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Look to Windward 83

Posted by michael from the light-of-ancient-mistakes dept.
Iain M. Banks' latest Culture novel, Look to Windward, isn't available in the U.S. yet. But this being the age of the supermation infohighway, I ordered it from a .co.uk. It's another beautiful work from Banks -- Culture fans will not be disappointed.
Look to Windward
author Iain M. Banks
pages 357
publisher Orbit
rating superb
reviewer Michael Sims
ISBN 1-85723-969-5
summary beautiful, moving, and thoroughly thought-provoking

I can't go into any great detail about Iain M. Banks' latest novel of the highly-advanced Culture civilization without giving away too much of the plot. The book opens as the light of two suns which were induced to explode in a war 800 years past -- the Idiran wars, the gigadeathcrimes mentioned in previous Culture books -- is about to fall upon the scene. The stage is set.

Unlike some of his other Culture books, this is not an action novel. While there is some action, that isn't the focus of the novel. Rather than rushing ahead, this book takes a leisurely pace through an exploration of war. Where Use of Weapons didn't give you time to think, Look to Windward gives you nearly infinite time - the rest of your life, in fact - to consider the consequences of war.

Ponder, if you will, a shell of light 1600 light-years in diameter. Outside of that shell, a war is still going on -- two planetary systems are still full of life. Inside that shell, the war is over and nothing remains of those systems but two stars gone nova. If this image moves you, so will the book.

Banks is intent upon sculpting a symphony, a tribute to war veterans of all times and places. Threads wax and wane, appear and disappear. Lifelines are cut short. Heroes aren't. Soldiers do their duty. As with most of his science fiction works, things are not as they seem, and you won't figure out just how things are put together until the final bars are being played. It is easy to imagine this book played aloud.

I still might start new Banks readers on Use of Weapons or Player of Games. But this would be an excellent second novel for them. Well, I take that back. Consider Phlebas should be read before Look to Windward.

(As an aside, does anyone else remember "All The Way Back", a short story by Michael Shaara?)
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Look to Windward

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  • the gigadeathcrimes? Hmmm, gigadeath. Sounds like a bad band name. Like megadeth. Gigadeth...

    oh well, i'm bored...

    How is it that i spend all day on the net, but don't have time to "read"
  • I have a love-hate relationship with his works. He is a master storyteller, and his worlds are really neat -- well-drawn, fascinating places -- but he is SOOO mean to his characters! He really wrenches the reader around some, too. Years after the fact, I am STILL wondering about the protagonist of Use of Weapons. Nonetheless, I'll snatch the new book up as soon as it arrives in the US.

  • Read the prologue online (Score:5)

    by Anne Marie ( 239347 ) on Sunday October 29, 2000 @06:15PM (#666002)
    Try before you buy and read the prologue [booksunlimited.co.uk] online.

  • Confusion (Score:3)

    by discore ( 80674 ) on Sunday October 29, 2000 @06:18PM (#666003) Homepage
    Hrm, I didn't even realize it was a book review for a sec. Maybe a 'Book Review: <title>" would be appropiate? Maybe a book review section?
    Putting it under news just didn't feel right.
    Offtopic blah blah.. at least I'm not trolling or flaming. Constructive critism!
  • The Gutenberg Elegies [amazon.com] by Sven Birkerts (forgive the blatant Amazon link, but you just might like it). My English professor gave me a copy of the chapter: "Coda: The Faustian Pact." Excellent reading, since I'm doing an essay on how the Internet is turning us into the Borg. True food for thought, since the UCLA study that came out almost wrecked my concentration.
  • Just think of the internet as the ability to send electical/light bits really fast to remote locations on earth. How those bits are interpreted as information is where it becomes useful. So knowing we can represent most information using bits many bits, the internet allows us to send virtually all information almost anywhere, in lightning fast (close enough) time. Doesn't sound so bad when you look at it like that, does it?
  • Ponder, if you will, a shell of light 1600 light-years in diameter. Outside of that shell, a war is still going on -- two planetary systems are still full of life. Inside that shell, the war is over and nothing remains of those systems but two stars gone nova. If this image moves you, so will the book.

    Great Moogly Googly! They wrote a book about the US election and the aftermath.

  • Between this book and /Consider Phlebas/ Mr. Banks shows himself to Love T.S. Eliot's /The Waste Land/ and particularly:

    Part 4 - Death by Water

    Phelbas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
    Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
    And the profit and loss.
    A current under sea
    Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
    He passed the stages of his age and youth
    Entering whirpool.
    Gentile or Jew
    O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
    Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.
  • It's actually shorter than many other /. reviews, but its very disjointed, which made my eyes slide off the page. Had some dodgy sentences too -

    If this image moves you, so will the book.

