I’ve foud several glaring continuity errors. There is also a throwaway line in which one character cheekily refers to a continuity error found in the novel Robinson Caruso. Please spoil this for me: are the continuity errors I’ve been finding in Ilium put there on purpose, as a signal to the reader?
Thanks.
-Kris
Sorry for the typo in the title.
I previewed the post but didn’t read the title…
Should have said “who’s” but that’s moot now…
-Kris
Do you mean continuity errors within just Ilium, or between it and the sequel, Olympus?
Can you give some examples?
Oh, and please spolier-box them, especially if they are from Olympos.
And please make it clear which book is being spoiled. I don’t want to read anything about Olympos, which I just began reading, but I’ll comment on Ilium.
I’m reading Ilium, about 150 pages into it.
In the early stages, I was seriously wondering what was going on, but things are starting to make sense now, and I’m really enjoying it.
So, since I still have plenty left of it to be read, I’ll ask that spoiler boxes also be used for any details of Ilium.
Yes, they are intentional. You will find out why eventually.
Knowed Out, are you talking about inconsistancies between The Iliad and Ilium, or things inconsistant just within different parts of Ilium? Or between Ilium and Olympos?
Title is fixed. That’s easy to do, Frylock… in future, just contact a Moderator. Happy to be of service.
These are all problems within Ilium itself.
Sorry I have no page numbers in what follows–Don’t have the book with me ATM.
[spoiler]For example…
In one scene Mahnmut and Orphu are talking about Proust’s “three” attempts to discover the meaning of life, where the third one is left unarticulated, but in a later scene “four” such attempts are pondered by Mahnmut. He thinks to himself something like “Orphu said Proust had four attempts” in that latter scene. But this is false. Orphu had only talked about three attempts.
Helen has Hockenberry explain himself to her in bed at knife point, and then they go to the next room, and then has him explain himself to her at knife point. She asks exactly the same questions, and he gives exactly the same answers. It’s as though, in the second scene, the first hadn’t happened–or hadn’t happened as described in the book, anyway.
(This one may just be my misunderstanding) Helen and Agammemnon have sex in one scene, but in a later scene Helen thinks to herself that she and Agamemnon “aren’t lovers yet” but that she hopes that will change. This one, though, I realize may just be a misreading on my part–perhaps a single bout of sex doesn’t qualify them as “lovers.”
I know I’ve seen at least a few more but can’t remember them right now.
Assuming I’m right that there are “errors” here, even if they don’t end up having an explicit role in the plot I still think they might be no mistake. It would be completely in keeping with the themes of the work for the author to use this method to remind us occasionally that we are not reading a report but rather a crafted work of art. Also, recall the explicit reference to continuity errors made in reference to Robinson Carusoe. Also, recall that a major plot point revolves around a fact that a jarring continuity error exists within the Iliad itself involving the character of Phoenix.
[/spoiler]
-Kris
Well, I totally missed those when I read it. Thanks Frylock, I’ll have to keep an eye out for these things when I re-read it. In fact, I’m starting to think I should abort my reading of Olympus until I re-read Ilium.
Knowed Out, are those the same as what you were thinking of?
Were these inconsistancies explained in Ilium, or Olympus? If Ilium, can you please explain it to me (in a spoiler box)?
I thought that Frylock meant the Battle of Troy, which isn’t the way it happened in the Iliad. That’s what knocked me for a loop as I was reading the first book. Then it all became clear.
I’ve only just started reading Olympos, so I can’t comment on continuity errors between the two books. As for his examples, I didn’t pick up on them, but here’s my half-assed attempt to explain them:
Mahnmut doesn’t get Proust. He doesn’t have the mindset for it, and this is something he repeatedly gripes about to Orphu, but Orphu ignores his protests. It could be that Mahnmut just got the number wrong.
This double-questioning actually happens a few other times. Maybe it’s the ancient Greek way of being thorough.
Helen is really capricious. She redefines the truth to suit herself often. She’s already done it a couple of times in Olympos.
I found another error in Olympos which makes me feel that he’s doing it on purpose. I wish I had the book in front of me for the page numbers, but here it is:
When Hannah and Noman come back from the Golden Gate, they bring some additional people with them. One is described as a man named “Stephe”. Later Stephe is referred to as “she”.
And for those of you who have finished the book, can anyone explain the significance of
the submarine full of black holes? What purpose did this serve in the book at all? They reactivated for some reason I can’t comprehend. Harman is sent out to find them – walking the whole way. (Why not just fax him to the spot?) Then they leave him there to die which makes absolutely NO sense unless they knew that the Moravecs were going to pull a deus ex machina – which of course they do. Maybe I’m being dense, but I can’t figure out what the significance of the submarine is at all. Seems like he could have been included in the back story and left it at that. I found the ending to be a bit of a let down and hurried as if he was trying to tie up all the loose ends as quickly as possible. And they told Setebos that the Quiet was coming and he said, “Oh I better skeedaddle. And he did. The End.” :dubious:
Thanks for pointing that out, Velveeta.
