Ilium by Dan Simmons

 

The title refers to the other name for the ancient city-state more often called Troy.  It is from the name Ilium that the title of Homer's Iliad, about the Trojan War, is derived.  One of the subplots is based on the Trojan War.

 

The novel takes place a few thousand years in our future.  Earth is home to less than one million humans who live somewhat like members of the 19th Century leisure class, only with non-humans acting like servants and with teleportation linking different locations where people live.  The people behave like pampered leisure class members who can't be bothered with how things work or why they are the way they are -- at least with the exception of a couple of main characters.

 

Mars has been terraformed.  Olympus Mons is home to the Olympian gods -- sort of.  They seem to believe they're the gods, but they have regeneration tanks for when a god is injured and other technology.  They've somehow reconstituted some Homeric scholars from Earth's past and given those scholars some hi-tech gadgets.  The scholars' jobs are to observe the Trojan War taking place apparently on Mars and compare what takes place with what Homer's Iliad says.  Zeus supposedly knows what the outcome was, but the other gods are not allowed to have that knowledge.

 

There is also a race of "little green men" on Mars who are erecting huge stone sculptures all along the shore of the sea.  The stones show the head of Shakespeare's Prospero.  The little green men are green -- getting their nourishment from photosynthesis -- but apparently are not from Mars or our solar system.

 

Further out in the solar system there are a few kinds of part organic, part machine intelligences.  Their confederation has become concerned about the massive level of quantum teleportation activity on Mars.  It reminds them of a time of crisis centuries ago when post-humans caused a disaster by their manipulations of space-time.  A small expedition is sent to investigate and possibly act.  One of the beings that actually reaches Mars is studying Shakespeare, the other studies Proust.  Both have a range of Earth languages, literature and history.

 

The Trojan War has been proceeding essentially as described by Homer for the last nine years.  It's reached the point of the central stories of the Iliad.  But one of the muses, working for one of the goddesses, has recruited the Homeric scholar Hockenberry for a plot to kill another goddess.  Hockenberry ends up deciding it's time end the war as a sport for the gods.  And the pair of beings from the outer solar system has arrived on Mars.  Events start diverging from the Iliad.

 

Meanwhile, another Odysseus has shown up on Earth and it trying to prepare the humans there for coming events, which he does not disclose in any detail.

 

There are a variety of other sub-stories and images of the technology in use or in disuse.  These can be interesting, but the elements described above are the key points around which the story is woven.  I've simplified them a bit to keep this short and to avoid spoilers.

 

There is enough content in the book oriented to Homer, Shakespeare, Proust, and to a lesser degree other literary figures, that the book may appeal more to readers with interest in that kind of literature.  Those with less background in (or taste for) such literature may miss some points or consider some passages bogged down in it.

 

It's an interesting story.  Although some of the themes are old, the presentation is basically good (with a few exceptions).  The book is not complete by itself.  This book ends in no more a satisfying manner than a book about WWII ending halfway through D-Day (assume you don't know how WWII ended and are depending on the book to tell you).  Apparently, there is a follow-up book, Olympos, which presumably answers some of the dangling questions.  Since I have not yet read the second book, I don't know if the story concludes there -- but two-book series are not that common.  So take this into consideration.