    I hate being told how I will or do feel. I think the review could have used another draft - or one less.

  • Egad (Score:3)

    by CapnRob ( 137862 ) on Sunday October 29, 2000 @06:34PM (#666009)
    I also ordered and read _Look to Windward_ from the UK, and I'm having a hard time believing that this guy and I read the same book. _Look to Windward_ is disjointed, shallow, lacking in characterization, and definitely lacking in the complexity that was present in _Use of Weapons_ and _Consider Phlebas_. It's two hundred pages of a single character doing absolutely nothing besides moping around, followed by two pages of actual story ... and if we want that, Dave Sim did it brilliantly in _Melmoth_. There's material about life in the Culture that was done better in _Player of Games_, material about Minds that was done better in _Excession_, material about Special Circumstances's screwups that was done better in _Use of Weapons_ ... this is, basically, a pretty lousy book all by itself, and once you compare what qualities it *does* have with other books by Banks, it suffers - badly - in the comparison. If you have to have all Banks's work ... wait for paperback. Possibly even wait for it to appear in paperback in used bookstores.
  • My biggest complaint with Banks is that he doesn't write books as quickly as I can read them. I, too, had to buy this one overseas because I just couldn't wait. Culture fans won't be disappointed.

    To add to the Banks list, if you can find it, read Against a Dark Background. It's not Culture, but it's still highly entertaining.

  • Banksie (Score:5)

    by Kiss the Blade ( 238661 ) on Sunday October 29, 2000 @06:38PM (#666011) Journal
    I actually bought this and read it when it came out here in the UK ~2 months ago. I don't want to say too much about it, because I appreciate it could spoil things for others, but it seemed to me that the entire book was all about fatalism. You just knew while reading it that the main character was doomed from the very start; everything thereafter is inevitable.

    Anyway, I love Banks stuff. He is my favourite SF writer. He is not really a 'hard' SF writer, I think he concentrates on the society rather than the technology - hence 'the Culture', and this is what makes him so interesting. Indeed one of the attributes of the Culture is that technology no longer advances from the perspective of the average citizen. Once you are capable of manufacturing anything, anywhere, and effectively for free what more can you do that will affect the average human?

    Also, his work is very refreshing when compared to that of most other SF writers, as it regards communism as inevitable, something I would agree with, in the long term. The only other writer I can think of writes about this is Ken MacLeod, his fellow Scot. I think Americans especially, who dominate the field, tend to write about future Megacorporations and the like. Is this because they really think this or because they are scared of losing sales - I mean Americans (rightly) have been totally opposed to communism for decades, so possibly their SF writers are scared of being branded commies?

  • Well, actually, this book could be considered sort of a sequel to Consider Phlebas. It's a cool tie-in.
  • If they were running windows, it would have changed itself. Oh well.
    ---
  • I've read this book, and I have to say I am a bit disappointed. It seems to me that the author has cheapened himself some for this book. What is he trying to say? As far as I could tell, the book had no real point. The earlier works seemed a bit more tasteful, too. Quite a number of offcolor bits in this one that frankly flat out offended me. If I were you, I'd save my money for the next Asimov book.
    ---
  • ...you might want to check out www.phlebas.com [phlebas.com] which is all about Ian M Banks' books.
    By the way, I love his books too. He is "mean" to his characters, but I think that adds something, rather than takes anything away. Banks usually has much to say, between the lines, as well. Inversions is the most obvious example, but look at the other books too. (But don't look too hard and forget to enjoy :) )
    Note: I am not affiliated in any way with that website..Just thought I'd pass it on.

  • Iain [M] Banks (Score:3)

    by Rupert ( 28001 ) on Sunday October 29, 2000 @07:12PM (#666016) Homepage Journal
    Iain Banks is a sick writer. I cannot think of any other author so inventively grim. The Wasp Factory and Song of Stone are just incredibly depressing.

    Iain M. Banks is a sick writer. He has created one of the great future civilisations (Galactic Empire? pulease!), which he describes as "a fucking utopia", and yet within it, he manages to set stories every bit as fucked up as the Wasp Factory and Song of Stone.

    I love his writing, but I try and make a point of never reading two of his novels back to back, lest I be tempted to orphan my children.

    --
  • really, his sf books aren't as great as all that. For a start they are waaay to long, usually padded out with wholly irelevant episodes. And while they often have a half-decent tale in the middle somewhere, they NEVER have a decent ending. Also, they're not particularly inventive, as claimed: Consider Phlebus, the last i read, was totally lame (warmed up Ringworld, mostly) and it amazes me when I see people commending it. I favour anything by Ken Mcleod, another Scot and a friend of IMB, especially The Cassini Division or The Sky Road; intellegent, tight, funny sf without the need to wade thru 500+ pages of fluff.
  • [Vague spoiler follows. You've been warned.]

