gods and religion in Dan Simmons’ Ilium/Olympos
Dan Simmons’ Homeric pair of science fiction novels, Ilium and Olympos, are – in every sense of the Greek bard’s work – EPIC. They span some 5,000 years of human civilizations both pre- and post-literate, both historical and post-historical, and have for setting nothing less than the entire solar system and its parallel-universe iterations. To even categorize them requires the invention of a whole new genre; some kind of intertextually literate, poetically epic, hard sci-fi-fantasy ingot melted down from the Iliad and Odyssey, Proust’s A la recherche de temps perdu, and Shakespeare’s The Tempest, mixed with a thorough knowledge of Hesiod, Virgil, Ovid, incidental works on Greek myth, Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound, Browning’s Caliban Upon Setebos, and modern string theory and quantum mechanics. They are an absolute adventure of a read.
As far as any formal or institutionalized religion goes in this illiterate, eloi civilization (as one character refers to it) with no knowledge of history or science… well, there is none, at least in the form that we’d expect. Revealed-text-based moral codes similar to what we know in our own societies do not exist; there are few restrictions, for example, on sexual behavior. But there is a very ubiquitous, blind belief in both technological devices and the afterlife; blind because technology is never inquired into or questioned, and observation on any post-death happenings are never sought.
In the novels, people travel around Earth by “faxing,” a type of teleportation similar to that of Star Trek, in which a person’s constituent atoms are broken down, stored, and reconstituted at the intended location. In Ilium and Olympos, this is done by way of a network of “faxnodes,” which rely on supercomputers and massive memory banks in orbit around Earth to store an individual’s quantum data and transfer it from faxnode to faxnode. Humans are not aware of any of that, however. To them, the faxnodes have always worked and will always work, transporting them around the globe seemingly by magic. Indeed, they receive quite a lifestyle shock when the faxnodes do stop working and they must hike for the first time.
These “old-style” humans, having been genetically modified by the mysterious and technologically advanced post-humans, are allotted 100 total years of life, divided into periods of five “Twenties.” At each “Twenty,” humans are faxed to a place known as the Firmary, located in Earth orbit, where they are healed, fixed, updated, generally kept young, and faxed back down to Earth. This has always been the case. When one’s Fifth Twenty rolls around, a Final Fax occurs, in which the human is faxed away to join the post-humans in their orbital ring cities in a life of eternal beauty. Or so humans believe, not ever having seen evidence to the contrary.
Sound familiar? I think that a subtle commentary on human religion is woven into the novels. All of the old-style humans possess a faith that they never question: faith in the magic of their technology, faith in what happens to them after death, and faith in their world as having always been the way it is now. This kind of faith has analogs in our contemporary monotheistic religions, and is deconstructed over the course of the novels. First, the main old-style human characters meet Savi, called the Wandering Jew (though humans have forgotten what a Jew was), who enlightens their understanding of their world, mostly by explaining various technologies and replacing their myths with observed facts. Soon, the humans find out that no post-humans exist, at least not in the orbital rings where they were believed to be. They then learn that they were never faxed up to join the post-humans, but simply were faxed to the Firmary so that the creature Caliban could feed on dead humans. By the end of the novel, nearly all of the old-styles beliefs have been eroded, and the characters realize that they have to come to terms with such things as aging, injury, and permanent death.
The deconstruction of accepted beliefs is not limited to those of the old-style Earth humans, though. In Ilium (and on Mars), it turns out that the Greek gods are not actual gods, but post-humans enhanced with ridiculously cool technology, like the ability to quantum teleport. Obviously this has ramifications for both the Greeks and the Trojans, whose worship turns into a massive war against the gods fueled by their rage at deception and manipulation (herein may lie another jab at the control over people exercised by organized religion).
So if we try to sort out all the god plot points, we uncover some sort of power relationship between all of the novel’s god-like beings:
- Sycorax (who, it turns out, is the same as Circe) and Setebos (known as Briareous or Aigaion) are near equal to Prospero. Sycorax’ name is a portmanteau of the Latin sus ‘pig’ and corax ‘raven.’ In Greek mythology, Setebos is born of Gaia and Uranus, and superior to even the Titans.
- it was Prospero, we find out eventually, who raised the post-humans to their positions as Titans and Greek gods, giving them their (technological) powers. He isn’t really a god, though, but the “self-aware avatar of the Earth’s logosphere.”
