Iain M. Banks (1954–2013)

To this point the Culture has largely been portrayed as all powerful, so it's an interesting expansion of this fictional universe to get a taste of what greater powers it is aware of. We're introduced to the concepts of elder races and of subliming: the act of a species passing beyond our three-dimensional mortal coils. There's a sense conveyed that the Culture might have engaged in doing so already had it not (thus far) deliberately chosen otherwise. With the author's passing following the show more tenth volume, we're free to imagine the Culture makes that decision later.

The Culture novels to this point have almost never been straightforward tellings, "The Player of Games" being the one exception. It was also the best in the series, in my opinion. This fifth entry goes beyond the pale for most complex telling thus far; I was a good two thirds into it before I was no longer entirely bewildered. And it's really not all that complicated a story on the surface, summed up quite well by the back cover: the Culture has encountered a strange, technically advanced oddity and is debating what to do about it. There's an interesting backstory about it having been encountered before, and the hint that some elements of the Culture are working up a possibly-related conspiracy. I was hopeful the oddity might shake things up for this series the way that the Mule did for the Foundation.

Banks does a great deal of indulging in communications among GSV Minds, which always fascinates in its strange mix of enormous technological AI power and range of personalities. But this time he makes those exchanges so difficult to follow that they do nothing but add confusion until the murky picture finally becomes more clear. This same confusion applies to the many disparate human characters cycled among. It adds up to an extremely patience-testing experience. Clearly Banks is building up to some kind of surprise twist ending like we've seen him do before, but is it really worth making everything so gosh darn hard to follow? Having finished, I'm not sure that it was, or that it was even necessary. I'm also becoming less certain that the Culture universe is such a hopeful view of our potential future after all, with the AI treating us like children and our acting like we deserve it.

I'm putting this series on pause for a while. As much as I like the Culture universe (and that's what will eventually draw me back), only one experience in five was made a genuinely enjoyable ride. The rest have all taken work to appreciate and are trending more so. show less

Ah, what a scrumptious, cool space opera! The scope. The amazing world building. The sheer amount of themes and ideas. Mysterious artifacts. Understated humour. My third Culture novel was a treat.

There are many threads for the reader to unravel, and the book takes its time in the first half, to become a roller coaster in the second. I loved the layers upon layers of conspiracies – that explode in the reader’s face, sometimes literally and loudly (on page, I mean, he he), sometimes just show more quietly and brilliantly (cruelly, crazily).

I also have a weakness for when authors do this:

“Slogans, signs, announcements, odours and personal greeters vied for attention, advertising emporia and venues. Stunning ‘scapes and scenes played out in sensorium bubbles bulging out into the centre of the street, putting you instantly into bedrooms, feast-halls, arenae, harems, seaships, fair rides, space battles, states of temporary ecstasy, tempting, promoting, suggesting, offering, providing entrance, stimulating appetites, prompting desires; suggesting, propositioning, pandering.”

What did I say? Scrumptious.

The human characters were not particularly interesting – pathetic is a word that comes to mind. Ulver the spoiled brat does grow on you. A little. Somewhat. It doesn’t mean I did not care about them at all, though. On the other hand, I enjoyed following every single one of the too-clever-too-eccentric-too-everything-for-my-own-good sentient spaceships. Perhaps it was intentional? Anyway, I loved them! Their names are splendid, too. I suspect that lots of sci-fi authors with cool spaceship names in their books had read Banks ;) Shoot Them Later. Serious Callers Only. Fate Amenable to Change. Quietly Confident. Awww.

The wrap-up was immensely satisfying. show less

I've read through the whole series of Culture novels over the past 6 months, starting the next one after I've finished the last. It's sad coming to the end of the series which I've enjoyed a lot (even when I've criticised it), especially knowing that it's the end because the brilliant author has died. But in many ways this book feels like a fitting end to the series because it's so focused on endings and death in general.

The basis of the plot is around a whole civilisation about to Sublime - show more go off into the higher dimensions with an experience totally incomprehensible from here in the Real and basically disappear from galactic life almost totally. One of the ships refers to it as, paraphrasing, disappearing up your own arse. To the people back at home, it must seem very similar to death, even though it's like an afterlife that everyone knows for sure exists. Everyone has the same concerns with memorialising themselves, somehow proving they existed in the Real. One of the major characters concerns himself with having a star named after him. One of the major planets is covered in a giant city where the main character comes from that was originally built by a previously sublimed civilisation and now stands as a living monument to them, even with new inhabitants. The action is started by a ship from what's left behind of a previously sublimed civilization, existing only to tie up the loose ends they left when they went away. We hear what the music piece the book is named after is thought of by its long dead composer - he thought it was awful and it was made as a joke, even though it's now revered and is his legacy. What it means to be remembered, what you leave behind, if it really matters - it's something that comes up again and again throughout the book.

