Exploring the Intersections of

Gender, Judaism, and Christianity

in Dan Simmons Ilium
Rachel Winchel

Very little scholarship in science fiction is dedicated to recent novels, especially concerning
the roles of the female characters and even less is dedicated to analyzing Jewish female
characters. Ilium is a unique novel that challenges traditional science fiction that
depicts Jewish people as being separate or unimportant to the plot of the novel, or as Susan
Kray refers to them as deracinated walk-ons, ethnic in name only and present merely for
the sake of nominal diversity (87), by having a principal character who is both female and
Jewish. The character of Savi is an atypical Jewish woman who goes beyond the boundaries
established by traditional science fiction and takes on leadership roles like that of Abraham,
Moses or Christ, and rises to power and influence despite her marginalized status in society,
directly countering Krays argument that Jews in Future Time do not forge viable spiritual/
religious/ cultural forms (87). Dan Simmons is unafraid to step out against the maledominated boys club of science fiction and present a female character that all readers can
appreciate. Ilium is an example of messianic literature with a female archetypal messianic
figure who turns against traditional, stereotypical gender roles, juxtaposing the novel
against traditional Christianity and Judaism, creating new religious icons for a
futuristic world.
My feminist reading of the text will, as Veronica Hollinger writes, resist the ideological selfrepresentations of the masculinist cultural text that traditionally offers itself as the
universal expression of a homogenous human nature (125). My reading is most likely
not one that all of my colleagues in the science fiction realm will agree with; however, only
by critiquing the narrative of the novel and digging deeper to uncover the importance of the
role of the female protagonist in the novel can one hope to make a meaningful change and
impact for women readers of science fiction. Reviewing the scholarly criticism is difficult in
this case because so little has been analyzed. Scholarship on religion and Judaism in Dan
Simmons Hyperion exists concerning the character of Rachel, who grows backward to
infancy (Kray 87), but Ilium is simply too new, and perhaps regarded by some as too
commercial for any significant analysis. For my analysis of science fiction and Judaism, I rely
on the work of Dr. Susan Kray, a professor at Indiana State University, who has written
extensively on religion. However, I will go one step further than Dr. Kray, who discounts the
notion that Jewish women are heroines or hold leadership roles in science fiction novels, and
prove that Ilium is centered on a female Jewish protagonist and creates new religious icons
using a futuristic mixture of both Christianity and Judaism.
Because Kray provides almost no direct argumentation on female Jews in science fiction, and
in particular in Ilium, I will combine her research with that of Veronica Hollinger, the co-editor
of Science Fiction Studies, who provides an excellent analysis of how women have
been portrayed since the Enlightenment and compares that to the portrayal of women in
science fiction. Hollinger contends that women have been marginalized and ignored in favor
of a white, male and middle-class society (125) and I argue that science fiction presents a
unique opportunity for challenging the traditional marginalization of women in literature
through its narrative experiments and in the ongoing dialectical relationship between

