THE CULTURE: BOOK 5 | Excession

The fifth published Culture book, the fourth novel and my first confirmed re-read as I work my way through the series in publication order.

Excession employs 3P omniscient narration across multiple POV characters with no particular one receiving a clear majority of text. Machine Minds comfortably make up half of the principal characters, and even these inhabit separate subplots. With past Culture stories, Banks toyed with genre templates: Excession most resembles the espionage thriller or confidence game.

I read from the 1996 UK edition (clothbound), as published by Orbit. This edition includes an orthodox table of contents, and both Prologue and Epilogue are important if not crucial for understanding the unfolding story. Banks used minimal structural contortions here, certainly as compared to Use of Weapons. Nevertheless the complex history and large cast of characters provide plenty of challenges for the reader.

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● OCP / Excession I suspect the title is a Banksian neologism: 'Excession' translates literally as an instance of excess, but that grammatical construction appears to be new with Banks. So too the related term Outside Context Problem (OCP), Wikipedia defining it "an encounter by a group with something that has neither precedent nor characteristics familiar enough to anticipate or readily understand using accepted frameworks". OCP seemed to me oddly familiar, as though the term should be widely recognised in logic or anthropology, yet a Wikipedia editor discussion page ("Talk:") stated explicitly it originated with Banks's novel. I found no references not related to the novel.

● Ulterior Former member civilizations of the Culture, collectively referred to as the Ulterior; presumably they do not comprise a formal polity. Those named include the Peace Faction, the AhForgetIt Tendency and the Zetetic Elench. The Elench feature prominently in a framing device related to the OCP. Elsewhere, it's stated there are 20 home planets to the Culture, and that Elder Civilisations are separate from both Ulterior and Sublimed civilisations. Banks effectively maps out evolutionary paths for individual societies within the Culture universe, within / without / and through the Culture itself. [80-82]

● Personal Property & Privacy Banks makes explicit that which could be inferred from Culture's post-scarcity civilization: "Practically the only form of private property the Culture recognised was thought, and memory -- whether you were a human, a drone, or a ship Mind." [66] Characteristic of Banks, the point is illustrated in extremis, via the defining trait of the ship Grey Matter. Until the OCP brings it back into congress with other Ships, Grey Matter dedicated itself to investigating genocide, even to the point of "mind rape". Notably the violent behaviour it exhibits is against humans, never other Minds, and is perpetrated in simulation. Banks will take up this theme in earnest in Surface Detail, a later Culture novel. Here, the subplot suggests the human part of the OCP plot is not "forced" or extraneous but in fact a necessity given possibly crucial information known only to another human.

● The Affront An alien race portrayed in melodramatic fashion, almost so overdone as to defy belief: undoubtedly many readers dismiss this aspect of the novel as either Banks deliberately attempting to test the limits of free speech, or as a boorish joke. (LT reviews attest to both interpretations.) But: that the Interesting Times Gang are motivated to conspire together and "protect" the Culture from any situation in which the artifact falls into the possession of Affront agents, this in itself suggests something else. Banks effectively juxtaposes Culture Minds and Affront leaders. While his exhibits are as unsubtle as ever, he offers no concluding argument, leaving any inferences for readers to draw themselves.

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'Long ago and far away -- two and a half thousand years ago, in a wispy tendril of suns outside the Galactic plane, an early General Contact Unit chanced upon the ember of a very old star. The GCU started to investigate. And it found not one but two unusual things.
'Firstly, the dead sun gave every sign of being absurdly ancient. The techniques used to date it indicated it was getting on for a trillion years old.'
'What?', Genar-Hofen snorted.
Uncle Tishlin spread his hands. 'The ship couldn't believe it either. But no matter what it was they used or how they did their sums, it always came out that the dead star was at least fifty times older than the universe.'
'What was the other unusual thing they found?'
'An artifact, a perfect black-body sphere fifty klicks across, in orbit around the unfeasibly ancient star. The ship was completely unable to penetrate the artifact with its sensors, or with anything else for that matter, and the thing itself showed no signs of life.'
'Three years later ... the star and presumably everything else had vanished utterly.'
'Just vanished?'
'Just vanished. Disappeared without trace.' [65-67]

SYNOPSIS | Special Circumstances activates its highest level emergency protocols when an alien artifact returns to known space millennia after it first appeared (and just as mysteriously vanished). To prevent bad actors from goading the alien presence into confrontation (or worse: somehow obtaining the alien technology for purposes unsympathetic to the Culture), SC embarks on two parallel clandestine efforts. The first involves keeping the artifact secret from general knowledge, a project managed by a group of Minds organised for just such an action. The second, unfortunately, relies upon the assistance of a human: contacting the captain of the original ship which first encountered the alien artifact, in hopes of learning something vital about the alien. Twenty-five hundred years later, however, the captain is neither alive nor fully dead, and certainly not expected to be cooperative. ( )

The best one of his books I've read so far. More of a "conventional" "space opera" than some of the others but written very well with an interesting setting and aliens and ideas and slightly unconventional writing like disordered chapters compared to chronology (not confusing to read at all though imo). The ending was also pretty good and not a big twist, which was nice. Sometimes it's hard to keep track of all the names which is my only problem but even so it's pretty easy to keep up with context clues. Really great book, loved it. ( )

Great exposition about the Culture that names the series, but rather confusing storyline. Leaves something to be desired in comparison to earlier books. ( )

Excession digs deeper into the inner workings of the Culture society than the other parts of the series I've read before. I liked it for that reason. It was a particularly good look at the Culture's Minds (hyper-intelligent AIs, basically) and ships.

What I didn't love about the book was that the human characters felt almost unnecessary. Still recommended for fans of the Culture. Just read another one or two series books first.

POSSIBLE SPOILERS FOLLOW

This is a story about big events. The Excession of the title is a reference to the appearance of something so powerful in the galaxy that the Culture does not know how to respond; imagine the Aztecs spotting a nuclear powered aircraft carrier off their coast. So of course the ships and minds take charge. The human characters are sort of forced into the plot. ( )

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