intriguing reading how Mahnmut the Moravec is into Shakespeare and I haven't reached Orphu of Io who is into Proust. That is so weird that we were just discussing Proust at the forum with FirTree and all of the sudden here he is in my book. That's one of those Karma things you were talking about. I love Artificial Intelligence stories about the AI evolving into human personalities.

H.G. Wells', The Time Machine is suppose to have an influence in here too. And I really get into a futuristic book when it relates to Earth. That was so cool when Harman, the old style human who can still READ LOL, walked through the ocean.

So yes, I'm still reading it and I can see why it's one of your favorites so far.

Thanks Pattirose. I bookmarked it and have been using it. It's nice.

Spoilers Ilium highlight:

Daeman was just eaten by an allosaurus. That was unexpected. I don't really like him but I bet he's going to come back.

Thank you Patti for singing praises about the Ilium!

I just finished ILIUM. I give it a 9.5 out of 10. I took half a point off for length of a few battle descriptions.

I reserved OLYMPOS and will read it after I complete Gabaldon's book 2 of the Outlander series.


Caliban has an interesting speaking style for an evil monster. It just seems cool to have a Shakespearean dialogue thrown in the story by one character. Even though I was aware of a certain literary allusions being used in the Ilium and with Caliban, I was still shocked and surprised in the scene that he was presented in the book. I reacted "OMG, no way." So frightening and grotesque.

The ILIUM had almost everything I could ask for in a scifi epic novel and things that I would never even think of asking for. This was an outstanding reading experience. I'm so glad I didn't give up on Simmons. I knew a book was in his works for me somewhere. The ending left me anticipating the next adventure and I'm so glad I don't have to wait long. I love so many of the characters in the novel.

This is a must read book.





Spoiler



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I'm confused by the use of 2 different men (versions) named Odysseus. Was that explained in the story? I remember when the 2nd one appeared to Savi and the group. Later, a hint about Savi and Odysseus using each other. I wonder if this is a mystery that will be revealed in OLYMPOS? Right now, he appears to be in 2 places at once? I don't recall that he uses faxnodes back and forth. ???