Inversions.
-This is one that I didn't have a strong impression on with a first reading, good or bad. There were some standout incidents in the story, but the larger narrative didn't come together completely. On reread it did and I found it great, standout science fiction in the same tier as The Player of Games and Use of Weapons.
-Reading this right after Excession made a strong contrast, the account being vastly more restrained, less going on, and the most advanced tech a knife missile that makes basically one appearance. It really emphasizes Banks' strength as a writer, that there's a compelling narrative here without the diversity of worldbuilding. Overall this is one of the denser written Culture novels, it succeeds on the strength of its characterization, its prose (top rate even for Banks) and because the main situation is so interesting.
-I would like to see a detailed review at some point by someone that read this as their first Culture novel, see what they thought was going on. As is, the connections were subtle but pretty pervasive, making this one of the core 'conventional' Culture books. Looking at the range of the series it seems in a way the necessary step in fleshing out Special Circumstances--having seen their operation from the view of a non-Contact Cultureite and a mercenary, now we see it from the civilization being influenced. That the account also has an ex-Culture interferer makes the narrative considerably more tangled and interesting.
-De War is kept at considerable more distance in the text than Vosill--the framing of this makes it less reliable, there's less direct detail on his actions, and the conclusion of his story remains speculative even in-universe. Overall what one gets is restrained, collected, his choices coming largely through the stories he tells that are distorted to varying degrees. It's the measure of calm and worried professionalism that's at once companion to Vosill and very different from it, that makes for an effective study in contrasts.
-There's also the ironies across the piece. The doctor with the feel-good, do-good Culture ends up backing the monarchical system with the more ruthless
attitude and general killing. The ex-Culture bodyguard shows himself much more focused on guarding, care and idealistic defense. As well, there's the larger issue of Haspidus ultimately being the better choice than Tassasen, while seeming at first the more backward-looking, medieval and brutal society. In the end, though, amidst all the pageantry of tradition the king has an interest in standing in as a ruler and doing things for the society, and is even willing to innovate and distribute power to do that. The Protector General, while more directly charming and apparently progressive is ultimately self-absorbed to monstrous levels, I'd say that attitude came across fairly clearly in this reading. Banks uses the two men's vie towards sexuality as a shorthand, with UrLeyn's ultimate revealed backstory of rape and abuse indicating the unredeemable aspects of his regime. A bit simple, in some ways, but overall drawn out effectively enough.
-The dual narratives play to substantive change in different ways. For Vossil, a triumph as Oelph and the reader see just how many resources she has. For DeWar, a crashing down of everything he's worked for and the justifications he has for it, with his ending action left as more than a bit ambiguous. In each case the narrative seems utterly suitable, and there are enough discussions to make Haspidus and Tassasen credibly appear to be happening in the same world. Each is a different kind of response to the end of the Empire, each features a different take on what the Culture morally tries to do.
-Oelph is an effectively strong character, with the voice slowly changing in just the right direction to make the growth from naivety credible. On the other end, Perrund is a fascinating character even before the major twist, and her interactions with DeWar sparkle. It's not chemistry in a romantic sense, for the most part, but a real sense of two characters being quite interested in the views and assumptions of the other, which even across a rather sparse
-The first part of the narrative proper features Oelph fetching someone called the Doctor while reporting to someone he calls Master. I wonder how much of this was a deliberate play on Dr. Who.
-This novel is one I'm very glad I reread. It doesn't have quite the high points of Use of Weapons and lacks the overall range of setting that's typical for a Culture novel, but it's a very intense exploration of the heart of the Culture mission, and is in some ways Banks' best structured novel.
Similar to and better than: David Brin's Brightness Reef
Similar to and worse than: Ursula K. LeGuin's Lavinia
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Culture reread V: Excession
Excession.
-This was one I've been dreading rereading, having quite disliked it the first time through, and made me put of the larger project of going through the series again for a bit. My objections to Excession were various, and a number of them are recorded above in this thread: the arbitrary non-consequential plot, the uninteresting and unsympathetic characters, the iritating pace, thorough underuse of the whole idea on an OCP. Having reread it, I believe I was wrong with most of that, and find Excession to be a great novel. Unique and absorbing science fiction, showcasing many of Banks greatest talents and making for a recognizably different type of adventure story.
