Amazon.com exclusive interview, he talks about his latest SF triumph, Olympos, a tale of Mars, the Greek gods, and survival in a post-human world.
Book Description
Beneath the gaze of the gods, the mighty armies of Greece and Troy met in fierce and glorious combat, scrupulously following the text set forth in Homer's timeless narrative. But that was before twenty-first-century scholar Thomas Hockenberry stirred the bloody brew, causing an enraged Achilles to join forces with his archenemy Hector and turn his murderous wrath on Zeus and the entire pantheon of divine manipulators; before the swift and terrible mechanical creatures that catered for centuries to the pitiful idle remnants of Earth's human race began massing in the millions, to exterminate rather than serve.
And now all bets are off.
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Beneath the gaze of the gods, the mighty armies of Greece and Troy met in fierce and glorious combat, scrupulously following the text set forth in Homer's timeless narrative. But that was before one observer -- Twenty-first Century scholar Thomas Hockenberry -- stirred the bloody brew; before an enraged Achilles joined forces with his archenemy Hector; and before the fleet-footed mankiller turned his murderous wrath on Zeus, Hera, Athena, Aphrodite, Apollo, and the entire pantheon of divine manipulators.
Now, all bets are off.
Dan Simmons, the multiple-award-winning author of
The Hyperion Cantos, returns with the eagerly anticipated conclusion to his critically acclaimed, Hugo Award-nominated sf epic
Ilium. A novel breathtaking in its scope and conception,
Olympos ingeniously imagines a catastrophic future where immortal ""post-humans"" high atop the real Olympos Mons on Mars restage the Trojan War for their own amusement even while the sad remnants of mortal humankind are forced to confront their ultimate annihilation.
For untold centuries, those few old-style humans remaining on Earth have never known strife, toil, or responsibility, each content to live his or her allocated hundred years of life in unquestioning leisure. But virtually overnight and for reasons beyond their comprehension, the world around them has changed forever. The voynix -- terrible and swift creatures that once catered to their every need -- are now massing in the millions with but one terrifying purpose: the total extermination of the human race.
Having traveled farther and learned more of the wondrous and terrible truth of their world than any others of their kind, Ada and Daeman -- with the aid of the crafty and mysterious warrior once called Odysseus, now called Noman -- must marshal the pathetic defenses of Ardis Hall in anticipation of the onslaught of the murderous voynix. And they must do so without Harman, Ada's lover and the father of her unborn child, who wanders the Earth on a great odyssey of his own. Harman seeks nothing less than the limitless knowledge necessary to defeat Setebos, an unspeakable, otherworldly monster who feeds on horror, and whose arrival heralds the end of all things.
And meanwhile, back on Mars ...
The vengeful rebellion of Achilles -- and the intervention of sentient robots from Jovian space, determined to prevent a potentially universe-obliterating quantum catastrophe -- has set immortal against immortal, igniting a civil war among Olympian gods that may send all things in Heaven and Earth and everywhere in between plummeting straight to Hell.
A monumental work that blurs the often arbitrary line between great sf and serious literature, Dan Simmons's
Olympos -- together with its extraordinary predecessor,
Ilium -- sets new standards for the genre, confirming his reputation as one of the most original authors currently working in the field of speculative fiction.
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Customer Reviews:
A mixed bag.......2007-08-13
This is the sequel to "Ilium". Although sequel isn't really the right word, because that implies each book can stand independently. This is one long story that, for whatever publishing or marketing reasons, is being sold as two different books. The "Kill Bill" of literature, if you will.
I suspect that the primary reason for this would be the sheer length of the story. At a combined total of close to 2000 pages, it would be hard to fit it all into one binding. However in my opinion, the publishers of this book are being slightly dishonest, because the book jacket really should read, "Don't even think about buying this book if you haven't read 'Ilium' yet, because it will make absolutely no sense." But there's not a word about this book being a sequel on the cover. In fact for someone just wandering through the bookstore, like I was a couple months ago, it is very hard to tell just by looking at the book covers which book is a sequel to which.
Marketing quibbles aside:
I thought Simmons did an excellent job of re-writing the characters from Homer's Iliad. At this point in the story, the meddling Dr. Hockenberry has succeeded in diverting the Trojan War from its normal course, and Homer's characters are now off on a new adventure, but all the more fun to follow these classic characters as they go down a new unknown path.
I was absolutely glued to this book during the Trojan War sections. However, as I noted in my review of Ilium, unfortunately the Trojan War sections are only 1/3 (maybe even less) of this story. The rest deals with the standard post-apocolyptic future being terrorized by cyborg killing machines, resurrected dinosaurs, Caliban and the characters from Shakespeare's "The Tempest", and some strange half organic robots from Jupiter. It all ties together somehow at the end, but for me, it got a bit too bizarre. Furthermore I never really got interested in any of Dan Simmons's original characters the way I was interested in the Greek and Trojan heroes.
