Dan Simmons’s begins his second foray into the far future with Ilium, the first half of the Ilium / Olympos duology, and what a journey he has made! Ilium won the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel of 2003, and Olympos was also nominated in 2005. For anyone counting, Simmons has claimed that same prize for Hyperion, The Fall of Hyperion, and The Rise of Endymion, all three part of his acclaimed Hyperion Cantos. Each year, Locus magazine presents the Locus Award to the winner of their readers’ poll, and it isn’t difficult to understand why so many science fiction fans chose Ilium: Dan Simmons’s dramatic epic offers something to satisfy every speculative fiction readers’ tastes, cramming dozens upon dozens of literary references between scenes of nerve-racking action, intriguing puzzles, and visionary glimpses of astonishing technology.
…Ilium
posted by james m. toburen
To say there is a whole lot going on in Ilium would be a huge understatement. The novel begins with three separate settings and sets of characters, each of them completely compartmentalized from the others... Although the date is never specifically referenced, Dan Simmon's characters give the impression that Ilium's events are occurring in a faraway future, perhaps thousands of years from our present day lives.