abstraction and concretization (Hollinger 129). By deconstructing Ilium through the lens of
gender and religion, we can analyze our current state as females and the ways in which
technology is changing the traditional gender roles imposed by society (Hollinger
134). Religion and gender must be analyzed together because women in traditional Judaism
are viewed as the conduits for Jewish religious community (Kray 87). Traditionally, women
are given a portion of power in their religion, and analyzing the importance of gender
in Ilium without analyzing religion at the same time would limit the perspective and tone of
the character of Savi, the female Jewish protagonist in Ilium, who serves as the archetype of
the Wandering Jew and of the Messiah.
Ilium is a religious novel and contains many characters and scenes that mimic those found
in traditional Jewish and Christian stories but with a futuristic and humanistic interpretation
to fit the setting of the novel three thousand years in the future. The religious icons
in Ilium are not exclusively male, like the major religious icons in Judeo-Christian myth, and
not all the roles or instances are pleasant or ideal. Simmons often puts religion in a negative
sphere and some of his characters even seem anti-Semitic. The plot of Ilium is based
on religious events, including the destruction of the Second Temple, the building of the
ThirdTemple, and the destruction of all Jews, except one. These events are significant
because they involve the Jewish people as a whole, and provide an opportunity for Savi, the
last remaining Jew, to have an essential role in the novel. She becomes historically
important, and will be the last remaining link between the Jewish people of the past and
those remaining in the neutrino beam. Similar to the last remaining Jew in the thirty-eighth
century found in Susan Krays analysis of the short story A Canticle for Leibowitz (88), Savi is
the last, the one, the only (qtd in Kray 88), and it is responsibility to not only spread the
history of the Jewish people after they were essentially eliminated in the Final Fax, but also
to find a solution to free them. In Ilium, religion is found and created through Savi, the only
Jew that managed not to be reduced to the blue neutrino beam at the Final Fax. Savi is
unique in that her Jewish faith historically represents reason, and scientific rationalism
(Mendlesohn 267). Because her faith is one of reason, she is not depicted as dangerous,
diverting humans (and aliens) from the path of reason and true enlightenment (Mendlesohn
269). Dan Simmons goes beyond the religious analysis of Mendlesohn and creates a new
scenario to analyze. Although Savi is Jewish, she portrays a messianic figure in the
novel. Not only is she a messianic figure, who leads her disciples, Daemon and Harmon, she
is female, thus intersecting religion and gender.
Although many science fiction critics such as Susan Kray argue that religion is not viewed as
a positive force in science fiction (88), the portrayal of religion, especially Judaism, is a
positive force in Ilium. Ilium does not use religion to signify vicious, destructive
ignorance and reaction, represented by raving preachers or insular, inbred communities rife
with stupidity and mean-spiritedness as Kray insists is evident in the majority of science
fiction that attempts to incorporate religion (88). Instead, Savi is a leader figure, similar to
Moses, in that she attempts to lead her people, Daemon and Harmon, to the Promised Land,
the firmary. Like Moses, Savi dies before seeing her people freed and in the Promised
Land. Savi is killed by Caliban and never gets to free her people from the neutrino
beam. All hope is not lost in the novel; since Savi has led Daemon and Harmon on the quest
and has shown them the impact of the voynix on Jerusalem, she has changed their
perceptions of religion and has introduced them to Judaism (Simmons 340). Daemon and
Harmon continue the quest to free the Jewish people from the neutrino beam, like Joshua
leading the Jewish people to the Promised Land, or the disciples leading the Christian church
after the crucifixion of Christ.
Savi is a ground-breaking character in the world of science fiction, a world dominated
by white, Protestant males (Kray 88). She is known as the Wandering Jew, a common
theme in literature, especially in Christian literature (Kray 90), yet, the character of Savi is
unique because she is female, directly opposite from the traditional stories of the Wandering

Jew which are about males. Savi is comparable to the traditional Wandering Jew stories
because, although she is female, she is wandering through eternity without Jewish
companionship or any relationship to a Jewish community or heritage (Kray 90), albeit not
entirely. Although Savi as the Wandering Jew continues the image of the Christian view of
the Jews as one people, always and everywhere the same (Kray 92), she is not a symbol
that is doomed to homeless wandering among other nations as punishment for not being
Christian (Kray 92) because Christianity is a void concept in Ilium.
The idea of Christianity no longer exists in the world portrayed in Ilium, neither on Mars or
on earth. Ilium contains elements of Christianity, but there is no mention of Christ or that
any of the post-humans are Christian, even Harmon, who is able to read, has never heard
of Christianity (Simmons 313). The novel is set so far in the future that only Judaism
survives because it is based in history as being rational (Mendelsohn 267). Ilium is not
rooted in Christianity, as Kray insists all science fiction novels are, and Savi, the Wandering
Jew, is not forced to spend her time traveling the earth until Jesus returns (Kray 92) but
rather has spent her time waiting for Daemon and Harmon to find her so that she can lead
them on the quest. Savi does maintain a connection to her heritage and customs by
remembering and telling the events that happened during the Final Fax to Daemon and
Harmon. Through relating the events of the Final Fax to Daemon and Harmon, she tells
Jewish stories to Daemon and Harmon, proving that the novel is written with Jewish
undertones, and that Savi is a positive figure like the Jewish characters in science fiction
novels written by Jews. While it is unknown if Dan Simmons is Jewish, he certainly writes
both Ilium with Jewish undertones that cannot be denied. Savi represents the type of
Wandering Jew that is found in novels written by Jewish authors, what Kray describes as a
figure who makes a positive claim, however restrained or ironic, to a future for Jews and
Judaism (Kray 93).
Not only does Savi represent a figure who makes a positive claim (Kray 93), she
also becomes a new religious icon, a combination of the archetypes of the Wandering Jew
and the Messiah, for the Jewish people who were trapped during the Final Fax that promised
them that they would be transported to the firmary until the world was repaired; however,
that never happened and their bodies were broken down into atoms and trapped within the
form of a blue beam emanating from the third temple in Jerusalem (Simmons 315,
565). Through Savi, the Jewish people stuck in the neutrino beam have the possibility for
being restructured and surviving again. Ilium maintains the Jewish collective fantasy of
women as the torchbearers and sources of wisdom and meditation and does not attempt to
replace the character of Savi with the individual American male Jews fantasy of one male
as the last Jewish hold-out in a Gentile universe (Kray 90). Savi recognizes the antiSemitism in that other humans were successfully transported during the Final Fax, but not
the Jews, and she tries to educate Harmon and Daemon about the concept while they are in
Jerusalem, thus attempting to serve as a positive educator for the Jewish people in the
novel, providing them hope. While Ilium is guilty of portraying Jews as isolated remnants
adrift in time (Kray 87), Simmons does not leave them without hope through the character
of Savi, unlike the novels that Kray analyzes, those in which the future has little use for
Jews and almost none for Jewish women (88). Through the telling of the story of the
destruction of the Second Temple and the Third Temple, which houses the neutrino beam
(Simmons 314-315), Savi plays an essential role of educating Daemon and Harmon so that
they might continue the quest after she is killed.
Simmons has done his homework in writing about the Ninth of Av, and accurately represents
a futuristic view on the pain felt by Jews such as Savi regarding the destruction of
the Second Temple. The incorporation of the Ninth of Av in the novel unifies the Jewish
characters across vast distances of time and space, which represents a tension between
repeated threats of expulsions, expropriations, massacre, and genocide on one hand and a
sense of destiny on the other (Kray 90). According to The Orthodox Union, a website