-There's definitely a shift here from the earlier volumes to the later of the series. For all their variety, they were ultimately intense character studies of some figure with the ethic of the Culture's intervention in another civilization. Here there's a greater variety of viewpoints and the focus is a lot more interior--the setting becomes a lot more significant and the Culture's interacts more peacefully with groups near their tech-range. And above it, of course, in the case of the titular Excession.
-The Excession as an artifact is still rubbish. It's interesting to have the Culture face something far above them and be so uncertain, but there needs to be a sense of something interesting in its own right, some civilization with ideals and norms. Instead, all we're given is an extremely powerful scout that does nothing for its default, is reactive to events, and shows its power by breaking physical laws that Banks himself set up, and hasn't greatly emphasized before this novel.
-I don't see this lack of creativity as a dealbreaker this time because the Excession is just there to push things around. Like the Inhibitors from Revelation Space, its an external presence that generates movement around the setting and different reaction to it. The setting that comes into focus is fantastic--amusing, grotesque, optimistic, tragic and creative in different measures. Part of what I liked in Excession was how it addressed a number of my earlier criticisms. I mentioned previously with The Player of Games how the Culture seemed a bit too conventional, mono-formed, and assuming that its generally niceness with AI was a simple inevitability. Here, we're given a look into some other groups basically Culture-level in tech, are clearly fairly ethical unlike the Idirans and Homoda, and constitute a viable alternative. The peace faction and Tendency feature here, but more especially the Elench. Their focus on remaking themselves rather than ameliorating others makes for a nice contrast, and is in many ways a more appealing goal. Diversity and self-transformation, with the expectation that two Elencher ships that separate will meet later having diverged yet sharing still the memetic pattern for alteration. It's definitely a less imperialist view than the Cultures, and while it also arguably does less in the way of working to improve bystanders, it also sounds the more dynamic standpoint. As well, the status of Elench Minds and that the whole faction split from the Culture makes for a kind of subversive counterpoint to them, and makes the whole setting a lot more interesting. One doesn't generally see in space opera the good polities fragmenting benignly in that way, and it's a lot more dynamic to have splinter groups forming, reabsorbing, diverging further, then to just have individuals leave the Culture. Particularly when those that leave have horrible fates as an indication of why they were wrong to go against hedonism, see A Gift From the Culture and State of the Art.
-It's a pity that Banks undermines the Elench in the course of his narrative. There are some pretty intriguing philosophical arguments they make that aren't really addressed, but the way events play out the Culture perspective is validated and the Elench get seen as second-best. The Elench's desire to poke the Excession is shown as reckless, while the Culture's comparative paranoia seems the more sensible if less potentially rewarding one (ignoring the status of the conspiracy that gets involved with this, see bellow). Much as with the Morthanveld latter--their ideology being shown as too cautious to face the Iln--there's a sense that Banks gives his civilization a narrative justification that's a bit contrived.
-It's even more of a pity that, to my recollection, the Elench are never mentioned in subsequent stories.
-Still, for all the contrast isn't ideal, the initial setup made with the Elench ship's takeover and flight of the drone is very tense. It's intense, distinctive and helps make for an effective launch to the novel. Connected with that, I had a much more favorable impression of the Affront--exaggerated hyper-masculinity, casual good cheer, utter sadism. In many ways they make a more effective counterpart to the Culture than the Idirans' flat fanaticism or Azad's decadent court with sadistic underpinnings. There's something oddly disarming about how open they are with their cruelty--human heads off to the side, attempted anal rape on Affronters being a casual greeting--it doesn't in itself lend to great depth, but it makes for a fun and disturbing society. Reminded me a lot of the Dwellers, of course, but in some ways they're more effective for ultimately taking place in a moral universe. I still think it would have been a lot more interesting if the Affront had had the tech/resource edge over the Culture.
-Characterization also plays a lot better than I remembered. Genar's not nearly as engaging as Gurgeh, for instance, but he's vibrant enough for his subplot to hold up, and has a strong introductory scene that provides reasonable interest. Ulver's kind of entertaining in how immature she is, although her great intelligence seems to remain an informed attribute, and why she specifically was necessary seems inadequately cleared. It feels a lot like characters are there just to move along the focus to different parts of the setting, but unlike Consider Phlebas the connection is tight enough and the prose sufficiently vibrant to make it worthwhile.
