Ahira's Hangar

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From the multiple award winning author of the Hyperion Cantos -- one of the most acclaimed and popular series in contemporary science fiction -- comes a huge and powerful epic of high-tech gods, human heros, total war, and the extraordinary transcendence of ordinary beings. Ilium. From the towering heights of Olympos Mons on Mars, the mighty Zeus and his immortal family of gods, goddesses, and demigods look down upon a momentous battle, observing -- and often influencing -- the legendary exploits of Paris, Achilles, Hector, Odysseus, and the clashing armies of Greece and Troy. Thomas Hockenberry, former twenty-first-century professor and Iliad scholar, watches as well. It is Hockenberry's duty to observe and report on the Trojan War's progress to the so-called deities who saw fit to return him from the dead. But the muse he serves has a new assignment for the wary scholar, one dictated by Aphrodite herself. With the help of fortieth-century technology, Hockenberry is to infiltrate Olympos, spy upon its divine inhabitants...and ultimately destroy Aphrodite's sister and rival, the goddess Pallas Athena. On an earth changed since the departure of the Post-Humans centuries earlier, the great events on the bloody plains of Ilium serve as mere entertainment. Its series of unrivaled heroics and unequaled carnage add excitement to human lives devoid of courage, strife, labor, and purpose. But this eloi-like existence is not enough for Harman,a man in the last year of his last Twenty.That rarest of post-postmodern men -- an "adventurer" -- he intends to explore far beyond the boundaries of his world before his allotted time expires, in search of a lost past, a devastating truth, and an escape from his own inevitable "final fax". Meanwhile, from the radiation-swept reaches of Jovian space, four sentient machines race to investigate -- and perhaps terminate -- the potentially catastrophic emissions of unexplained quantum-flux emanating from a mountain-top miles above the terraformed surface of Mars...The first book in a remarkable two part epic to be concluded in the upcoming Olympos, Dan Simmons's Ilium is a breathtaking adventure, enormous in scope and imagination, sweeping acrosss time and space to connect three seemingly disparate stories in fresh, thrilling, and totally unexpected ways. A truly masterful work of speculative fiction, it is quite possibly Simmons's finest achievement to date in an already storied literary career.
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Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
****Tavern Wench of DOGMA, the Defenders of George Martin's Art****<i></i>

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Rage. Sing, O Muse, of the rage of Achilles, of Peleus' son, murderous, man-killer, fated to die, sing of the rage that cost the Achaeans so many good men and sent so many vital, hearty souls down to the dreary House of Death. And while you're at it, O Muse, sing of the rage of the gods themselves, so petulant and so powerful here on their new Olympos, and of the rage of the post-humans, dead and gone though they might be, and of the rage of those few true humans left, self-absorbed and useless though they may have become. While you are singing, O Muse, sing also of the rage of those thoughtful, sentient, serious but not-so-close-to human beings out there dreaming under the ice of Europa, dying in the sulfur-ash of Io, and being born in the cold folds of Ganymede. Oh, and sing of me, O Muse, poor born-again-against his will Hockenberry - poor dead Thomas Hockenberry, Ph.D., Hockenbush to his friends, to friends long since turned to dust on a world long since left behind. Sing of my rage, yes, of my rage, O Muse, small and insignificant though that rage may be when measured against the anger of the immortal gods, or when compared to the wrath of the god-killer, Achilles. On second though, O Muse, sing of nothing to me. I know you. I have been bound and servant to you, O Muse, you incomparable bitch. And I do not trust you, O Muse. Not one little bit. Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
****Tavern Wench of DOGMA, the Defenders of George Martin's Art****<i></i>

Quote:At any rate, tonight is the assembly at Agamemnon's tent and the confrontation between Agamemnon and Achilles. This is where the Iliad begins, and it should be the focus of all my energies and professional skills, but the truth is that I don't really give a @#%$. Let them posture. Let them bluster. Let Achilles reach for his sword - well, I confess that I'm interested in observing that. Will Athena actually appear to stop him, or was she just a metaphor for Achilles' common sense kicking in? I've waited my entire life to answer such a question, and the answer is only minutes away, but strangely, irrevocably...I...don't...give...a...@#%$. The nine years of painful rebirth and slow memory return and constant warfare and constant heroic posturing, not to mention my own enslavement by the gods and the Muse, have taken their toll. I'd be just as happy right now if a B-52 appeared and dropped an atomic bomb on both the Greeks and the Trojans. @#%$ all these heros and the wooden chariots they rode in on. Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
****Tavern Wench of DOGMA, the Defenders of George Martin's Art****<i></i>

Quote:"What does the balloon look like?" asked Orphu. The deep space moravec was tethered in the center of the enlarged gondola, strapped down by many meters of line and set into a frame Mahnmut had hammered together. Nearby, shielded and secured, were the transmitter and the smaller Device. "It's like a giant pumpkin above us," said Mahnmut. Orphu rumbled over the tightbeam, "Have you ever seen a pumpkin in real life?" "Of course not, but we've both seen images. The balloon's an orange ovoid, wider than it's tall, about sixty-five meters across and about fifty meters tall. It has vertical ridges like a pumpkin...and it's orange. "I thought it was sheathed in stealth material," said Orphu, sounding surprised. "It is. Orange stealth material. I guess our moravec designers didn't consider the fact that the people we'd be sneaking up on might have eyes as well as radar." Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
****Tavern Wench of DOGMA, the Defenders of George Martin's Art****<i>Edited by: Duchess of Malfi  at: 8/31/03 6:32 pm
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Quote:Every hour, every day, every morning, I don't know what's going to happen next. It's wonderful. Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
****Tavern Wench of DOGMA, the Defenders of George Martin's Art****<i></i>

" I presume there will be some sort of spacecraft," said Koros III. "Or are you going to fling us one after another, naked, like so many chickens fired from a trebuchet?"

"I'm probably dead anyway. But I'll use the taser on as many of these bitches as I can before they drag me down." <i></i>

awesome quote kins!

My fav, which has been my sig on the Watch for the past month is:
"I apologize again," said Ada. "The security failure on the part of the voynix was inexplicable, but my own carelessness was inexcusable. I'm sorry that your weekend at Ardis Hall was ruined and that your sense of harmony was perturbed."

"Perturbed, yes...perhaps an inadequate word to describe being devoured by a six ton carnivore," said Daeman...