concerning Jewish history, Tisha BAv, or the Ninth of Av, is important to the Jewish
people. Both the First and Second Temples were destroyed on the Ninth of Av and World War
I began on the Ninth of Av (OU.org). In Ilium, the Third Temple was built by the voynix on the
Ninth of Av, the day of the Final Fax (315). The construction of the Third Temple in one day
is not an unrealistic ideal, because the Second Temple was destroyed in one day on the
Ninth of Av, when Roman soldiers threw torches at the Temple, starting an enormous
conflagration (Telushkin 138).
Historically, on Tisha BAv the sin of the spies caused Hashem to decree that the Children of
Israel who left Egypt would not be permitted to enter the land of Israel (OU.org) and
foreshadows the Jews not making it through the Final Fax, which can be seen as a way
to enter the modern Promised Land. Savi recognizes that the Jews were left behind by the
post-humans on purpose (Simmons 341), further emphasizing my claim that the Final Fax
was just a ploy to get rid of all the Jews, an example of anti-Semitism among the posthumans. The post-humans never tidied up the planet as they claimed because dinosaurs
still roam the earth and eat Daemon (Simmons 340); yet ironically, they did tidy up the
planet because they eliminated the existence of all of the Jews except one, Savi. The posthumans, taking over the role of God, but are different than the characters typically taking on
the role of God, as described by Susan Kray. The post-humans have no religion, unlike the
Jews that Susan Kray argues take over the role of creator God in science fiction (91). The
world has been destroyed through science, and the post-humans will attempt to fix the
world through the same science that helped to destroy it. However, the post-humans failed
to capture Savi in their neutrino beam and she takes on a leadership role, like Moses leading
his people to the Promised Land. By incorporating stories of Judaisms past with futuristic
stories in the novel, thousands of years of history comes full circle, all the Jews trapped in
the neutrino beam are direct participants in that formative moment of history (Kray 91),
the building of the Third Temple, and creator God no longer exists.
Savi takes Daemon and Harmon on a journey to Jerusalem to see the Third Temple and the
nine thousand one hundred and thirteen Jews left behind after the Final Fax
(Simmons 340). By doing so, she attempts to teach Daemon and Harmon to be skeptical of
the information that they are constantly fed and to reach out on their own to form their own
opinions about their existence. While the three are in Jerusalem, they are bombarded by
cries of Itbah al-Yahud which readers find out means kill the Jew (343). This reminds me
of the Bible story before Christs crucifixion, the crowds shout out of kill the Jew. Savi takes
on a sacrificial role like Christ and she makes a promise with Ariel to save the soul of the
Earth (385) and she fulfills that promise when she, Daemon, and Harmon are attacked by
Caliban. She essentially sacrifices herself in order to find out more information about
Caliban, to distract him and ask what happened to the post-humans here? (Simmons
460). To save the lives of Daemon and Harmon, who carry out the mission of killing Caliban
and attempt to save the Jews in the neutrino beam like disciples, Savi postpones shooting
Caliban until it is too late, allowing him to give Daemon and Harmon information about
Setebos and Prospero before Caliban bites through her neck with one powerful snap of his
jaws (Simmons 462). In the novel, Savi represents a messianic figure, an archetype of
good, while juxtaposed against the Caliban, an archetype of evil. Simmons creates a new
religious icon in the character of Caliban, his evilness is recreated through his spawn, the
calibani, nestled among metallic crosses, a traditional Christian symbol of hope and rebirth,
waiting to recharge and rebirth themselves in evil in order to unleash more terror.
Farah Mendlesohn, co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction, argues that in
the realm of religion, science fiction tends to focus on practice rather than faith which
explains why sf writers have chosen frequently to write about the crucifixion (265) and that
religion is associated with intellectual degradation (266). Ilium contains images of
the Crucifixion, but the images are opposite in meaning from the traditional views of the
Crucifixion as life-saving and awe-inspiring. In Ilium, the crucifixion is used by Caliban to

