I just finished reading Ilium by Dan Simmons. 592 pages in less than 3 days, and I worked eight hours a day each of those days. Think I liked it much?

This book is the fucking bomb. Dan Simmons is the fucking bomb.

Simmons is a really interesting author. He writes science fiction. He writes mysteries. He writes horror novels. He writes noir thrillers. He writes fantasy. In 1986, he won the World Fantasy Award for his first novel, Song of Kali, beating out The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice and Clive Barker's first novel, The Damnation Game. In 1990, he won the British Fantasy Award and the Bram Stoker Award for his pretty fucking amazing pseudo-vampire novel, Carrion Comfort. That same year, he won the Hugo for his first science fiction novel, Hyperion.

Hyperion was the first book in a series of four novels known as the Hyperion Cantos. And they're some of the best science fiction novels ever written, especially the first two books. When I first read them, they grabbed hold of my imagination and made me realize that I could really love science fiction novels. They were full of big bold ideas but the tales were told through brilliantly crafted characters. And the whole thing was set up against a background that required you to have at least a bit of knowledge of literature to see the whole story. Keats and Chaucer echoed through the stories.

Simmons has been off writing in other genres for a few years now, but he's back to science fiction big time and he's totally on his game. ILIUM is crazy good.

Imagine a far future solar system. The moons of Jupiter are colonized by 'moravecs', organic robots who spend their downtime debating Proust and Shakespeare. Earth is home to only a few hundred thousand 'post technological' humans, who live carefree spoiled lives, but they have no knowledge of technology or literature or simple common sense anymore. And they're going to need all of that soon.

Meanwhile, the 'post humans' have disappeared. They may be on Mars. Something's on Mars. The Greek Gods are on Mars. A twentieth century scholar has found himself resurrected in this future to observe the Iliad being reenacted, or possibly unfolded for the first time... on Mars. There are also Little Green Men on Mars, who spend their lives building giant stone heads.

The Internet has grown and been modified and mutated and is a living entity. The Earth's biosphere is alive. Gods walk the Earth. Gods walk Mars. Time is being manipulated. Other worlds may be intersecting with this one.

Is your head exploding yet?

Reading this book was like shooting heroin. Buy it. Read it.

Meanwhile, I'll be waiting for OLYMPOS, the sequel due out next year.

But soon, I'll have ABSOLUTION GAP to tide me over in the meantime...