I’ve only read about a hundred and fifty pages of Olympos. I found Illium to be a fascinating page-turner. I’m finding Olympos to be sort of limp by comparison. It seems awkwardly written, and I keep thinking I’m detecting what is in my opinion one of the worst of the literary sins: stretching things out so they take up more words so you make more money. I could be wrong about that–I just keep getting that little suspicion that that’s what’s happening, if you know what I mean.
If Illium were the Matrix, I’m finding that Olympos would be somewhere between Matrix 2 and Matrix 3. The meaning of the analogy: If Illium had fascinating premises and sort of “blew my mind” on the metaphysical/humanistic front, (hey, I was young when I first saw the Matrix!) Olympos is just sort of an action thriller (minus most of the “thrill”) with no further literary merit.
(So far.)
I’ve actually put the book down to read others instead. I hope to come back to it.
-Kris
I’d guess that’s a simple error on the author’s part, with a minor character. I don’t even recall the character, at all.
My biggest problem with the book is it uses the old literary “technique” of [spoiler]having god-like characters set humans on tasks without telling them how or why, and giving them just the barest help. Other books do this but it’s sometimes explained why the godlike characters cannot help. But not in this case, as far as I could remember.
And regarding the sub, I assume containment fields were breaking down, and they had to lure the Moravecs there somehow. Which as I type this I realize makes litle sense, because it wasn’t Harman’s presence that alerted the Moravecs, but the attack from Setebos. Maybe it was to get the Moravecs to Harman, so Harman could send the Moravecs to save the people as Ardis? Still a stretch…[/spoiler]
I thought it was still a good read, but you bring up a good point. It does seem drawn out and he leaves lots of loose ends and some things flat out make no sense at all. It’s as if he got tired of writing it or a deadline approached and he just threw together an ending. As drawn out as the book seems, he wraps up the ending in the blink of an eye and you’re left wondering why he even mentions certain things. And did anyone else feel like the publisher told him to add a sex scene? The one in Olympos is so crammed into the story it actually made me laugh out loud – no purpose whatsoever except to show that he can write soft core porn. (And although I do love me some soft core porn, this was just padding the book.) Revtim mentions another problem I had with it – all powerful gods that can’t help with some bizarre task they’ve sent their hero on. It’s still better than most of the Sci-fi out there, but it has some serious flaws. I’m happy to find that I’m not the only one left scratching my head over parts of the narrative.
Nuthin’ but spoilers!
But then he says that they were inert until Savi and Odysseus reactivated them – somehow since it was never explained how or why they would want to do this. The whole storyline involving Harman and the sub makes absolutely no sense at all. The Moravecs just push it out into space and then they trip on over to the next problem. Half the friggen book is a set up to find this thing and it’s resolved in a matter of paragraphs. Same thing with Setebos! I’m so conflicted about this book. I really liked parts of it, but the rest made me want to claw my brain out.
It does look like he left some dangling plot lines for a sequel to take care of later, or a duo-sequel like he did with the Hyperion books.
I’ve got some ruminations, but I guess it’s best to put them in a spoiler box.
[spoiler] Orphu figures out that Earth limited its population to one million, then got to the point where they no longer needed their bodies and kept their atoms locked in some sort of stasis beam. They apparently did this with a lost tribe of Israel or something. But then some of them recreated themselves as personalities from the Battle of Troy, because that’s the strongest influence of imagination on quantum physics. The Tempest is another strong influence, but Prospero says that he, Ariel, and Caliban (as well as Setebos) are from outside Earth. So somehow they integrated themselves into this imagination-quantum matrix and controlled the remaining humans to live 5 periods of twenty years of partying.
Then, Odysseus shoots and kills his younger self, suggesting that he is either a recreated human who became an old Odysseus while another human became a young Odysseus, or he may not be part of that cadre at all and is actually the original Odysseus, who goes off with Circe, who is supposedly of the same mold as Prospero et al.
And are the Titans also recreated humans who prefer languishing in methaned Tartarus while everybody on the surface of Mars gets to play army? Did the recreated humans wind up losing track of their previous identities, and will now go on to live their lives resettling old Earth (another shared Simmons phenomenon from Hyperion)?
I think Simmons must have had a continual binge of hallunogenic drugs and wrote down all these subplots then tried to bind them together.[/spoiler]
My impression was that Savi and Odysseus deactivated some kind of outer field that would have prevented the old-style humans from discovering the sub itself, because the the individual containments around the black holes were failing. I figured the black holes escaping their containments would have went right through the outer thing that Savi and Odysseus deactivated.I could very well be wrong, I also found this subplot confusing.
Sorry to bump this but I figured this would be the best place to ask questions.
I have just started this book and haven’t read any of the spoilers up above.
All I want to know is this: Is reading Homer’s stories or a having knowledge of Greek history considered a prerequisite to begining these novels?
I’m on page 15, admittedly not far in, but I had to stop and ask on here because it seems as if Simmons is going with the assumption that everyone’s familiar with the source material. Me? Not so much.