-As well, more attention is given to the Minds overall. On one level this is a bit problematic, as they seem too pedestrian, too human. The speeds of their actions are extreme, but at times we seem their mental processes and they appear a bit conventional. On the other hand, they are made forceful personalities, a number of unique character types coming across well.
-The notion of Eccentric ships is an interesting one. In reflection at one point the Sleeping Service mentions the charade as liberating, being able to indulge its full whims and desires, in a way that's theoretically allowed but custom frowns on for regular ships. I'm reminded of Orwell's comment that an anarchy, in principle a complete free society, could easily become one of the most coercive ones because of the power placed by custom and unwritten consensus.
-Following all the twists of the conspiracy is pretty interesting, and the ultimate intent makes it both somewhat sympathetic and another mildly dystopian edge for the Culture. There's a bit of a plausibility factor, though. As things go, the notion of the Attitude Adjuster and others wanting to force the debate and have the Culture roll over the Affront is understandable. It seems a bit much to have them just hand over the Pittance fleet to them, though--it makes it obvious there's been internal subversion, and aren't Minds supposed to be more subtle than that? As well, the decision to active all this in the context of the Excession seems rash--it's a convenient excuse in some ways but is toying with things they'll obviously be unable to control.
-In another matter the society seems better at stretching the borders. Genar's desire to be an Affront (even if treated as very strange), the Tendency person with wings--it makes for a stranger feeling, one reinforced by having Minds be so prominent. I still think the sexual differentiation are too conservative though. There are these binaries of male and female, and people routinely go from one to the other--something halting in the middle, but no typically. It's pretty drab, really. Again on Reynolds, I seem to recall Revelation Space being more creative with these notions.
-There's something kind of satisfying about the ending, where what seemed initially as the setup for explosive space opera turns out to derive more drama from a character moment, the meeting and discussion of two past lovers in the context of the Sleeper Service's obsession. In contrast the Excession just leaves. It's a satisfying final tone in a number of ways, but it definitely makes for less edge to the finale, a weaker final punch. The lack of anything that happened having a real impact on the setting is a bit of an drag. Interesting as the survey is, if Banks is going to invest so heavily in threatening the normal state of Involved in the Cultureverse, it would be worthwhile for him to do something to actually shift it.
Similar to and better than: Jack Vance's The Five Gold Bands
Similar to and worse than: Alastair Reynolds' The House of Suns
-This was one I've been dreading rereading, having quite disliked it the first time through, and made me put of the larger project of going through the series again for a bit. My objections to Excession were various, and a number of them are recorded above in this thread: the arbitrary non-consequential plot, the uninteresting and unsympathetic characters, the iritating pace, thorough underuse of the whole idea on an OCP. Having reread it, I believe I was wrong with most of that, and find Excession to be a great novel. Unique and absorbing science fiction, showcasing many of Banks greatest talents and making for a recognizably different type of adventure story.
-There's definitely a shift here from the earlier volumes to the later of the series. For all their variety, they were ultimately intense character studies of some figure with the ethic of the Culture's intervention in another civilization. Here there's a greater variety of viewpoints and the focus is a lot more interior--the setting becomes a lot more significant and the Culture's interacts more peacefully with groups near their tech-range. And above it, of course, in the case of the titular Excession.
-The Excession as an artifact is still rubbish. It's interesting to have the Culture face something far above them and be so uncertain, but there needs to be a sense of something interesting in its own right, some civilization with ideals and norms. Instead, all we're given is an extremely powerful scout that does nothing for its default, is reactive to events, and shows its power by breaking physical laws that Banks himself set up, and hasn't greatly emphasized before this novel.