- Zeus is, naturally, the most powerful of the novels’ Greek pantheon, and imported Setebos to help in his war with the Titans. Zeus’ power can be negated by the Demogorgon (who does not seem to have any relation to post-humans or Prospero), as well as the Fates (who seem to stay out of everything, though). When prompted by the scholic Hockenberry, Zeus says “remaining lord of the gods and ruler of the universe…[is a fulltime job]…just ask Setebos or Prospero or the Quiet if you doubt me,” which seemingly implies that they too have sort of near-omnipotence.
- the Demogorgon serves a god described as the “maker of the living world, almighty, merciful,” “single, supreme God of the entire universe,” and also known as the Quiet. Notably, Achilles, Hephaestus, and others think that concept to be absurd and dismiss the Demogorgon as insane. But, it is the Demogorgon who puts Zeus back into his place for trying to usurp the power of the Quiet.
- the Quiet and his servant the Demogorgon, apparently, “eat Seteboses for snacks,” while Prospero is referred to as “silent servant of the Quiet.”
It must be, then, that the novels’ theo-scape (I most certainly did just coin that word) involves one, superior-universal-omnipotent god, and the rest are just really powerful beings that fit into some sort of hierarchy dictated by the compendium of classical literature relating to Hellenic mythology.
Thus, we see that when Zeus tries (and fails) to claim (usurp) universal power, he proclaims to the other Greek gods that he will “become God Ascendant, the single God to thee, the one and true omnipotent God, Almight God, true Lord of all Eternity.” These epithets are very reminiscent of judeo-christian-muslim monotheism. In Zeus’ failing, as well as in the earlier deaths of the novels’ Greek gods at the hands of mortal warriors, we see that “false” gods – that is, post-humans pretending to be gods – ultimately get destroyed. And destroyed bloodily, in Zeus’ case. It’s quite a nice scene, somewhat more climactic than the death of Philip Pullman’s tired, geriatric God in His Dark Materials.
Though the novels leave much unsaid in describing this single God and its powers, the fact that it is mentioned and plays a role where the machinations of powerful beings are concerned is interesting. Dan Simmons, in interviews, has said that he doesn’t adhere to any religion, but that he finds organized religion to be interesting and fun. Organized religions are all over the place in his Hyperion Cantos, but here, anything resembling them falls apart. What remains as the one unchanged force in the Ilium universe is the lone god described to be omnipotent.
In addition to the above theological structure of the novels, which is what I’m concerned with here, I should mention that Dan Simmons, almost disappointingly, can’t stay away from perpetuating the pseudo-historico-universal theme of Jews vs. Muslims. In the novels, this takes the form of a thread presented as background to a certain plot point: sometime in the distant past, the “Global Islamic Caliphate” developed a virus designed to kill all Jews, which, as a result of Jews only marrying other Jews and keeping a fairly constant genetic pool, failed. After some kind of war, everyone died anyway, including some Muslims who killed themselves. The character of Savi is the only “Jew” left, and she describes Jews as a “hypothetical race construct.” The Judaism-Islam eternal conflict idea is depressing and unnecessary; it’s my only complaint about any of Dan Simmons’ writing.
resources for the study of classical arabic
If I’m going to criticize the teaching of Arabic, I ought to point the way to the few helpful resources that exist in English. As far as I’m concerned, you’re out of luck when it comes to spoken Arabic, sans something in situ, so here are my approved and highly regarded resources for the study of Classical Arabic:
The thick, redoubtable Hans Wehr dictionary, the best-organized and thorough collection of modern standard words. It’s fine for Classical Arabic, though some words are different. Many are the hours I’ve spent exploring Arabic roots and their permutations in this longtime friend.
The two best lesson books that I’ve encountered are Wheeler Thackston’s Koranic & Classical Arabic and Alan Jones’ Arabic Through the Qur’an. Both provide excellent exercises, answer keys, and lucid explanations of grammatical concepts. Jones’ book includes a well-rendered Arabic typeface (which makes the reading much easier, believe me) and proper voweling of words, though his exercies only come from phrases found in the Qur’an. If you’re going to study Classical grammar though, why not do it by working through the heavy and obscure Qur’anic grammar? I dislike Thackston’s transliteration and root system (he should just stick to the things that Arab grammarians used for centuries).
As important as a good dictionary is a good grammar. The best one of Classical Arabic available in English is William Wright’s A Grammar of Classical Arabic. First published over 100 years ago, this book is so thorough that no one has published another grammar in English since then. Because everyone learns language differently, I’d say that the best method might be to get some texts, have this book and the Hans Wehr by your side, and just dive right in. This is THE key to learning anything about Classical Arabic structure, replete with excellent examples and lengthy, clear explanations in the best classical philological style.