grow and recharge his knights of evil, the calibani. Caliban takes on the role of the devil or a
dark angel who serves a more powerful master. In his speeches to Savi, Daemon, and
Harmon, before Savi tries to kill him, Caliban states that Setebos is the mastermind behind
eating the posts, and sending the moravecs to Mars. The calibani, created by Prospero and
Ariel, recharge themselves from within large metal crosses, a twist on the traditional
Christian cross. These evil beings work for Caliban and he can be viewed as their God, like
demons serving the devil and using a Christian icon to gain energy (Simmons 379). The
caliban are recharging in the dry Mediterranean basin, an area traditionally thought of as the
cradle of civilization. Savi and Caliban are two opposing archetypes, both blending
Christianity and Judaism in their portrayal. Simmons blends themes of the Wandering Jew
with that of the Messiah to create Savi, a character living on an iceberg until she is found by
Daemon and Harmon. He takes the image of the crucifix, juxtaposing death and
resurrection, to create an image of evil through the character of Caliban, whose children are
re-birthed on the cross, just as in Christianity, Christ, the son of God, represents rebirth
through the death on the cross.
Ilium is a novel which could be viewed as an outsider when compared to other
recent science fiction novels because it does not ignore Jewish characters and places its
Jewish character in the role of the female protagonist who fights against evil. This character,
Savi, juxtaposes two religions that are based on patriarchy, Christianity and Judaism, and
steps beyond the traditional roles the two religions impose on women in order to create a
futuristic mixture of both religions. Savi is both a Messiah and a Wandering Jew; she saves
the Jewish people by telling their history to Daemon and Harmon, who act as disciples in the
novel. By telling the history of the Jewish people to Daemon and Harmon, Savi acts like a
rabbi introducing the religion to young Jews, and by sacrificing herself to Caliban, the
archetype of evil in the novel, so that Daemon and Harmon might continue the mission of
saving the Jews stuck in the neutrino beam, she becomes a messianic figure. Simmons has
written an important message in Ilium through Savi, a character that finds collaboration in
Judaism and Christianity, a message that intersects religion and gender in order to create a
new religion and message of hope in a futuristic setting in which human connection and
compassion is often non-existent.

Works Cited
Gary, George Slusser, and David Leiby, eds. Worlds Enough and Time: Explorations of Time
in Science Fiction and Fantasy. Westport: Greenwood P, 2002. Hollinger,
Veronica. Feminist Theory and Science Fiction. In James 125-136.
James, Edward and Farah Mendlesohn. The Cambridge Companion to Science
Fiction. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003.
Kray, Susan. Jews in Time: Alternate Histories and Futures in Space. And Who Was
that Bearded, Yarmulkehd Old Man? In Westfahl 87-103.
Mendlesohn, Farah. Religion and Science Fiction. In James 264-275.
Simmons, Dan. Ilium. New York: Harper Collins, 2003.
Telushkin, Joseph. Jewish Literacy: The Most Important Things to Know about the
Jewish Religion, Its People, and Its History. New York: William Morrow, 1991.
Tisha BAv. The Orthodox Union. November
3, 9. http://www.ou.org/yerushalayim/tishabav/tishabav.html.Westfahl