-I don't see this lack of creativity as a dealbreaker this time because the Excession is just there to push things around. Like the Inhibitors from Revelation Space, its an external presence that generates movement around the setting and different reaction to it. The setting that comes into focus is fantastic--amusing, grotesque, optimistic, tragic and creative in different measures. Part of what I liked in Excession was how it addressed a number of my earlier criticisms. I mentioned previously with The Player of Games how the Culture seemed a bit too conventional, mono-formed, and assuming that its generally niceness with AI was a simple inevitability. Here, we're given a look into some other groups basically Culture-level in tech, are clearly fairly ethical unlike the Idirans and Homoda, and constitute a viable alternative. The peace faction and Tendency feature here, but more especially the Elench. Their focus on remaking themselves rather than ameliorating others makes for a nice contrast, and is in many ways a more appealing goal. Diversity and self-transformation, with the expectation that two Elencher ships that separate will meet later having diverged yet sharing still the memetic pattern for alteration. It's definitely a less imperialist view than the Cultures, and while it also arguably does less in the way of working to improve bystanders, it also sounds the more dynamic standpoint. As well, the status of Elench Minds and that the whole faction split from the Culture makes for a kind of subversive counterpoint to them, and makes the whole setting a lot more interesting. One doesn't generally see in space opera the good polities fragmenting benignly in that way, and it's a lot more dynamic to have splinter groups forming, reabsorbing, diverging further, then to just have individuals leave the Culture. Particularly when those that leave have horrible fates as an indication of why they were wrong to go against hedonism, see A Gift From the Culture and State of the Art.
-It's a pity that Banks undermines the Elench in the course of his narrative. There are some pretty intriguing philosophical arguments they make that aren't really addressed, but the way events play out the Culture perspective is validated and the Elench get seen as second-best. The Elench's desire to poke the Excession is shown as reckless, while the Culture's comparative paranoia seems the more sensible if less potentially rewarding one (ignoring the status of the conspiracy that gets involved with this, see bellow). Much as with the Morthanveld latter--their ideology being shown as too cautious to face the Iln--there's a sense that Banks gives his civilization a narrative justification that's a bit contrived.
-It's even more of a pity that, to my recollection, the Elench are never mentioned in subsequent stories.
-Still, for all the contrast isn't ideal, the initial setup made with the Elench ship's takeover and flight of the drone is very tense. It's intense, distinctive and helps make for an effective launch to the novel. Connected with that, I had a much more favorable impression of the Affront--exaggerated hyper-masculinity, casual good cheer, utter sadism. In many ways they make a more effective counterpart to the Culture than the Idirans' flat fanaticism or Azad's decadent court with sadistic underpinnings. There's something oddly disarming about how open they are with their cruelty--human heads off to the side, attempted anal rape on Affronters being a casual greeting--it doesn't in itself lend to great depth, but it makes for a fun and disturbing society. Reminded me a lot of the Dwellers, of course, but in some ways they're more effective for ultimately taking place in a moral universe. I still think it would have been a lot more interesting if the Affront had had the tech/resource edge over the Culture.
-Characterization also plays a lot better than I remembered. Genar's not nearly as engaging as Gurgeh, for instance, but he's vibrant enough for his subplot to hold up, and has a strong introductory scene that provides reasonable interest. Ulver's kind of entertaining in how immature she is, although her great intelligence seems to remain an informed attribute, and why she specifically was necessary seems inadequately cleared. It feels a lot like characters are there just to move along the focus to different parts of the setting, but unlike Consider Phlebas the connection is tight enough and the prose sufficiently vibrant to make it worthwhile.
-As well, more attention is given to the Minds overall. On one level this is a bit problematic, as they seem too pedestrian, too human. The speeds of their actions are extreme, but at times we seem their mental processes and they appear a bit conventional. On the other hand, they are made forceful personalities, a number of unique character types coming across well.
-The notion of Eccentric ships is an interesting one. In reflection at one point the Sleeping Service mentions the charade as liberating, being able to indulge its full whims and desires, in a way that's theoretically allowed but custom frowns on for regular ships. I'm reminded of Orwell's comment that an anarchy, in principle a complete free society, could easily become one of the most coercive ones because of the power placed by custom and unwritten consensus.
-Following all the twists of the conspiracy is pretty interesting, and the ultimate intent makes it both somewhat sympathetic and another mildly dystopian edge for the Culture. There's a bit of a plausibility factor, though. As things go, the notion of the Attitude Adjuster and others wanting to force the debate and have the Culture roll over the Affront is understandable. It seems a bit much to have them just hand over the Pittance fleet to them, though--it makes it obvious there's been internal subversion, and aren't Minds supposed to be more subtle than that? As well, the decision to active all this in the context of the Excession seems rash--it's a convenient excuse in some ways but is toying with things they'll obviously be unable to control.
