History Literature / Illium

Professor Thomas Hockenberry, a Homeric scholar [[FishOutOfTemporalWater from the 20th century]], finds himself resurrected in the far future by [[Myth/ClassicalMythology the Greek Gods]]... [[MaybeMagicMaybeMundane except not really]]. In fact they're post-humans ''pretending'' to be the Greek gods, and they're [[CosmicChessGame amusing themselves]] by re-enacting the entire Trojan War on a terraformed Mars. And it's Thomas's job to compare the events of the re-enactment to actual history.

%%* CoolOldLady: Savi.
%%* CoolOldGuy: Harman and Odysseus.
%%* {{Cliffhanger}}: The ending of ''Ilium.''

* {{Doorstopper}}: The novel clocks in at 573 pages, which is fair, as it is really two stories cut in half for readability. The continuation of the story happens in ''Olympos'', and that companion novel takes the {{Doorstopper}} element of the books up to eleven - it clocks in at '''690''' pages.

** [[spoiler:Ilium (a.k.a. Troy) may also count, having received its fair share of damage from the Greek armies, wrathful gods, and quantum teleportation fields to the point that it is almost in ruins by the end, despite its ''Iliad'' -ordained fate being avoided.]]

* {{Expy}}: Savi [=/=] [[spoiler: Moira]] is essentially [[spoiler: Rachel Wintraub of the ''Literature/HyperionCantos'']] placed into a new setting. Much like [[spoiler: Rachel, she can travel back and forth in time and her death brings rebirth for herself as "Moira" and the others of humankind. Heck, once Prospero even refers to her playfully as "Moneta", Rachel's nickname in the ''Cantos'']]. It is, however, explicitly stated that [[spoiler: Moira is a post-human who took over Savi's appearance, and is not actually Savi.]]

* GreekChorus: [[InvokedTrope Invoked]] by Thomas at the very beginning of the, since he is supposed to ''be'' the GreekChorus to the Gods who resurrected him. [[PlayingWithTropes Played with]], since the intro stylistically hews close to actual Greek Choruses ("Sing, O Muse..."), but then he actually lampshades the trope:

* HandicappedBadass: Orphu gets blinded and immobilized by a god's plasma blast early in the first book, and spends the rest of the book and the entire second book blind due to permanent damage to his optic nerves, but that doesn't seem to slow him down. Even in his weakened state at the end of the first book, he still manages to take command of the rockvecs with the authority of a five-star general without question, and in the second book, he manages to figure out ''the entire background'' of the story using nothing but conjecture, observations, and his own knowledge of old world history.
* HeroOfAnotherStory: Koros III is simultaneously an ActionHero, GuileHero, and ScienceHero and is definitely a badass but he isn't a main character and his adventures are only alluded to by other characters.

* LovePotion: The leader of the Amazons uses a perfume variant in an attempt to infatuate and immobilize Achilles so she can kill him. [[spoiler:Unfortunately for her, she underestimates Achilles' fighting ability (and the direction of the wind) and she and her comrades are slaughtered. Unfortunately for ''him,'' he catches a whiff of the perfume at the last second, and finds himself hopelessly and permanently in love with a ''corpse.'' His journey to find a way to revive her actually becomes a vital part in Hephaestus' plot to overthrow Zeus and end the war.]]
* LudicrousGibs: [[spoiler:A vengeful Zeus invokes this after realizing Hera drugged him to take him out of the picture while she tried to restore status quo on Iliad-Earth. Helen, when later recounting the scene to Hockenberry, explicitly uses the word ''destroyed'' to describe Hera's fate, and mentions that the [[ChunkySalsaRule pieces of Hera and her chariot that fell from the sky]] continued burning and sizzling for days.]]

* MassiveMultiplayerCrossover: Let's see... we have a re-enaction of the epic poem of Homer, two sci-fi robot creatures, and the people of an Earth that no longer remembers how to live (as they have essentially become [[ShoutOut Eloi]]) and [[spoiler: the Reveal that another time traveller shares the same name as one from another continuity; the ''Literature/HyperionCantos''. However, when you put the two together the facts match up: Moira is Jewish, as is Rachel, and they both are described as having dark hair and being able to travel through time, having a small romance of some sort.]] Put 'em all together and you get a work like this one.

* OnlySaneMan: Hephaestus is the only Greek god who remembers being a human, as a result he is much more stable than the others and is well aware of the damage that their wanton playing is causing on the rest of the universe.

* ParentalAbandonment: Of a sort - none of the Old Style Humans living on Earth have any idea who their fathers are, though relationships with mothers remain important. Thus, when [[spoiler:Harman]] tells [[spoiler:Ada]] that he desires to stay alive beyond his "[[YourDaysAreNumbered fifth twenty]]" (the maximum age a human is usually allowed to be, and also when most people choose to die) to be a father to their child, the idea is foreign and shocking to her, and she is actually ''angry'' at him for suggesting it at first.

* RageAgainstTheHeavens: The alliance between the Achaeans, the Trojans, and the moravecs going to war against the Olympians.

* ShoutOut: It's a Creator/DanSimmons novel, who did you expect? A Moravec General in Olympos suggests nuking something from orbit, as it is the only way to be sure, along with other subtler shout outs to both modern pop culture.

* TomboyAndGirlyGirl: Ada, who is demure, quiet, and in love with Harman, in contrast with Hannah, who makes her own furnace, wields Odysseus' sword, and in general is more of an ActionGirl than Ada.
* {{Transhuman}}: The post-humans/[[spoiler: Olympian Gods]]. Even so-called "old-style" humans have some shades of this, as implanted cybernetics give them access to "functions", most of which invoke networked technology to provide information and sensory enhancements, and as they later discover, [[spoiler: the ability to teleport without having to use the fax nodes]].

* UnrealisticBlackHole: Really badly abused in one of the more ridiculous side plots in the novels. [[spoiler: The Global Caliphate, having finally become so crazed as to want to destroy the world, somehow find the mass to create bowling ball sized black holes, then load them onto missiles somehow, and plan to launch them from a submarine. The plot fails of course]]. The [[ArtisticLicensePhysics bad science]] here is just so extreme that it breaks right through the boundaries that have already been pushed in the storyline. [[spoiler: The Moravecs lampshade this a little, making a few offhand comments about the dubiousness of the Caliphate's plot actually succeeding, but ultimately decide to have the missiles carried into orbit and flung into space as far away from Earth as possible, just to be safe.]]
* ViewersAreGeniuses: One can only fully understand every reference after studying Homer's ''Literature/TheIliad'', ''Literature/TheOdyssey'', and Shakespeare's ''Theatre/TheTempest'', Browning's 'Caliban upon Setebos' and also have some familiarity with ''Literature/TheTimeMachine'', the complete works of Marcel Proust, Shakespeare's sonnets, and Hans Moravec's writings. They should know a decent amount about quantum physics, the Voynich manuscript, terraforming, transhumanism, and biosphere theory. Even then... no guarantees you'll get everything.

* ManOnFire: The deaths of [[spoiler: Dionysus and Oenone.]]