My icon- Dan Simmons' Ilium

While I'm not sure if it has aroused any curiosity, I felt the need to explain the picture in the upper right corner of my blog. It is the cover of a novel called Ilium by Dan Simmons, one of my favorite science fiction authors. Simmons' appeal lies in his intertextuality; in this book for example he transforms and integrates the works of Homer, Shakespeare, Nabokov and Proust into a dramatic recreation of the Iliad.