    This thing that I found really chilling about the book was (without giving too much away) that it seemed to be a prologue for a larger conflict to come. banks goes out of his way (in other books, too) that the Culture needs someone to kick its ass. It appears that Banks has decided just who is going to do that, even if he hasn't let us in on it yet.

    Look to Windward, indeed.

  • reviews (Score:1)

    by danny ( 2658 )
    Heh, I'll have to get a copy and write my own review. My reviews of some of Banks' earlier books can be found here [dannyreviews.com].

    Danny.

  • "Against a Dark Background" had one of the worst endings I have ever read, next to "Double Full Moon Night". Everyone dies pointlessly and then the story just stops. No resolution to the great and twisted background story, no satifaction. It just stops.
  • Yeah. My post was a joke, because it's a really short review. Obviously, the moderators don't have much of a sense of humor.

    I agree with you completely about the editing of the draft.

  • Re:Iain M Banks - famous for being famous? (Score:4)

    by Kiss the Blade ( 238661 ) on Sunday October 29, 2000 @08:22PM (#666022) Journal
    Consider Phlebas did make a lot of references to Ringworld, and intentionally so. The scene where dispassionate Minds and unconcerned citizens watch the Vavatch Orbital being destroyed is a sort of 'farewell to all that' as Banks says a fond goodbye to the Ringworld style and ushers in the new 'new wave'. And Consider Phlebas addresses traditional SF fare, and well, too, such as the search for identity, alienation, redundancy of biological beings etc

    Consider how different Banks' fictional world is. He was, AFAIK, the first SF writer to disassociate his future civilisation from the planetary-centred Civs. that preceded him. The Culture exists entirely in space, it has no central authority, no real territorial claims. Also, human beings are reduced to the status of fleas on a dog - they are not necessary. And the concept of this civilisation being so jaded and purposeless, now that it has solved all of it's physical problems, that it needs to make it it's mission to 'help' lesser civilsations is fantastic. This seems to me to be a reference to the USA & the West today - we are in a similar situation ;) . In fact, that book has so many complexities I reread it even now, and never fail to notice something new.

    But by far his greatest creation, IMO, are the Minds themselves. Most other Computer Intelligences in SF come across as humans with funny voices, but the Minds are a truly brilliant creation. It's very difficult to write of such beings convincingly, and make the reader believe they transcend humanity, but Banks pulls it off.

  • I've got a theory about this. I remember reading in one of his books that the Culture had sent an expedition to the Andromeda Galaxy - and were worried about a possible 'Outside Context Problem' when they get there. So, Aliens from Andromeda do it. Or the Sublimed.

  • Re:Banksie (Score:3)

    by Fnkmaster ( 89084 ) on Sunday October 29, 2000 @08:38PM (#666024)
    I think Sci Fi tends to reflect very heavily the culture that produced it. You can see this by reading some old sci fi from the 40s or 50s. It expresses the hopes and fears that people generally have at any given time and how they project those hopes and fears onto the future. And that's about the best most of us can do, given that we aren't telepathic. Different cultures have different things in their shared subconcious hopes and different thoughts that scare the living bejesus out of them. Here in the grand ole USA, we see corps engulfing everything. It kinds makes sense that it comes out in a lot of our Sci Fi. I don't know if it means that we fear or embrace rampant capitalism. Probably a little of both.
  • Part 4 - Death by Water

    Phelbas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
    Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
    And the profit and loss.
    A current under sea
    Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
    He passed the stages of his age and youth
    Entering whirpool.
    Gentile or Jew
    O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
    Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.

    (for those who were wondering as to the provenance of the titles. T.S Eliot's wasteland)

  • While it is poor form with HTML, the author still needs to underline any titles, as that is good writing...
    Remember, folks, computers and English don't mix! ;)
  • I haven't read any of Banks's stuff yet (in fact this is the first time I've heard of him), but his books sound very much like C.J.Cherryh's Cyteen. The book is extremely involved and extremely hopeless. The feeling of fatalism permeates the entire book - nothing can stand against the main "protagonist", whom by the end of the book I was ready to ponud into smithereens with my bare hands. Cyteen has that "wheels within wheels, plans within plans" Dune feeling, combined with the totalitarian state of 1984, and a serious discussion of the ethics of cloning, politics and mind control. A great book.
  • It's a series, referred to as (surprise) the Culture series... i.e. a "Culture" novel (note the capital) rather than a culture novel.

