Ahira's Hangar

It looks as if the author and publishing company are looking at a spring of 2005 date for the release of Olympos (and the paperback release of Ilium). And Dan Simmons has a sample chapter up at his website!

www.dansimmons.com
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Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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The release date for Olympos is July 1, 2005.

from Amazon:

Quote:
Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
Welcome back to the Trojan War gone round the bend. Hector and Achilles have joined forces against the Olympic Gods. Back on a future Earth, assorted creatures from Shakespeare's The Tempest get ready to rumble in a winner-takes-the-universe battle royale. And amid it all, a group of confused mere mortals with their classically trained robot allies (from Jupiter no less) race across time and space to keep from getting squashed as the various Titans of the Western Canon square off.
Confused? It's all part of Dan Simmons's Olympos, a novel one part fun-with-quantum-physics and two parts through-the-looking-glass survey of Western Literature. Picking up where he left off in the high-wire act Ilium, Simmons doesn't disappoint. Not only is Olympos excellent hard science fiction and grand space opera, it's a riveting and fast-paced book that is alternately shocking, thrilling, and often deftly hilarious as his hapless human creations wrestle the forces of literary history itself. Be sure to read Ilium first though. That and a more-than passing familiarity with The Illiad might come in handy for the journey to Mars, Ilium's far-off shores, and the Earth that might be. --Jeremy Pugh


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Product Details

Hardcover: 576 pages
Publisher: Eos (July 1, 2005)
Language: English
ISBN: 0380978946

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Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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I can tell tha tthe release is coming very soon. I got an email from Amazon offering %35 off yesterday. I think I will take them up on it. I had been planning on buying it locally so I could pick it up right away and start reading, but that's enough of a savings to make me be willing to wait a couple of extra days for the shipping. ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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Quote:
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Drawing from Homer's Iliad, Shakespeare's Tempest and the work of several 19th-century poets, Simmons achieves another triumph in this majestic, if convoluted, sequel to his much-praised Ilium (2003). Posthumans masquerading as the Greek gods and living on Mars travel back and forth through time and alternate universes to interfere in the real Trojan War, employing a resurrected late 20th-century classics professor, Thomas Hockenberry, as their tool. Meanwhile, the last remaining old-style human beings on a far-future Earth must struggle for survival against a variety of hostile forces. Superhuman entities with names like Prospero, Caliban and Ariel lay complex plots, using human beings as game pieces. From the outer solar system, an advanced race of semiorganic Artificial Intelligences, called moravecs, observe Earth and Mars in consternation, trying to make sense of the situation, hoping to shift the balance of power before out-of-control quantum forces destroy everything. This is powerful stuff, rich in both high-tech sense of wonder and literary allusions, but Simmons is in complete control of his material as half a dozen baroque plot lines smoothly converge on a rousing and highly satisfying conclusion.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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My OLYMPOS review...

After waiting over a year for the concluding volume in his hugely ambitious ILIUM/OLYMPOS set piece, Dan Simmons finally delivers us OLYMPOS, a 700 page tome that doesn't just live up to expectations, it obliterates them! This is a work of astounding imagination and inventiveness.

Picking up eight months after ILIUM left off, we are brought into this novel through the eyes of the most beautiful woman who ever lived, Helen of Troy, as she mourns for her husband, Paris, recently killed in one-on-one combat with the god Apollo--

Or was it the mighty god Apollo? Maybe not, according to Paris’ first wife, who speaks up at Paris' funeral pyre.

It seems as if all is not well within Ilium’s fabled walls! In fact, not nearly everyone involved in this recent united front against the Gods is kosher with the idea. There are rumors of Greeks and Trojans alike once again praying to their deities and even plotting with them to get the real war started back up again!

Thus begins this wildly entertaining page turner of a novel that has everything you could ask for in a concluding volume. My only complaint would be that it wasn't long enough! Yes, I say this knowing that it already pushes 700 pages. I can't help it, I wanted even more.

Oh, and one more thing, these books should be available on audio cassette or CD!

Greg <i></i>

Cool.

You must have access to an ARC.

My copy should get to me on or about July 5, according to Amazon. Can't wait!! <i></i>

Well, it came earlier than what they told me.

I am about halfway through, and so far it is fantastic!!!

It's hard to put it down this afternoon to go to work.

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Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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Olympos kicked some extremely serious butt.

I need a day or two to gather my thoughts and I will start a clearly marked spoiler thread for discussion (if anyone else wants to start one in the meantime, feel free. )

Right now the only thing I am capable of saying is: ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
<i>Edited by: Duchess of Malfi at: 7/5/05 10:34 am
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I have started a separate thread for a spoiler discussion. If anyone wishes to talk about the book with heavy spoilers, please go there.

Light spoilers from the opening chapters are probably OK here.

Thanks.

~duchy ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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