Ilium / Olympos
The science-fiction novels Ilium and Olympos by Dan Simmons published in 2004 and of 2006. The story tells of the events on an alternative earth and an alternative Mars, which in the end merge into a future reality here on the true earth. Most of these events are set in scene by creatures who play the roles of the ancient Greek gods .
Similar to the Hyperion chants , Ilium / Olympus must be classified as a kind of literary science fiction that makes strong reference to intertextuality . The frame of reference stretches from Homer's Iliad to Shakespeare's Tempest to Marcel Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu and finally Vladimir Nabokov's novella Ada or The Desire . In September 2019 the novel Illium was republished by Heyne Verlag , and Olympos will follow in September 2020 .
subjects
The Ilium / Olympos cycle deals with a wide variety of issues, from cosmology and quantum mechanics to psychology and philosophy .
What does it mean for the relativity of space and time when it can apparently be manipulated at will and technical possibilities and subjected to certain interests?
Is there such a thing as a transtemporal persistence of individual characters, in other words, what about Thomas Hockenberry is still identical to himself - after 3,000 years of decay and subsequent genetic reconstruction from DNA residues?
What does it say when artificial, made beings, like the Moravecs , ask the deepest and most existential questions about humanity, and seek and find answers to them in historical humane writers? In answering this philosophical problem, which is particularly important to him, Dan Simmons makes the reader familiar with the writings of Homer, Shakespeare and Proust, at least in part and without overemphasizing his erudition.
Timeframe
Based on two extremely different poles of time, Ilium tells a human story . One pole is the Trojan War , the other is the narrative reality of the solar system in about 3000 years. The imaginary center of this time seesaw forms the year 2006, the date of death of Thomas Hockenberry , one of the main protagonists of the book.
Perspectives
In alternating sequence, on 826 pages, Dan Simmons offers the reader three highly different narrative perspectives that approach each other towards the end.
The first , which gives the novel its name, is the view of Ilium, i.e. Troy and Olympus , as the abode of the gods. Here, Thomas Hockenberry , a 21st century historian revived by the gods , takes on most of the narrative. In the course of history, however, he changes, to an ever increasing extent, into a participant who shapes the action.
The second , very unique way of looking at things is that of the so-called Moravecs , thinks a population of intelligent, self-reproducing robots that were settled by humans in the outer planets and in the Kuiper Belt during the Dark Ages . The narrators of this storyline are the submarine operator and deep-sea researcher Mahnmuth from Jupiter's moon Europa and his friend Orphu , a high-vacuum Moravec who works in the sulfur torus of Io. What they both have in common is their preference for historical, humane writers, which makes Mahnmut a specialist in Shakespeare's sonnets, while Orphu makes Marcel Proust his favorite.
The third narrative thread takes place on the earth itself. In the meantime, two rings of artificial objects glisten in the sky above the earth, in which the next people supposedly live; - a group of metahumans who, through genetic manipulation , have left the boundaries of Homo sapiens far behind. On the largely uninhabited surface of the earth, however, some 100,000 completely degenerate, so-called old people , indulge in a cheerful, spiritless party existence. Served by servitors and protected by the Voynixen - legacies of past generations - they live 100 years in the most beautiful carelessness, before, according to their own legends, they go to the rings and join the legendary descendants. A trio - Harman , Daeman and Ada - carries the weight of this narrative thread . These three have maintained a minimum of curiosity and curiosity, which puts them in unimaginable trouble after meeting Savi , a 1,400-year-old survivor of the last human attempt to restore order on earth.
When narrating from Thomas Hockenberry's point of view , Dan Simmons uses the first person present tense, while all other narrative perspectives are perfectly written from the third person.
Course of action
Recalling the anger motif of the Iliad , which runs through the entire Homeric epic, Dan Simmons Ilium is introduced with a chant of anger, which the narrator accusingly addresses to his muse . After he withdraws this outburst, verbally resigned, the actual narrative begins.