    "See grades here equal status or power, it's just like college; you so caught up in letter grades you skipped the F-in knowledge..."
    - J-Live, "School's In"

  • Though clever, this piece relied too much on one joke. Sentences were also long and unwieldy at times.
  • I'm a big admirer of Iain Banks, but it seems like
    he's starting to run out of ideas as far as the
    Culture books go. The Culture, while one of the
    most impressive SF backgrounds ever dreamed up by
    anyone (way more impressive, IMHO, than the Foundation or the background to Dune), has a basic
    problem: not enough death and suffering and Bad Stuff for someone like Banks to write about. So his stuff is always on the periphery, about the rough edges where the Culture meets the rest of the galaxy (usually primitive, nasty and militarized).

    Unfortunately, this has started to get old. It was done very well in the first few books, but doesn't really bear repetition very well. The Culture always seems to hold too many of the cards (both in terms of power and morality), and there are always big Minds from Contact or SC willing to jump out and play "deus ex machina" to wind up the plot (Player of Games, Excession, Look to Windward).

    Iain Banks hasn't written a bad sf novel, but as far as the Culture ones go, once you've read Use of Weapons, Player of Games and Consider Phelebas, you're going to be in serious diminishing-returns territory.

  • Re:Iain M Banks - famous for being famous? (Score:3)

    by Elgon ( 234306 ) on Sunday October 29, 2000 @09:50PM (#666031)
    "Everyone dies pointlessly and then the story just stops."

    If the purpose of art is to hold up a mirror to life, then this succeeds admirably I think.

    Elgon
  • As with a number of British-published books (most notably Pratchett's Discworld series), they're more often than not also available in Canada. One place that sells online is Chapters [chapters.ca]. They do have Look To Windward [chapters.ca], although they say it'll take 3 to 5 weeks to get it to you.
  • All the sympathetic characters die without resolution of the plot. One bit-character survives by simply staying alive until everyone else is dead. the Mind doesn't count as a character, it's a prop. And where are people getting the idea that IMB sf ideas are so "new?" There wasn't a single provocative idea in Phebus, which is what sf is really about. Spaceships and laser-weilding mercenaries are just dressing. The Culture is quite cool, but, hey, not actually very novel. Ask your local librarian for a long list of books in the last 300 years that have addressed Utopian ideas.
  • I read through some of the news items. The latest item there is from October 1999.

    Save your time.
  • People who haven't read any Banks Culture books before might find it useful to visit my review page:

    http://www.genmars.com/adrian/books/b ank s/ [genmars.com]

  • I bought the book last month. (Nice to get something before the Americans for a change :-)) I think it's fairly good, but not up to books like Use of Weapons. The novel has a kind of travelougue feel in parts, which makes it feel like the story might have made a good short story if the filler had been cut out. The Chelgrans are - arguably - derivative of David Niven's Kzini. Still, don't take this as a reason not to read the book! Banks builds some incredibly imaginative worlds in this book as in his others. Banks' average is still better than most writers' best.

    Incidentally, if you prefer SF about (semi)evil corps, (as discussed in a previous thread) you might want to look at The Business, Banks' latest non-SF novel.

  • There's a suggestion -- a bare suggestion, possibly misleading -- that other Minds were responsible for the conflict. Culture civil war could be a change, if it blew up; we already had a taste in _Excession_, of course.

    But whatever. I loved the book, and the sensawunda throughout it, including from the airspheres.

  • Or the in-book suggestion, that the Culture will try to kick its own ass. I mean, really, who else is more qualified or more appropriate?
  • Banks is a stunningly talented writer, with incredible imagination and descriptive skills, but his fascination with the edges of human behaviour are nausea-inducing. Almost every book contains its equivalent of the wood-chipper scene in "Fargo"- and makes that little episode look like something from Disney. I sometimes wonder if the good stuff is worth the price he makes you pay. "Use of Weapons" was particularly bad, not only because of the sickening fate of one of the characters, but also because Banks skated so close to violating the rule against having a point-of-view character lie to the reader, as makes no difference: the reversal at the end is a cheap trick that engenders anger, not admiration.
  • Go to www.luddites.com.

    You can even order a free mouse pad with "I hate modern technology" printed on it. :)

    On second thought, maybe you should try yousuck.com or dealwithit.com.

    And don't forget to email lots of people about how you hate email.