Last thing to have is some Arabic texts, and not just sentence-long exercises. Some real millenium-old Arabic prose, and the best thing is that there exist a hundred thousand-odd Arabic manuscripts for you to peruse. Depending on your interests, you can start with anything from geography to history to religious writings to music or love-treatises. You could get a book that includes some varied sample texts and a glossary, such as MC Lyons’ Elementary Classical Arabic. Note that a book like this has no grammar explanations, it’s just a reader.
Once you get good enough, of course, you will be able to stop relying on English-language resources and make use of the works of the famous Arab grammarians like Sibaweh and Arabic language dictionaries.
Excellent web resources include the Classical Arabic blog, the Hans Wehr’s Disciples blog, and the al-ghazali website of Classical Arabic texts, grammars, and dictionaries.
on not learning arabic
Some years ago, Georgetown University Press came out with a new 3-volume Standard Arabic textbook pretentiously titled Al-Kitāb fi taʿallum al-’arabiyya [The Book concerning the learning of Arabic]. On one hand, people probably thought this to be a good thing, as no one had published a new and extensive Standard Arabic textbook since the days of the large and orange Elementary Modern Standard Arabic (a first edition of which, dated 1975, I happen to own), and everyone was scrambling to learn Arabic at the time in order to communicate with the terrorist world.
Soon, Al-Kitab became the standard Arabic text…at every institution in the United States. I request evidence of an American Standard Arabic course which does not use it. Unfortunately for everyone studying at those places, and the lofty name of the book, it has absolutely no merits when it comes to acquiring a utile and realistic knowledge of a language.
How so? In place of actually delineating arguments, I’ll just say that it fails outright or is substandard (not that there is a standard in Arabic instruction, anyway) in teaching modern standard grammar, proper voweling, a breadth of vocabulary, anything of use in conversation, or any useful dialect phrases (of course it doesn’t explain that there exist different Arabic dialects or that no one actually speaks in Standard Arabic). It does not even make the distinction that Modern Standard Arabic and the various dialects are different languages, and that (apologies) learning MSA is not going to help you actually talk to anybody in the Middle East. I’ve met countless dozens who studied al-kitab for years only to show up in the Middle East with the speaking capability of a blender. It also completely ignores the vast and beautiful body of classical Arabic literature in its text examples.
In addition to my complaints on substance, al-kitab’s illogical and inconsistent transliteration scheme and ugly Arabic typography commend it even less.
But this book is symbolic of the fact that Arabic instruction in the United States has not advanced in recent years, despite enrollment in Arabic courses increasing drastically and large amounts of money being put into its “teaching,” despite government folks fervently trying to shore up our understanding of them damn terrorists, despite nearly every major university having a sizeable Arabic program.
Below, I’m just setting out some links relating to a discussion of al-Kitab’s de-merits that was kicked off by a Washington Post op-ed in June 2008. Some of the ensuing writing is ridiculously over-reactive. But yes, I belatedly discovered the controversy and wasn’t even able to comment on related blog posts since their comments had been closed for a year.
Matthew Yglesias’ “al-kitab revisited”
selections from ‘the american chesterfield’
Philip Stanhope, the Earl of Chesterfield, was an 18th century British statesman. Hoping to educate his son in the most honourable (excuses for the Brit spelling in this context), gentlemanly, and learned way possible, he wrote a series of extensive letters to him over the course of 20 years on everything from friendship, choice of company, and knowledge to ‘genteel carriage,’ employment of time, and rules for conversation.
In the early 1800s, his work was adapted into The American Chesterfield, a selected edition of some of his letters with additions from American advice-givers “suited to the youth of America.” I happened to find in my house a pocket-sized, rather raggedy and cover-lacking copy of this very work, dating from 1847.
Many of the letters are somewhat loquacious, wandering around a bit before getting to the point, and the author frequently inserts French words where English ones would probably do fine. I suppose it was intended to give the text an “air of douceur” (to quote from the chapter on Genteel Carriage).
My favorite passage, somewhat more timeless in its applicability than others, at least to me, was entitled Eloquence of Expression. Part of his point was that speaking well will at the least lead people not to become uninterested in your subject, or annoyed with you, while those who speak well incline you towards their opinions and ideas. He writes:
No one can attend, with pleasure, to a bad speaker…He who mumbles out a set of ill-chosen words, utters them ungrammatically, or with dull monotony, will tire and disgust. Do you not suffer, when people accost you in a stammering or hesitating manner; in an untuneful voice, with false accents and cadences; puzzling and blundering through solecisms, barbarisms, and vulgarisms; misplacing even their bad words, and inverting all method?