-In another matter the society seems better at stretching the borders. Genar's desire to be an Affront (even if treated as very strange), the Tendency person with wings--it makes for a stranger feeling, one reinforced by having Minds be so prominent. I still think the sexual differentiation are too conservative though. There are these binaries of male and female, and people routinely go from one to the other--something halting in the middle, but no typically. It's pretty drab, really. Again on Reynolds, I seem to recall Revelation Space being more creative with these notions.
-There's something kind of satisfying about the ending, where what seemed initially as the setup for explosive space opera turns out to derive more drama from a character moment, the meeting and discussion of two past lovers in the context of the Sleeper Service's obsession. In contrast the Excession just leaves. It's a satisfying final tone in a number of ways, but it definitely makes for less edge to the finale, a weaker final punch. The lack of anything that happened having a real impact on the setting is a bit of an drag. Interesting as the survey is, if Banks is going to invest so heavily in threatening the normal state of Involved in the Cultureverse, it would be worthwhile for him to do something to actually shift it.
Similar to and better than: Jack Vance's The Five Gold Bands
Similar to and worse than: Alastair Reynolds' The House of Suns
Culture reread IV: State of the Art
State of the Art.
-The first time I read this I viewed it as a light-weight but fairly charming and consistently amusing piece, with its own usual Culture blend of humor and pathos. After rereading it I think this was wrong, the novella is very bad, with a horrifically weak plot and overall poorly conceived.
-To begin with the humor. It's simply too much, too garish and not hung on anything meaningful. Banks is a great humorist, but that works when its balancing something--often something quite grotesque, at other points just a substantive character moment or interesting piece of creativity. Here, it's people going around doing ostensibly funny things, often as part of deliberate jokes, and it's just so stupid and meaningless I can't connect. This gets into a major issue with characterization that I talk about bellow.
-More central, though, is the basic failure of the plot. Nothing really happens. The whole thing is aggressively pointless by the end. It puts in all kinds of interesting possibilities out there, but refuses to narratively engage with any of them. What we're left with is a lot of discussion on mundane affairs and the drama of several extraordinarily stupid people. What's more, this whole little trip and the non-Contact option makes the Cultureverse Earth into basically an urban fantasy---all kinds of interesting things lurk in the shadow but none of it changes the lives of the wider populace. It's pretty obvious from the getgo that Contact will not be made--'77 as a choice suggested that--and lots of characters speculating what the Culture might want to do with Earth and them speculating how Earth would respond if they knew isn't something we need a book for. It's something a commentary thread like this can do, nothing in that distinction is a story.
-The whole thing is transparently only there because Banks wanted to have the Culture reflect on Earth, and offer some meta-statements on science fiction. Fair enough, but given that the way he does it is a cheat. Banks has his characters play directly off the notions of science fiction, which for this is---Star Wars and Star Trek, and a smattering of other pop culture. Reasonable if one is to assume just an engagement with the wider culture and sociology of mass expectations for the SF Other, but the novella's scope isn't that widely centered. Plainly it's a way for the readers to speculate on ways the Culture contrasts with wider science fiction. Given that, it's just taking cheap potshots to focus on the films and television. The Culture is of course based on a book series, if Banks was doing this at all effectively he'd have to give some contrast with the future expected in genre books of the time and the "real" one embodied in his polity.
The Arbitrary visits Earth in 1977. At that point, prominent recent SF novels included: Philip K. Dick's Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said, Asimov's The Gods Themselves and Le Guin's The Dispossessed. Why doesn't the story offer a side by side with one of them (Le Guin's, in particular, actually has a lot of similarity, and does its deconstruction of utopia and dystopia a fair bit better than Banks has ever managed). There could be an interesting sort of dialog if put in that standard, a kind of intense and funny meta-narrative like Adam Roberts' recent Yellow Blue Tibia. But no, what Banks offers is more in the way of 'expectations of time travel lol' which just comes across as smug in all the wrong ways.