Along the way you meet what's presumably the oldest human in the Culture, who was there when it was first founded. He gives his opinion on living and the meaning of it:

Living either never has any point, or is always its own point; being a naturally cheery soul, I lean towards the latter. However, just having done more of it than another person doesn’t really make much difference... Meaning is everywhere. There is always meaning. Or at least all things show a disturbing tendency to have meaning ascribed to them when intelligent creatures are present. It’s just that there’s no final Meaning, with a capital M.

In a way, the themes of this book are a reaction to the bleakness of the first book of the series, Consider Phlebas. (massive spoilers for both that book and this) Phlebas ends on a sort of depressing note, very "shoot the shaggy dog" to use TVTropes terms. This book is similar, although far less depressing - mostly what happened didn't matter at all, yet people died for this thing that didn't matter. Nobody who was bad gets justice. Yet it to me is far more optimistic - there was some value in trying to do the right thing but it was better to leave the Gzilt legacy intact than try and tell the truth about their religious book when it'd cause confusion and panic even though the book barely matters to them any more. One of the character's talks about seeing the "ghost" of someone he killed - in a way they'll carry over to the Sublime, even in a very indirect way. Maybe I haven't made my case well, but there's a sense of stoicism about this book. People die, bad things happen, but things go on. There's always something more, even with the horrible bits.

Along the way there's a variety of stuff that's seen throughout the series that's fun - lots of inter-Mind and internal Mind conversations and rivalries and multiple amazing landscapes and cultures and aliens described in loving detail.

I'm bad at articulating this stuff, but the message of the book to me was a sort of "there is meaning in every moment of life and just existing, ultimately we go and really our legacy doesn't matter that much because it will be picked over and taken and interpreted in ways we don't agree with but it's important that we try to do the right thing anyway and do what we can to make the future better and hopefully we'll leave our mark". Which sounds kind of wishy washy maybe. I don't know. The thing that kept me reading the series I think is the Culture itself. A lot of thought gets put into philosophical and aesthetic debates which suggest that somehow utopia is "boring" or looks with horror at the possibility of a future free from want and major conflict. Which is shit. I like the Culture on a lot of levels, but primarily I like that it is in many ways utopian, and the focus of the books isn't on "well it's not utopian" but on the moral dimension of what you should do from there and also the sheer amazingness and joy of being a post-scarcity society with the power to keep trillions of people happy and living and thriving. It's a beautiful thing to read about. Everything I've read about Iain Banks is that he cared about caring for others and making life better for everyone. In this sense the Culture is a worthy testament to him as a person both because of the great writing and concepts and as a political work. Maybe that's reaching too far. But the series as a whole is brilliant and this is a fitting send off to a great setting and world by a great author. show less

This happens to be exactly what I wanted when I wanted it. I wanted intelligent galaxy-spanning space opera with a handful of baseline humans getting caught up in an existential conundrum that the far-superior AI Ships (and Main Characters) had to face.

And we even get a BDO to spark an enormous intergalactic war. Woo Woo! Of course, the BDO (big dumb object) is nothing of the sort. In fact, it might be smarter than all of them combined. Who knows? I loved the speculation.

Life, love, sex, show more conspiracy, extremely high stakes, this novel really pretty much had it all, but I think I had the most fun chuckling over all those damn ship names. "I Blame Your Mother", "I Blame My Mother", "Use Psychology", "Jaundiced Outlook", "It's Character Forming", "Unacceptable Behaviour", "Serious Callers Only", and "Meat Fucker" just to name a quick few that tickled my fancy.

This novel kept my attention much better than the previous novels, but honestly, I think I liked those previous ones better on the re-read than the first shot. Maybe I'm just getting used to Banks's writing, at long last, or all my fancies were tickled in just the right measure in just the right times.

These are of a higher quality Space Opera than practically anything else out there, but it's of a very particular sort. Tongue-In-Cheek? Absolutely. Out to prove that a beneficent galactic society can still have some real humdingers for stories despite the apparent lack of conflict? You bet.

It's like a master's course in Proving It Can Be Done despite all the doomsayers. It's nothing like any kind of Space Opera I've ever read, again. Still. Continuing on. It's pretty damn awesome.

I want to continue these Culture novels like something fierce, but I have so much on my plate already. I'll schedule them for one a month from now on, and savour them in delight. :) show less