They are soon plunged into a strange world filled with references to Shakespeare’s The Tempest. But a small group of humans begin to seek knowledge about who they are and what happened to the godlike race of post-humans who preceded them, and they find that all is not what it seems. We see this from the perspective of Mahnmut, a submarine pilot from Europa, who in his spare time chats with his friend Orphu about Shakespeare, Proust, and other great authors.įinally, on a post-apocalyptic Earth, humanity lives in an idyllic and ignorant state, constantly kept happy by the support of robotic servants. Meanwhile, the moravecs, the race of sentient robots living on the moons of Jupiter, have detected strange quantum fluctuations on Mars, and send a small team to put a stop to them, before something potentially catastrophic occurs. But as he is pulled into the gods’ manipulations and politicking, he makes a choice that sends the war careening from the “fated” path set forth by Homer. Greeks and Trojans fight for their lives as the gods, from their home on Olympus Mons, watch, interfere, and pick favorites, and Hockenberry must report to the Muse on the accuracy of Homer’s Iliad, the poem which he has spent years studying. In one thread, Classics professor Thomas Hockenberry of 21th century Earth is mysteriously resurrected and forced to bear witness to a recreation of the Trojan War on a terraformed Mars. There are three plot threads, which intertwine with each other.

Let us begin with a summary of the plot, brief if possible, but the complexities of Ilium might make that a challenge. Ultimately, I found Ilium somewhat of a difficult puzzle to evaluate. It is one of the most recent stories to reuse elements of Greek mythology, especially Homer’s Iliad, for its own purposes, and I wanted to see exactly how this reworking of the ancient material would turn out. This summer, I tackled Dan Simmons’ science fiction novel Ilium.

Ilium book review