-Which brings us around to the issue of characterization, which is a failure. In essence I don't care about any of the exaggerated, two-dimensional portraits we're presented with here. The Arbitrary is probably the most interesting, and it doesn't go much beyond random pranks and a fairly undefined disquiet with the Culture's core mission. Some amusing moments and a flair for good lines, but the wider psychology isn't really there. Sma is a tiny fragment of the character she was (strictly speaking will be) in Use of Weapons. Which wouldn't be bad in itself but her tone of thinking just feels off, and isn't in itself terribly engaging. Fundamentally her reflections on Earth and conviction that there must be contact aren't very profound, and after a point come across as overly pleading/whiny.
-Then there's Li. What was the point of the character again? He's so inflated, bombastic, over the top in proposals---it's like watching a typical Space Battler stroll around the Culture trying to get things rolling his way, and it doesn't make for any kind of substantive impact.
-Still better than Linter, who just ups and goes mascohistic in a terribly uncompelling way. It's simply too abrupt, unreasoned and over-the-top to feel like a legitimate subversion of the Culture's call. Convenient is the strongest impression I get from that, with a character whose a walking hollow void to generate something in the way of tension. And the circumstances of his death are too melodramatic for me to get into that moment to any extent.
-Of a bit more worth are the larger thematic issues brought up, but here I"m also dissatisfied. The unique point here, unlike earlier works, is critiquing the Culture as static, overly unchanging compared with Earth. Therefore the planet, for all its cruelty, ignorance and violence, offers a prospect of transformation and vitality, of experienced newness that is lacking in the Culture. This is in itself a good reason for disatisfication with the Culture, what bothers me about it is that it's something that even applies to the Culture. This polity is technologically stagnant compared to Earth why, exactly? The slow advancement is a feature of the group across the series, but here it's in sharpest relief and it doesn't make sense. The Culture clearly hasn't "maxed out" the tech that's scientifically possible in this universe. It has greater numbers of people than the present, much higher intellects available, immortality and a great desire for innovation for innovation's sake. That should produce more empirical investigations and rate of breakthroughs, on a variety of levels. The brainbug that a much more technologically sophisticated group would at a certain point have almost no further tech growth isn't unique to Banks, but it's a conceit that annoys me and it featured particularly prominently here.
-I'm also bugged by how aggressively West-centered this whole trip and study are. Sure, there's one line about one of Sma's colleagues visiting Japan, and an equally brief mention that some point soon the West's hegemony over the larger planet is going to run out. But still, in a study of 20th century humanity it's overwhelmingly focused on Western Europe and the United States, with a brief glance as the Iron Curtain for hypocrisy and Asia for mass-murder. The shelf of literature mentioned at one point is: Dostoevsky, Borges, Greene, Swift, Lucretius, Kafka, Austin, Grass, bellow, Joyce, Confucius, Scoot, Mailer, Camus, Hemingway, Dante. Shakespeare is also mentioned prominently. Not completely Western but pretty heavily, and all these works are the type of Great Books one would expect to find on a standard Anglo-American shelf. Why, then, are the Culture representatives adopting such a parochial view in their survey of the planet? Why do they effectively take America and allies as the dominant cultural force of the species? I have to say, this isn't a bias I'd expected Banks to have, and it adds a disquieting tone to the larger survey. Contrast again with Yellow Blue Tibia.
-It's not a complete failure. High points include: actually making a Mind a real character for the first time, some insight into Contact as against Special Circumstances, and the scene where the crew eat human. That last is just the right brand of grotesque Banksian humor--so unlike what one would expect of an uber-tolerant utopia, and yet with no actual ethical cost, thus making for an evocative image. Still, overall I'm glad that Banks hasn't done other Culture novellas. Going by this sample it doesn't suit him, producing something grotesquely bloated and irrelevant for a short story and far too meager to effectively deliver the story or insights it thinks it does. Or it could be just his notion of brining Earth into line with the Cultureverse. More than anything else, the smug tone amidst the narrative linked to the weakness of the actual story leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Similar to and better than: Terry Pratchett's The Colour of Magic
Similar to and worse than: Adam Roberts' Yellow Blue Tibia
-The first time I read this I viewed it as a light-weight but fairly charming and consistently amusing piece, with its own usual Culture blend of humor and pathos. After rereading it I think this was wrong, the novella is very bad, with a horrifically weak plot and overall poorly conceived.