1. Thomas Hockenberry and his fellow students have been following the course of the Trojan War for 10 years and are checking the accuracy of the Homeric epic for the gods of Olympus. Hockenberry knows very well that these gods are not the real, Olympic figures in the Homeric Iliad that they claim to be. How and through what they became what they are is not known to him, he only knows that they have a technology that reaches far beyond the horizon of a historian from the 21st century. The battle he is forced to watch is very much the historic siege of Troy. As the novel progresses, it becomes clear that Thomas Hockenberry is trapped in a highly surreal scenario. Mount Olympus, on which the gods reside, is apparently on an inhabitable Mars, while the Trojan War apparently takes place on historical earth. A paradox that, for both Thomas Hockenberry and the reader, only finds its solution in the sequel to Olympos .
Only Zeus himself and the scholics know the course of the war documented by Homer and these specialists do not find any really serious deviations. One or the other episode has moved to a different place in time, but otherwise the Iliad is frighteningly perfect. Nonetheless, in the meantime Thomas Hockenberry has in any case been fed up with aristocracy and heroic demeanor. If it were up to him, he would put an end to the endless slaughter with a single nuclear blow . It's not up to him, at least not yet.
When the goddess Aphrodite equips him with special equipment - a so-called Hades helmet, which makes him invisible to all gods except Aphrodite, and a quantum teleportation medallion with which he can move like the gods - the conditions change. He is to watch Athena and, when the time comes, kill him; demands Aphrodite. What the goddess does not know, but Thomas Hockenberry does : Aphrodite is injured by Diomedes in the course of the next few hours and is no longer able to follow the events in Troy or on Olympus for a few days. So the opportunity for this professional witness to become active himself.
The first thing he does is change his figure to that of Paris and sneak a long pastoral hour with Helena , the most beautiful woman of the era. His contented, post-coital dawning is suddenly interrupted by the fact that Helena holds a dagger to his throat and forces him to confess his identity and his true tasks in Troy. Helena is not amused, but immediately sees the opportunities for her and Ilium with Thomas Hockenberry . She developed a plan with the realization of which the war between the Greeks and Trojans ended and the peoples, now allied with one another, stood up to the gods.
2. While the gods pursue their favorite pastime, constant interference in the Trojan War, in the outer solar system the Moravecs are righteously worried. For centuries they have been measuring steadily growing quantum activities in the area of the inner planets and slowly the energies used are growing into a threat to the entire solar system. The cause of this phenomenon is a mystery to them, but it is important to find the source of this dangerous development as soon as possible and, if necessary, to eliminate it.
An expedition is equipped and starts to Mars , which has turned out to be the center of quantum activity. Telescope images also show that large parts of it have now been terraformed and large areas of it are covered by the sea. According to all the laws of nature known to Moravecs , an impossibility, but on the other hand an undeniable fact. The seas are the reason why Mahnmut and his submarine are on board the spaceship. If necessary, he should undertake the surface exploration. His friend Orphu, on the other hand, is committed to the work in the vacuum. As far as the theory goes, in practice the ship is attacked by the gods in Mars orbit and largely destroyed. What remains is Mahnmut , Orphu and the submarine, which go down on the planet almost according to plan , apart from one or the other total write-off.
In addition to the gods and the ancient war participants, a third race lives on actually terraformed Mars - the KGM , who call themselves Zeks . They save Mahnmut and Orphu and bring them on one of their launch boats near Olympus Mons , the abode of the gods.
With the little green men , Simmons manages a genuinely ingenious, ironic appeal to all the legends about Mars and its inhabitants. The KGM are small, less than a meter, silent, and transparent like soft plastic. They spend their lives carving huge stone heads and setting them up on the shores of the seas at regular intervals. It is the same head of a man - Prospero - that the reader will get to know.
While trying to conquer Mount Olympus secretly with a balloon, Mahnmut and Orphu are caught by the gods, interrogated in detail and finally locked up. From this point the first and second narrative threads begin to weave. The two Moravecs are freed by Thomas Hockenberry and transferred to the Iliums plain. Here the war between men and the gods is just beginning, and the latter are mightily angry about it.
3. Unaffected by the chaotic developments in the Mars / Troy complex, the ancient people live their carefree life on the original earth. Unburdened by education and culture, they fax (a kind of mechanized teleportation ) their way from one fax node to the next, celebrating the festivals as they come, and they keep falling. Mostly there are so-called twenties parties, i.e. the dates that take place every 20 years to which the old people are faxed to the clinic in order to be genetically renewed. The fifth and last fax, after 100 years, is one of no return.
