| Product Summary | | Format: Hardcover | | ISBN: 9780380978939 | | Publisher: Harpercollins | | Publish Date: 7/1/2003 | | Buy.com Sku: 33664929 | | Item#: BLPC7L | | Dimensions (in Inches) 9.25H x 5.25L x 1.75T | | Pages: 592 |
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| | | | "Rage.|Sing, O Muse, of the rage of Achilles, of Peleus' son, murderous man-killer, fated to die, sing of the rage that cost the Achaeans so many good men and sent so many vital, hearty souls down to the dreary House of Death. And while you're at it, O Muse, sing of the rage of the gods themselves, so petulant and so powerful here on their new Olympos, and of the rage of the post-humans, dead and gone though they might be, and of the rage of those few true humans left, self-absorbed and useless though they may have become..." (from the first line) From the Hugo Award-winning author of the Hyperion Cantos comes the first book of a breathtaking new saga based on the themes of Homer's "The Iliad" and Shakespeare's "The Tempest"--a groundbreaking work from a "magnificently original" ("Denver Post") writer.
Annotation:
Dan Simmons, author of the sweeping science fiction Hyperion saga, borrows liberally from the fertile mythology of Homer's ILIAD in this first installment of an epic SF duology, set in a far distant future. The plot consists of three discrete, but thematically related, storylines. On a terraformed Mars, the Trojan War rages, presided over by awesome beings resembling the Greek gods who derive their powers from technology so sophisticated it may as well be magic. On Earth, a group arises from the decadent, uneducated scraps of humanity and struggles to reclaim forgotten knowledge left behind by the more evolved, vanished post-humans. Meanwhile, a group of moravecs--semi-organic, intelligent machines from the inner moons of Jupiter--journey to Mars to investigate a series of odd images they've picked up via remote observation of the planet.
| PraiseScience Fiction Chronicle
"Simmons folds..[the] disparate threads...[of the novel] into a coherent and engrossing saga." - Don D'Ammassa January 2004Times Literary Supplement
"...[P]erhaps the one modern reworking [of the ILIAD] to capture both the savage poetry of Homeric death-wounds and the power and terror of the Iliadic gods." - Nick Lowe 06/04/2004 |
| Author BioFollowing his graduation from Washington University in St. Louis in 1971, Dan Simmons moved to Colorado and taught elementary school for many years, while trying and failing to get his fiction published. In 1981 he attended a course for beginning writers taught by the writer and critic Harlan Ellison. At Ellison's urging, Simmons submitted a story to an unpublished writers competition. The story, "The River Styx Runs Upstream", won the contest and, on the same day it was published in Twilight Zone magazine--February 15, 1982--his first child was born. In 1985, his debut novel, SONG OF KALI, a grim horror novel set in the backstreets of Calcutta, won the prestigious World Fantasy Award. Since then, Simmons has racked up an impressive collection of other awards, including the Hugo Award, Locus Reader's Poll Awards, the British Fantasy & Science Fiction Award, and four Bram Stoker Awards. His masterpiece, THE HYPERION CANTOS, a massive work inspired by the works of John Keats and structurally based on Chaucer's CANTERBURY TALES, is credited in many quarters with single-handedly rescuing the sf sub-genre of "space opera" from the disrepute into which it had fallen. THE HYPERION CANTOS is a classic work of science fiction that many fans speak of in favorable comparison to works like Frank Herbert's DUNE series, and, along with its sequel ENDYMION, it is one of the most important works of science fiction written since 1970. Splitting his writing between epic science fiction and spectacularly dense, complex horror novels, Simmons is a genre-straddling author who will undoubtedly remain a powerful force in both fields, even when his work comes to be accepted outside of the constraints of genre fiction.