  • I share your feelings about Banks' love for the darkest corners of the human mind. Every time I read one of his Culture books, I feel like I've been beaten. I must say, however, I think the reversal at the end of "Use of Weapons" was necessary. At the very least, it distracted me from detailed thoughts on chairmaking. At best, it saved the book from a being a colorful, albeit unconventional, travelogue.
  • There is a suggestion of this. The Minds are always plotting and scheming against each other, and aren't above all out conflict and betrayal (Excession). So maybe they will overreach themselves oneday...

    I really like the exchanges between the Minds in Excession, all that cynicism and scheming is remarkably similar to Trolltalk at times ;)

    It seems to me that the only thing that keeps the Culture going is it's own belief in it's moral superiority. So if this belief were shattered, by some demonstration, then the Culture would disintigrate. The only thing that could destroy the Culture then, is the Culture itself, because the immoral act would have to be by the Culture.

  • Larry Niven is the science fiction author. David Niven was a British actor.
    Thank you for your time.
  • If I were you, I'd save my money for the next Asimov book.

    Got some news for ya, son -- Isaac's dead!

  • Not a bad comparison. Cherryh is almost as unrelentlessly grim in presenting hopeless situations as Banks. I especially remember "40,000 in Gehenna", where one side in a two-big-civilizations galaxy deliberately sets up a planetry colonization effort to fail. The people who get sent there are reduced to neolithic technology, since they were depending upon further ships sending supplies. All of this upleasantness is to curtail the expsnsion efforts of the other civilisation. Nasty.

  • Uhm, LTW isn't as tasteful as his previous works? Have you read some of his other books, especially the non SF ones like the Wasp Factory and Walking on Glass? You'd be in for a bit of a shock. And Asimov is dead. Has been for quite some time...

  • unrelentlessly

    Surely you mean relentlessly? ;^)

    "Free your mind and your ass will follow"

  • Read his first book, The Wasp Factory. Not SF, but definitely a sign of what was to come. Great book.

  • but he is SOOO mean to his characters!
    ... You say that like it's a bad thing...

    ~cHris
    --
    Chris Naden
    "Sometimes, home is just where you pour your coffee"

  • More than that I think that it is used for this purpose - there is no mistake in George Orwell's naming of this 1948 novel '1984' (reversed the last two digits).

  • While I agree that LTW isn't one of Banks' strongest books, I definitely enjoyed it (especially after Inversions which was, IMO, extremely disappointing) and if you're a Banks fan wouldn't hesitate to recommend it.

    In case anyone's unaware, there's an alt.fan.iain-banks usenet group...

    I'm another American who ordered from the UK, why can't we get Banks here in a reasonable time?
  • No, if I was talking about _Atlas Shrugged_, I'd have said "One thousand pages of a single character doing absolutely nothing..."
  • I sometimes wonder if the good stuff is worth the price he makes you pay.

    Nice quote. Banks is an incredible writer, but his books aren't mindless entertainment. It requires a certain effort to read them, and you can't expect to come away feeling satisfied.

    I kind of agree with you about the twist at the end of 'Use of Weapons'. It's unfair to the reader, but I can't help admiring it because he does it so cleverly. I think the rest of the book is overrated IMHO. It's deep, but I found it quite boring. 'Excession' was his best I think, even if it was one of his more superficial books. I'll be getting this one when it comes out in paperback.

    ---
  • A lot of his non-fiction isn't quite as grim however. I read Song of Stone and hated it, yet at the same time, I loved "The Bridge," "The Crow Road" and "Walking on Glass" (short but extremely clever). Like any author he has his ups and downs ("Whit" was particularly forgettable). But, one of his strengths is that everything isn't extremely sugar-coated. I think his writing benefits from the fact that he isn't afraid to throw some curveballs at the reader, even if he sometimes goes too far.
  • I agree with the poster who characterized Banks' writing as "inventively grim." Wish I'd thought of that... The thing is, he draws you into sympathizing with, liking, even identifying with the protagonists, and then he trashes them. Every single time. In every book.

    Case in point: The shape-changer character in (I believe) "Player of Games" and his crew of mercenaries are decently likeable sorts; and in the end, Banks does a Hamlet number on them; everyone winds up dead meat but the single adversary/almost-lover who gets to do the Hamlet-esque death-march with his corpse.

    By now, every time I start reading one of his novels (and they are very well crafted, interesting places), I go into it KNOWING that everyone in it whom I will care about in the least is going to be destroyed in one way or another. These novels are NOT for the easily-depressed...

    One of Heinlein's last novels broke the divide between the author and his/her characters by having them all mixing it up in Valhalla or thereabouts; I shudder for Banks if his characters were ever to catch up with him in a dark alley there...