The trio - Harman , Daemann and Ada - is different from the others. You have retained a certain thirst for knowledge and are not entirely satisfied with the conventional party life. Harman, for example, has learned to read and is looking for a spaceship to fly to the rings. Her curiosity brings her into contact with Savi , a 1400 year old woman who has a much better knowledge of this world and its history.
In Savi's hiding place they get to know Odysseus , a warrior who is familiar to all ancient people who have followed the transmissions of the Trojan War through the so-called Turin cloths. How he got to this place and time remains his secret, but he has a definite goal. In Ardis-Hall, Ada's estate , Odysseus begins to familiarize a growing crowd of old people with survival and fighting techniques.
Meanwhile, Harman and Daeman travel with Savis for help to the rings. Supported by Prospero , the avatar of the global Logosphere, they destroy the clinic there after they have recognized its true function. With this act of violence the sedate existence of the old people ends. The servitors cease their work and the Voynixe begin to systematically slaughter the old men. A brutal struggle for survival for this human species begins. As if that weren't enough, another man-made monster, Caliban , has been brought back to Earth. He and his Calibani also spread fear and horror there.
Final picture
At the end of the book there is the following scenario: The Trojans, together with the Greeks and supported by the Moravecs, are at war with the Olympic gods. On earth, the old men, suddenly thrown back on themselves, are threatened with extermination by aggressive Voynixe or Calibani. Under the leadership of Ada , Harman , Daeman and Odysseus , Ardis-Hall becomes the most important center of resistance.
Directory of the most important people and entities
Level 1 - Troy:
Thomas Hockenberry , classical philologist from 2006, resuscitated in the distant future as a cell reconstruct, in order to report to the Olympian gods about the siege of Troy as a Homeric scholar. His willful intervention fundamentally changes the course of the war.
Greeks : Achilles , son of the goddess Thetis with the mortal Peleus, almost invulnerable, mighty warrior, one of the leaders of the war against the gods.
Patroclus , son of Menoitius, best friend to Achilles, his apparent death at the hands of Athens drives Achilles to war against the gods.
Odysseus , son of Laertes, king of Ithaca, Greek military leader, cunning strategist, favorite of the goddess Athena.
Menelaus , son of Atreus, younger brother of Agamemnon, husband of the stolen Helena, because of whom the Trojan War is waged.
Trojan : Hector , son of Priam, leader and greatest warrior of the Trojans, together with Achilles leader of the war against the gods.
Andromache , Hector's wife, mother of Astyanax, whose feigned death at the hand of Aphrodite drives Hector into war between men and gods.
Helena , legendary ancient beauty, daughter of Zeus, wife of Menelaus, wife of Melenaos kidnapped from Paris and thus a reason for war.
Paris , son of Priam, brother of Hector, good warrior better lover, kidnaps Helena from Sparta and thus triggers the Trojan War.
Level 1.1 - Mars:
Zeus , son of the titans Chronos and Rhea, whom he fought and finally exiled to Tartarus. Chief of the gods, brother and husband of Hera, father of many of the lesser gods, the arbitrator in the conflict over Troy.
Athena , daughter of Zeus, cunning and far-sighted protector of the Greeks.
Hera , wife of Zeus, most important force on the part of the Greeks.
Aphrodite , scheming goddess of love, is on the side of the Trojans.
Ares , son of Zeus, god of war, slightly underexposed ally of the Trojans.
Apollo , Lord of the Silver Bow, most important fighter on the side of the Trojans.
Hephaestus , god of fire, the blacksmith of the gods, unhappily in love with Athena.
Level 2 - Earth:
Savi , the eternal Jew, has been a witness for 1400 years
Harman , 99 years old, the most curious old man alive
Daemann , 40-year-old mothers son, Don Juan and butterfly collector , develops into the tough fighter and intimate enemy of Caliban.
Ada , mistress of Ardis-Hall, wife of Harman and mother of their son.
Prospero , self-chosen avatar of the self-conscious logosphere of the earth.
Ariel , self-chosen personality of the self-conscious biosphere of the earth.
Caliban , an amphibious monster created by Prospero based on Shakespeare's The Tempest
Level 3 - outer solar system:
Orphu from Io, high vacuum Moravec and Proust specialist.
Mahnmuth von Europa, deep sea explorer, submarine operator and specialist in Shakespeare's sonnets.