-To begin with the humor. It's simply too much, too garish and not hung on anything meaningful. Banks is a great humorist, but that works when its balancing something--often something quite grotesque, at other points just a substantive character moment or interesting piece of creativity. Here, it's people going around doing ostensibly funny things, often as part of deliberate jokes, and it's just so stupid and meaningless I can't connect. This gets into a major issue with characterization that I talk about bellow.
-More central, though, is the basic failure of the plot. Nothing really happens. The whole thing is aggressively pointless by the end. It puts in all kinds of interesting possibilities out there, but refuses to narratively engage with any of them. What we're left with is a lot of discussion on mundane affairs and the drama of several extraordinarily stupid people. What's more, this whole little trip and the non-Contact option makes the Cultureverse Earth into basically an urban fantasy---all kinds of interesting things lurk in the shadow but none of it changes the lives of the wider populace. It's pretty obvious from the getgo that Contact will not be made--'77 as a choice suggested that--and lots of characters speculating what the Culture might want to do with Earth and them speculating how Earth would respond if they knew isn't something we need a book for. It's something a commentary thread like this can do, nothing in that distinction is a story.
-The whole thing is transparently only there because Banks wanted to have the Culture reflect on Earth, and offer some meta-statements on science fiction. Fair enough, but given that the way he does it is a cheat. Banks has his characters play directly off the notions of science fiction, which for this is---Star Wars and Star Trek, and a smattering of other pop culture. Reasonable if one is to assume just an engagement with the wider culture and sociology of mass expectations for the SF Other, but the novella's scope isn't that widely centered. Plainly it's a way for the readers to speculate on ways the Culture contrasts with wider science fiction. Given that, it's just taking cheap potshots to focus on the films and television. The Culture is of course based on a book series, if Banks was doing this at all effectively he'd have to give some contrast with the future expected in genre books of the time and the "real" one embodied in his polity.
The Arbitrary visits Earth in 1977. At that point, prominent recent SF novels included: Philip K. Dick's Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said, Asimov's The Gods Themselves and Le Guin's The Dispossessed. Why doesn't the story offer a side by side with one of them (Le Guin's, in particular, actually has a lot of similarity, and does its deconstruction of utopia and dystopia a fair bit better than Banks has ever managed). There could be an interesting sort of dialog if put in that standard, a kind of intense and funny meta-narrative like Adam Roberts' recent Yellow Blue Tibia. But no, what Banks offers is more in the way of 'expectations of time travel lol' which just comes across as smug in all the wrong ways.
-Which brings us around to the issue of characterization, which is a failure. In essence I don't care about any of the exaggerated, two-dimensional portraits we're presented with here. The Arbitrary is probably the most interesting, and it doesn't go much beyond random pranks and a fairly undefined disquiet with the Culture's core mission. Some amusing moments and a flair for good lines, but the wider psychology isn't really there. Sma is a tiny fragment of the character she was (strictly speaking will be) in Use of Weapons. Which wouldn't be bad in itself but her tone of thinking just feels off, and isn't in itself terribly engaging. Fundamentally her reflections on Earth and conviction that there must be contact aren't very profound, and after a point come across as overly pleading/whiny.
-Then there's Li. What was the point of the character again? He's so inflated, bombastic, over the top in proposals---it's like watching a typical Space Battler stroll around the Culture trying to get things rolling his way, and it doesn't make for any kind of substantive impact.
-Still better than Linter, who just ups and goes mascohistic in a terribly uncompelling way. It's simply too abrupt, unreasoned and over-the-top to feel like a legitimate subversion of the Culture's call. Convenient is the strongest impression I get from that, with a character whose a walking hollow void to generate something in the way of tension. And the circumstances of his death are too melodramatic for me to get into that moment to any extent.