| | Read A Chapter | Chapter One The Plains of Ilium Rage. Sing, O Muse, of the rage of Achilles, of Peleus' son, murderous, man-killer, fated to die, sing of the rage that cost the Achaeans so many good men and sent so many vital, hearty souls down to the dreary House of Death. And while you're at it, O Muse, sing of the rage of the gods themselves, so petulant and so powerful here on their new Olympos, and of the rage of the post-humans, dead and gone though they might be, and of the rage of those few true humans left, self-absorbed and useless though they may have become. While you are singing, O Muse, sing also of the rage of those thoughtful, sentient, serious but not-so-close-to-human beings out there dreaming under the ice of Europa, dying in the sulfur-ash of Io, and being born in the cold folds of Ganymede. Oh, and sing of me, O Muse, poor born-again-against-his-will Hockenberry - poor dead Thomas Click to read more... Chapter One The Plains of Ilium Rage. Sing, O Muse, of the rage of Achilles, of Peleus' son, murderous, man-killer, fated to die, sing of the rage that cost the Achaeans so many good men and sent so many vital, hearty souls down to the dreary House of Death. And while you're at it, O Muse, sing of the rage of the gods themselves, so petulant and so powerful here on their new Olympos, and of the rage of the post-humans, dead and gone though they might be, and of the rage of those few true humans left, self-absorbed and useless though they may have become. While you are singing, O Muse, sing also of the rage of those thoughtful, sentient, serious but not-so-close-to-human beings out there dreaming under the ice of Europa, dying in the sulfur-ash of Io, and being born in the cold folds of Ganymede. Oh, and sing of me, O Muse, poor born-again-against-his-will Hockenberry - poor dead Thomas Hockenberry, Ph.D., Hockenbush to his friends, to friends long since turned to dust on a world long since left behind. Sing of my rage, yes, of my rage, O Muse, small and insignificant though that rage may be when measured against the anger of the immortal gods, or when compared to the wrath of the god-killer, Achilles. On second thought, O Muse, sing of nothing to me. I know you. I have been bound and servant to you, O Muse, you incomparable bitch. And I do not trust you, O Muse. Not one little bit. If I am to be the unwilling Chorus of this tale, then I can start the story anywhere I choose. I choose to start it here. It is a day like every other day in the more than nine years since my rebirth. I awaken at the Scholia barracks, that place of red sand and blue sky and great stone faces, am summoned by the Muse, get sniffed and passed by the murderous cerberids, am duly carried the seventeen vertical miles to the grassy summits of Olympos via the high-speed east-slope crystal escalator and - once reported in at the Muse's empty villa - receive my briefing from the scholic going off-shift, don my morphing gear and impact armor, slide the taser baton into my belt, and then QT to the evening plains of Ilium. If you've ever imagined the siege of Ilium, as I did professionally for more than twenty years, I have to tell you that your imagination almost certainly was not up to the task. Mine wasn't. The reality is far more wonderful and terrible than even the blind poet would have us see. First of all there there is the city, Ilium, Troy, one of the great armed poleis of the ancient world - more than two miles away from the beach where I stand now but still visible and beautiful and domineering on its high ground, its tall walls lighted by thousands of torches and bonfires, its towers not quite as topless as Marlowe would have us believe, but still amazing - tall, rounded, alien, imposing. Then there are the Achaeans and Danaans and other invaders - technically not yet "Greeks" since that nation will not come into being for more than two thousand years, but I will call them Greeks anyway - stretched mile after mile here along the shoreline. When I taught the Iliad, I told my students that the Trojan War, for all its Homeric glory, had probably been a small affair in reality - some few thousands of Greek warriors against a few thousand Trojans. Even the best informed members of the scholia - that group of Iliad scholars going back almost two millennia - estimated from the poem that there could not possibly be more than 50,000 Achaeans and other Greek warriors drawn up in their black ships along the shore. They were wrong. Estimates now show that there are more than 250,000 attacking Greeks and about half that number of defending Trojans and their allies. Evidently every warrior hero in the Greek Isles came running to this battle - for battle meant plunder - and brought his soldiers and allies and retainers and slaves and concubines with him. The visual impact is stunning: mile upon mile of lighted tents, campfires, sharpened-stake defenses, miles of trenches dug in the hard ground above the beaches - not for hiding and hunkering in, but as a deterrent to Trojan cavalry - and, illuminating all those miles of tents and men and shining on polished spears and bright shields, thousands of bonfires and cooking fires and corpse fires burning bright. Corpse fires. For the past few weeks, pestilence has been creeping through the Greek ranks, first killing donkeys and dogs, then dropping a soldier here, a servant there, until suddenly in the past ten days it has become an epidemic, slaying more Achaean and Danaan heroes than the defenders of Ilium have in months. I suspect it is typhus. The Greeks are sure it is the anger of Apollo. I've seen Apollo from a distance - both on Olympos and here - and he's a very nasty fellow. Apollo is the archer god, lord of the silver bow, "he who strikes from afar," and while he's the god of healing, he's also the god of disease. More than that, he's the principle divine ally of the Trojans in this battle, and if Apollo were to have his way, the Achaeans would be wiped out. Whether this typhoid came from the corpse-fouled rivers and other polluted water here or from Apollo's silver bow, the Greeks are right to think that he wishes them ill. At this moment the Achaean "lords and kings" - and every one of these Greek heroes is a sort of king or lord in his own province and in his own eyes - are gathering in a public assembly ... (Continues...)
Excerpted from Ilium by Dan Simmons Copyright © 2003 by Dan Simmons
Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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