In order to avoid such problems, and speak pleasantly and eloquently, it is necessary to
Not neglect your style, in whatever language you speak, or whomsoever you speak to, were it your footman. Seek always for the best words, and the happiest expressions, you can find. Do not content your self with being barely understood; but adorn your thoughts, and dress them as you would your person; which, however well proportioned it might be, it would be very improper and indecent to exhibit naked, or even worse dressed than people of your rank are.
Would that our generation (and Presidents) heed such a warning and discard their sloppy and degenerate speech!
Lord Chesterfield warns that one’s career in government depends on one’s ability to speak well in public, for one will have to speak in front of one’s peers at some point, and people’s impressions, opinions, and even their personal like or dislike may depend upon it. He goes on for 12 small-type pages, citing the examples of classical Greece and Rome, quoting from Cicero, referring to his own political experience, and coming up with paragraph long analogies like the above one about speech as clothing. I think his son probably just wanted to be left alone after a while to do his own thing.
Not only that, but his son had a short, undistinguished political career, and died young after eloping with a peasant woman. Lord Chesterfield died of a broken heart or something shortly after.
If you want to browse through his letters or read them, they’re available online at Project Gutenberg.
arabic wordplay: tightly woven from both sides (محبوك الطرفين)
Yusuf al-Maghribi was an Egyptian writer (d. 1616), who wrote a volume on the spoken Arabic of early 17th century Egyptians entitled Dafʿ al-iṣr ʿan kalām ahl Miṣr, “Removing the burden from the speech of the Egyptians.” (Writing in a idiolectical form of Classical Arabic infused with Egyptian words, he nonetheless viewed spoken Egyptian as inferior). His was one of the first studies of spoken Arabic, and one of the only sources that exists describing spoken Arabic before the 1800s and Edward Lane’s Manners and Customs. Most excellent that al-Maghribi was interested in recording spoken language, for it lets us see how the spoken language has changed over several centuries. It would have been nice to have a few lengthy, transcribed, voweled passages of an Egyptian’s speech, but collected words will have to suffice. As an example, al-Maghribi records that the Egyptians were saying izzayak to mean “how are you” at least 4 centuries ago.
He collected some local poetry and wrote some of his own, mostly punning off of Arabic verb forms and double entendres. I found this gem, a mawwal in which the first word of each line is the reverse of the last word. al-Maghribi was apparently especially proud of this, because he had never seen anyone do such a thing with four-letter roots (which themselves aren’t too common). He called it maḥbūk al-ṭarafayn or “tightly woven from both sides:
مَن منّ بالوصل لو عارض كما نمنم
مَلْمَلَ فؤادى و مالي الكل قد لمْلَم
مَسْمَسَ حسودي بوصله لي و له سَمْسَم
مَزْمَزَ بشربه مِن القهوة و لي زَمْزَم
“The one who granted the union resisted it like he embellished
He made my heart restless, and did not gather everything for me
My envier confused me with his union with me and ran to him
He sipped his drink from the coffee and murmured to me”
A badass concept in Arabic wordplay, and somewhat unique to Arabic (well, Semitic languages) because of the way consonantal roots work. The poem seems a bit nonsensical, if only because al-Maghribi was compelled to use only those four-letter roots whose inverses exist. He ends up having to cheat a little bit anyway: man manna in the first line is really a pronoun plus a geminated verb, and not a quadriliteral, re-duplicated verb.
I found this through the doctoral dissertation (which includes a pdf of the Arabic text) of Liesbeth Zack (available online) entitled Egyptian Arabic in the seventeenth century: a study and edition of Yusuf al-Magribi’s Daf’ al-isr ‘an kalam ahl Misr.
why monarchy is a good thing
1 July 2009 at 11:30 am (asides and comments, imperialism)
This is adapted from my sister’s old blog, but somewhat applicable given the previous post.
To be honest, some of those are good points like constancy and unity, albeit perhaps not in these specific contexts. (Though the monarchy now costs the British taxpayer 69p per year, and 70% of the people disapprove of having to support the monarchy, according to a recent poll by the Guardian). But, there wouldn’t be a lot of really cool things like castles, funny looking royal guards, and epic knight battles without a monarchy, at least in the past.
And….the royal families of every major country in Europe (as well as some miscellaneous Arabs!) are in line to the British throne, because they are all descended from George III.
If you can take care of all the above, Reza Pahlavi, then you can restore your monarchy (as you’ve doubtless dreamed of doing)…
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