  • Iain Banks resources (Score:3)

    by logicTrAp ( 2864 ) on Monday October 30, 2000 @05:39AM (#666056) Homepage
    For Banks fans, there are a few web resources I haven't seen mentioned in the comments yet -
  • Hrmmm. I'm a big Banks fan and due to that just read Ken McLeod's "The Star Fraction". I was extremely disappointed. Perhaps his other books are better? TSF seemed tedious, a lot of confusing fillers crammed together with unbelievable political philosophies/situations. Would you say his other stuff is better or more of the same? (possibly I just don't like his style)
  • I've got a theory about this. I remember reading in one of his books that the Culture had sent an expedition to the Andromeda Galaxy - and were worried about a possible 'Outside Context Problem' when they get there.
    That was in Excessio n, wasn't it? [amazon.co.uk]

    (Aside from the OCP of the Excession itself, they also mentioned the expedition)
  • Damned preview button mangling <a> tags again. Anyone know if it's going to be fixed anytime soon?
  • And that's supposed to stop Asimov books from rolling out? :p

    Slashdot won't let me set the font sizes right, but look for Mirage: Isaac Asimov's Robot Mystery by Mark W Tiedemann, with "Asimov" stretched across the cover in 48-point all caps and "by Mark W Tiedemann" in a 6-point footnote at the bottom. Or any of a dozen similar titles that have been popping up for some time..

    Not that I've read any, I imagine it must be like reading Star Trek novels.

  • No question the twist was cleverly done: I went back through the book after I got over the shock and had worked out just why I was so angry with Banks, to see if he had slipped up anywhere. Although there is severe ambiguity at several points, he never actually flat out says what you think he is saying- very skilled indeed. I also felt the book a bit overrated: some sections were flimsy, almost a parody. I also enjoyed "Excession" the most- I think it's the most "geeky" book. "Feersum Endjinn" isn't bad, either (permanent, on-demand full-immersion connection to a hyper-Internet, anyone?).

  • Re:Read the prologue online (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Through a concordance of their writing styles I have established that Anne Marie is Signal 11. I'm not kidding. Also, you will note her appearance coincides rather nicely with siggy's disappearance.
  • State Of The Art is great, if not as detailed as the others. I also enjoyed the non-culture POV of Conscider Phelebas; perhaps that is why I liked SOTA -- it is narrated by the 1.0 drone Unhana Closp (sp?).

    I liked feersum endjinn but not enough to reread it, and it's been a goodly number of years.

  • Conscider Phelebas, not Player of Games, but that's only 'cause you kinda asked.

    I was going to bring up those books by -- now I forget -- Michael Moorecock or Brian Aldiss. Something about Riders of the Apocalypse? I read them only once, a long time ago, and I kept getting confused as to chronology. People kept on popping in and out of the story. Ring any bells?
  • First person!?! Argh! I hate fscking first person. Only one in 10 novels brings it off. It's almost as bad as writing dialecally (which I recall Mr. Banks has also commited, in Feersum Enjinn).
  • yes. I was unimpressed with Inversions by the same token that I was unimpressed with Greg Bear's last eon novel; the one where Olmy is trapped in a planet waiting for rescue.

    It's the old Star Trek bait and switch tactic; hook the SciFi audience with a few technology references, then write a completly non SciFi story. Any Star Trek that occurs while Kirk is unable to contact the ship, or any story taking place on the HoloDeck all use this. Inversions and the Greg Bear novels both do this, although the former less blatantly (in that you only realise it is a culture-universe novel if you are familiar with the concept before).
  • silently, and correctly.

    And that's exactly the problem. My Windows box kindly notified me that I could stay in bed for another hour.
  • I disagree, both about the treatment of the characters and about the twist. The character-treatment is a challenge to the conventional 'hero swanns through carnage blissfully untouched' kind of crap that gets fostered by writers in so many genres. Plus, if you think his treatment is bad, you should read Stephen Donaldson's 'Gap' series, which I would rate as being in the same league as Banks in terms of quality as well.

    And about the twist? It was totally necessary. In fact, it was given away before it happened - the character of the real Zakalwe was v. different from that of the main protagonist, there was all the emphasis upon the fact that Zakalwe had not been as good with weapons or tactics but v. good at hand to hand, whereas the protagonist is the reverse, there was that extract about the 'piece' of the sister/foster sister being carried close the the protagonists heart - and you get told who the bone fragment lands in! It doesn't take a genius, the really interesting part was waiting to see how Sma and Skaffen-Amtiskaw would react when they found out, and I still feel kind of frustrated that Banks left that to us. It would have been a further insight into the ethics of the culture, and the kind of person that they were willing to employ.