Dan Simmons is juggling several balls at once in this story line, and I don't think he really does any of them justice. The plot, to the extent there is a plot, becomes this huge monster of a story line, which has several loose ends and unanswered questions by the time the book comes to a close. Furthermore several of the side stories could easily have been pulled from this book without making a difference. For example, the whole story about the Trojan War taking place in the future didn't really impact the other storylines in this book all that much.
Furthermore there are several errors in this book, both in regards to Homer's story, and continuity errors in regards to Dan Simmon's own story, which indicate a lack of thorough proof-reading or editorial oversight. To give one example from many: Dan Simmons claims Sarpedon was killed by Patroclus, which is technically true in Homer's Iliad, but Simmons apparently forgot that in his own story Patroclus was kidnapped by professor Hockenberry before the last chapters of the Iliad were allowed to unfold. These kind of things don't spoil the whole book, but there were enough of them to annoy me.
Slow at times, complex, carefully thought out.......2007-08-09
Like its predecessor, Ilium, Olympos starts kind of slow, and has its slow spots. Still, it's a worthy sequel, and addresses some of the open topics left dangling after Ilium. Simmons is a master of believable alternate realities and complex, credible intertwining storytelling. We learn more of the war against the gods, the Little Green Men are explained, and we see the post-literate society grapple with re-learning fundamental survival skills. Recommended.
Stop expecting Hyperion and you will enjoy it more...........2007-08-02
While Olympos isn't as strong as Ilium, it is still quite good. There's a lot of meat being left out in most of the bad reviews, which seem to hover around the same theme: This isn't what they wanted after reading Hyperion. That's a shame, and I think that clouded some from appreciating many of the insane concepts Simmons presents in this book.
I think the ending was solid enough to tie up the loose ends that needed to be tied up. At the same time, it was open ended, which makes it brilliant. If it ended with a titanic battle everyone seems to want, and let the reader know what happened to every single character, it would have come across in a very cliche fashion. An ending like that would clashed with the structure of the book. This book has some of the most far out concepts and plot lines I've read in ages, so expecting a book like this to have everything tied up in a neat package in the end is nothing but setting oneself up for disappointment. The answers are there for you to find. Everything else is left for the imagination.
Sooooo Disappointing.......2007-06-07
Ilium was fabulous in so many ways. Olympos is the opposite. In this novel, the author has let islamophobia, misogyny and homophobia get in the way of his storytelling gifts. Where the Hyperion series had a transcendent view of human destiny, Olympos ends on a downer - the future for women, at least, is to be chained firmly to the kitchen sink.
Plotting seems to go out the window as well and, as other reviewers have pointed out, the narrative threads are left hanging. Why on earth was Moira brought back, for example? Why did Setebos leave? Is there any point to the Moravec army? And for God's sake, posthuman women seem unlikely candidates to gender bend into muscle bound Olympian Gods! But then, for Simmons, maleness is clearly the superior state.
Even the Moravecs can't rescue this ultimately nasty novel. I used to look forward to every new Dan Simmons novel - now I'm not sure if I would read this author again. My advice? Avoid!
Disappointment after Illium.......2007-06-02
Illium was the first Dan Simmons book I read. I'd picked it up because I was on a bit of a Mars-sf jag. It was different from what I'd expected but it was still a great book. Simmons managed the multiple plotlines with style and grace and gave us some interesting characters, especially in Mahnmut the Moravec cyborg.
Olympos is just a big disappointment. As Illium ends it looks like we're going to have a major war against the Gods with the Moravecs tagging along and trying to fix the potentially reality destroying stuff that's going on.
Instead the war takes place mostly off screen and ends largely with a return to the status quo. This is okay though but Simmons takes the book into odd and pointless detours and peoples it with characters with the thinest of motivations. Worse yet, the book moves at a plodding pace. When I read Illium I was amazed that Simmons could have made me read 800 pages about a few weeks worth of events and not be bored with it. In Olympos we just get everything expanded and boring. Do we really need a whole chapter (and a relatively long one at that) devoted to a characters pseudo-necrophilia? Do we really need THREE whole chapters of a character journeying to plead with some elder gods? Do we really need two whole chapters of a character getting a library downloaded into his brain? Do we need several chapters of characters rehashing how dire their situation is? Do we need one whole chapter of people deciding whether or not to vote on something and then another whole chapter for the vote?
Worse yet, the ending is rushed and leaves so much feeling unresolved. When I was about halfway through and Simmons was still introducing major new characters and plot points I knew there was a problem. The resolution feels awfully rushed and extremely convenient. Some characters are never fully explained. What is the difference between the Odysseus's? Who is Sycorax? Why the hell did we bother with Moira at all? Through nearly 2000 pages, in two books, Simmons builds us up for a major confrontation with the big bad guy. But it never comes!
There are other little issues that people have pointed to about style as well. There's disturbing homophobic and Islamophobic statements in the book. The books also had an unusually large number of typos.
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Changing genres as easily as others change clothes, bestselling author Dan Simmons has written horror, mystery, historical fiction, thrillers, fantasy, and science fiction. In this
Unending Bloom.......2007-06-03
