Talk:Ilium (Kurt Vonnegut)
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Cohoes, Schenectady or...? edit
Ilium is not Cohoes, but Schenectady, and the Ilium Works is General Electric. Likewise, the Iriquois River is actually the Mohawk River, and Homestead is the village of Scotia. I grew up in Schenectady, and many of the landmarks described in PLAYER PIANO still exist today. Talk to some old GE factory workers, and they can tell you what buildings some of the events in PLAYER PIANO occur in.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Tom127 (talk • contribs) 13:05, January 14, 2006 (UTC)
One should consider a more obvious village in upstate NY to which Vonnegut might be referring, Ilion, NY. Ilion is the historic home of Remington, and home of Remington Arms. This certainly fits the description in Wikipedia about Illium: " "The town is dominated by its major industry leader, the Ilium Works, which produces scientific marvels to assist, or possibly harm, human life. The Ilium Works is Vonnegut's symbol for the "impersonal corporate giant" with the power to alter humankind's destiny." And if you look up in Wikipedia about Ilion, it states: "In 1843 a post office was desired, so the people had to choose a name. Remington refused to be the namesake of the village,[6] and it was eventually named Ilion. A popular, yet unverified rumor is that the application said "Illium", but due to a misspelling or bad penmanship was interpreted as "Ilion".[citation needed] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.167.67.67 (talk) 18:03, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
Player Piano makes it quite clear that Ilium is not Schenectady - characters refer to Schenectady as a distinct location. Ilium is probably a pastiche of Capital District cities. The name suggests that it is Troy, but the geography of the city (the fictional Iroqois river flowing east-west like the real Mohawk river in Schenectady) very closely matches Schenectady's. And of course, the Ilium Works is obviously Schenectady's General Electric.
The description on the page is nonsense, though, as a city, fictional or otherwise, cannot be both "southeast of Albany and Rensselaer" and also in Albany County and near I-90. The eastern border of Albany County and the city of Albany is the Hudson River and I-90 passes directly through Albany and Rensselaer, so someone doesn't know what they're talking about.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.113.147.238 (talk) 00:23, April 18, 2007 (UTC)
I can't help recalling that the similar sounding word Ileum refers to a section of the small intestine, near where it joins the large intestine. Comparing an industrial city to part of the gut dedicated to the disposal of useless waste might be just a coincidence, but an interesting one. Saxophobia 02:25, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
Ilium is not the "Roman" name for Troy, as the Greeks also called the city "Ilion" with "Ilium" being the Latinization of the neut. nom.. Ilium was the name for the city proper of Troy, and the name Troy refereed to the surrounding area. So the relationship of Troy to Ilium would be of New York City, to Manhattan, not New Amsterdam to New York. I get that this is a SciFi article, but maybe someone more familiar with this article might want to change this. Thanks - a Classicist. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.4.105.19 (talk) 18:26, 11 February 2010 (UTC)