    OK, that's my rant finished for now.
  • I have a love-hate thing with daylight saving(s?)time in the autumn. Basically, it's like this. For the first night, when the clocks go back, it's great - you can either spend an extra hour out having a good time, an extra hour in bed, or a mix of the two. Every night afterwards, however, it's that little bit colder when you go out and come back, and in a scottish winter that's not great. It's also getting dark & cold in the mid-afternoon when I'm coming back from lectures etc, and when I might well have things I need to do around the town.

    To be fair, though, it does make it marginally easier to get up in the morning.

  • Lets save a bit of space and make a link to the Banks cat at ; dmoz [dmoz.org] (it may be a good idea to remember to add a similar link to future reviews).

    Loved the book by the way, not the funniest nor grimmest, but overall the best Culture novel in my mind.
    --

  • Actually, only the prologue and epilogue are told in the first person. Reading the prologue online isn't all that informative in this case.
  • What are The Culture novels?

    Iain M Banks has created a highly advanced space faring society called
    The Culture. In it phenomenally intelligent machines called 'Minds' run a
    civilization that many would consider as utopia or as close as you can
    get to it.

    Banks realized that a science fiction book set in utopia would be very
    dull and so he created 'Contact' the branch of The Culture that handles
    the dealing with, and meeting of, other civilizations. The plots of his
    Culture books all revolve around Contact and its espionage division
    called 'Special Circumstances'.

    In published order The Culture novels are:

    Consider Phlebas (1987)
    The Player of Games (1988)
    Use of Weapons (1990)
    Excession (1996)
    Inversions (1998) (Not a 'full' Culture novel, see below.)
    Look To Windward (2000)

    What is The Culture?

    The Culture is a kind of anarchist utopia (for the most part). It's
    inhabitants are a mixture of mostly humanoid species and intelligent
    machines. These machines fall into several categories: Minds are very
    intelligent and are generally found in the Culture's ships - in fact it
    could be said they 'are' the ships. Sometimes in the case of a huge
    ship, say, a General Systems Vehicle (which may have a population
    measured in the billions) there may be more than one Mind, typically
    three. Hub's are a special kind of Mind but one that is located on one
    of the Culture's non-ship habitats (more on this later) and performs a
    similar role. Finally Drones, these come in all kinds of shapes and
    sizes and have varying levels of intelligence typically one and a half
    times that of the intelligence of a typical Culture humanoid.

    There is no hierarchy as such in the Culture's society every individual
    is equal (machine or organic). The Culture is post-scarcity due to
    sophisticated technology. That is to say because the Culture can
    manipulate things at an atomic level (maybe below even that) anything
    can be produced with ease so anybody can have anything they want. Money,
    therefore, has no place in the Culture (in fact the Culture considers
    money to be a sign of poverty).

    The Culture has no laws, anybody can do pretty much what they want to
    do. It would be very hard for a member of the Culture to kill someone
    else (it would be considered very strange to even want to) but if you
    did do this you would be slap-droned, which is having a drone follow you
    around forever, making sure you didn't do it again. Worse though would
    be the social reaction; no one would want to talk to you.

    Organic life forms in the Culture have been genetically modified
    (geno-fixed) with all kinds of things. You can initiate a sex change by
    thinking about it. Drug glands in your brain allow all kinds of mood
    enhancements like; improving speed of thought, relief of tiredness,
    inebriation among many others. You don't get sick and a typical life
    span would be several centuries.

    Inhabitants of the Culture live in/on a variety of habitats. A few live
    on planets but there are only a few hundred inhabited planets in the
    Culture. The Culture's 'cities' are its GSV's, most have hundreds of
    millions of residents or even billions. Rocks consist of a converted
    asteroid and, like planets, living on one is unusual rather than the
    norm. The other forms of habitat are all manufactured. The most abundant
    are Orbitals which are giant rings in orbit around a star. Plates are
    similarly in orbit but are a pair of huge plates. Rings are an even
    bigger version of an Orbital, instead of orbiting a star they encircle
    one. Many members of Contact live on ships called GCU's (General Contact
    Units) on which they travel to observe, meet or interfere with other
    civilizations.

    more here http://home.freeuk.net/m.stanfield/culture/culture faq.txt
  • I agree that it's unfair, but it was hardly Zakalwe lying to the reader. All the way through I felt that the characters would make perfect sense if only ... things were different. And in the event they were. You may well accuse IMB of lying to you in Use Of Weapons, but the characters are true to themselves. And there is a clue on the back cover (of the paperback at least).
  • The Culture is a technological Utopia, in which death has lost its sting. How does such a civilisation relate to death?

    Banks has touched on this issue in previous Culture novels, but here he gives it a fuller treatment from an extraordinary array of perspectives. This is what makes SciFi such a wonderful genre: the ability to play themes out on a grander stage, and look at things from a completely alien point of view.

    Two slight disappointments:

    1) The Chelgrain (not sure about the spelling... it's a while since I read it) are human's wearing furry suits. Banks probably had his reasons for doing this, but I still found myself wishing for something a little more exotic.

    2) As I said earlier, Banks has already touched on this theme (eg. State of the Art), so Look to Windward doesn't seem quite as fresh as some of his earlier novels.

  • Also, his work is very refreshing when compared to that of most other SF writers, as it regards communism as inevitable, something I would agree with, in the long term.

    Hate to break this too you, but the culture is not a commune. It's not even vaguely socialistic. Part democracy, part benevolent dictatorship. You seem to be missing the fact that the Minds are in charge.

    Sure the humans have a say. But the ultimate decisions are nearly always left to the Minds. Once you get past the orbital/plate/GSV stage then you end up with a anarchic commitee system, where the Minds decide the direction of the culture.

    When it comes down to it it is a lot better solution that what most humans currently use. Human politicians are fallible. Once we make an adequate enough AI then, once we're sure it has our best interests at heart, we should put it in charge. Less likely to be distracted by matters mundane.

    --quote here--

  • Nope. The Culture is Socialist, materialist and anarchist. If you don't believe me , maybe you'll believe Iain [pp.htv.fi].

  • WARNING: Use Of Weapons Plot Spoiler Ahead!

    Reread it carefully: you are not told who the bone fragment landed in: the only identifier is "he", ie the protagonist (since the protagonist's point of view is the one that is seemingly consistently portrayed through the flashback). Since at that stage you have been carefully led to believe that Zakalwe is the protagonist, you naturally assume that it landed in Zakalwe. If you got the opposite impression, your careless reading inadvertently spoiled the plot for you. As for the issues around character: the explicit references to Zakalwe and Elethiomel are flashbacks to when they are children; it is entirely believable that Zakalwe would have been so twisted by his hatred of Elethiomel that he would have become something like him in order to beat him.

    As to how Skaffen-Amtiskaw and Sma reacted? The reaction of the drone is so obvious (vindication of his hatred) that it would have been pointless to include it. Sma's reaction was illustrated in the epilogue: the new recruit was someone who had sacrificed his own bodily integrity to save another, suggesting Sma saw the flaw of focusing on performance and ignoring character. Reactions are more powerfully illustrated by actions than by words. The basic rule of writing: show, don't tell.
  • Try reading 'A song of stone'. Very nasty things happen to characters you don't particularly like but do empathise with, caught in an inevitable downward spiral. That was hard going. Sort of worth it, but hard going. Compared with that, the other books of his that I've read are fairly nice to their cast...
  • I agree totally - after putting his characters through so much grief he should compensate them a little... :)

    I went to see him speak at a launch for Use of Weapons a month or so back, and asked him why his characters have such a bad time (in person he's a cheerful chap, which you wouldn't expect from reading his work). He said that it wouldn't be right (for the story) for them all to live happily every after - you have to see his point, but still...
  • Rebuilding... well, that should be within the Culture's power. We know people can be uploaded; I can imagine uploading and growing into a Mind. (Although the Minds themselves have various motivations designed into them; you might find yourself tweaked, to be safe.)

    I generally figure all those humans are the ones who have chosen not to transcend, descended from other humans who made that choice. After all, they have four hundred lifespans as a current fashion trend.

    Doing without spacecraft or computers isn't a feature of our known universe, but the Culture's universe has Subliming. Which the little bags of blood can also opt for.

  • Wow, you must be loads of fun at parties! I had put several hours into reading the book, gotten involved with the really twisted relationship the 3 central charecters had, and then he just stops. That is mean, and poor writing, to.
  • Slashdot won't let me set the font sizes right, but look for Mirage: Isaac Asimov's Robot Mystery by Mark W Tiedemann, with "Asimov" stretched across the cover in 48-point all caps and "by Mark W Tiedemann" in a 6-point footnote at the bottom. Or any of a dozen similar titles that have been popping up for some time..

    The really tacky thing is often the "approved by the estate of..." label. Also seems to be happening to Frank Herbert... I've heard the new Dune book is terrible.

    Of course, Arthur C. Clarke doesn't seem to have very much input on his co-authored books... but then the man deserves some rest :)

    Not that I've read any, I imagine it must be like reading Star Trek novels.

    Hey, isn't that what happened to James Blish? Used to be a decent writer... Star Trek novels have their place, I read a few but then I turned 10 :)

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