-Of a bit more worth are the larger thematic issues brought up, but here I"m also dissatisfied. The unique point here, unlike earlier works, is critiquing the Culture as static, overly unchanging compared with Earth. Therefore the planet, for all its cruelty, ignorance and violence, offers a prospect of transformation and vitality, of experienced newness that is lacking in the Culture. This is in itself a good reason for disatisfication with the Culture, what bothers me about it is that it's something that even applies to the Culture. This polity is technologically stagnant compared to Earth why, exactly? The slow advancement is a feature of the group across the series, but here it's in sharpest relief and it doesn't make sense. The Culture clearly hasn't "maxed out" the tech that's scientifically possible in this universe. It has greater numbers of people than the present, much higher intellects available, immortality and a great desire for innovation for innovation's sake. That should produce more empirical investigations and rate of breakthroughs, on a variety of levels. The brainbug that a much more technologically sophisticated group would at a certain point have almost no further tech growth isn't unique to Banks, but it's a conceit that annoys me and it featured particularly prominently here.
-I'm also bugged by how aggressively West-centered this whole trip and study are. Sure, there's one line about one of Sma's colleagues visiting Japan, and an equally brief mention that some point soon the West's hegemony over the larger planet is going to run out. But still, in a study of 20th century humanity it's overwhelmingly focused on Western Europe and the United States, with a brief glance as the Iron Curtain for hypocrisy and Asia for mass-murder. The shelf of literature mentioned at one point is: Dostoevsky, Borges, Greene, Swift, Lucretius, Kafka, Austin, Grass, bellow, Joyce, Confucius, Scoot, Mailer, Camus, Hemingway, Dante. Shakespeare is also mentioned prominently. Not completely Western but pretty heavily, and all these works are the type of Great Books one would expect to find on a standard Anglo-American shelf. Why, then, are the Culture representatives adopting such a parochial view in their survey of the planet? Why do they effectively take America and allies as the dominant cultural force of the species? I have to say, this isn't a bias I'd expected Banks to have, and it adds a disquieting tone to the larger survey. Contrast again with Yellow Blue Tibia.
-It's not a complete failure. High points include: actually making a Mind a real character for the first time, some insight into Contact as against Special Circumstances, and the scene where the crew eat human. That last is just the right brand of grotesque Banksian humor--so unlike what one would expect of an uber-tolerant utopia, and yet with no actual ethical cost, thus making for an evocative image. Still, overall I'm glad that Banks hasn't done other Culture novellas. Going by this sample it doesn't suit him, producing something grotesquely bloated and irrelevant for a short story and far too meager to effectively deliver the story or insights it thinks it does. Or it could be just his notion of brining Earth into line with the Cultureverse. More than anything else, the smug tone amidst the narrative linked to the weakness of the actual story leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Similar to and better than: Terry Pratchett's The Colour of Magic
Similar to and worse than: Adam Roberts' Yellow Blue Tibia
Culture reread III: Use of Weapons
Use of Weapons
"The need was obvious; to defeat what opposed its life. The method was that taking and bending of materials and people to one purpose, the outlook that everything could be used in teh fight; that nothing could be excluded, that everything was a weapon, and the ability to handle those weapons, to find them and choose which one to aim and fire." (ibid, 154)
-First time I read this it was rather out of 'chronological sequence' with the others, doing it in order of publication I can see how it's a logical next trend in the series. Consider Phlebas was the introduction to the Culture, the most conventional space-opera in some ways. More generally it was a narrative debate on whether the Culture deserved to survive, whether it had the necessary strength to sacrifice comfort in war, and if so whether their continued existence would be a good thing. All the other books are post Idiran War, and about working out different implications of the Culture continuance. The Player of Games shows their interference in an outside dystopia, with a lot more subtlety than just dismantling their empire by force. Player of Games also introduced the idea of mercenaries, outside contractors for Special Circumstances used to do the really dirty business. From that, it's a logical next step to look at one of these mercenaries, and probe the tangled ethics of Serving the Greater Good.
-I'm not generally bothering with spoiler warnings here, my assumption is that being here embraces seeing the endings to all the Culture books. Here, though, I'll emphasize that there is a major twist in the process of the character that will ruin a lot of the benefit of reading it untampered.
-I didn't love this one the first time. Admired the themes and overall flow of the narrative, but wasn't consistently caught up in it, appreciated individual scenes but not the larger whole. I think partly I wasn't properly attuned to the different timeline, the way all the incidents folded together. This time, knowing the big benchmarks for the life of Elethiomel (henceforth to be referred to as Zakalwe) make the focus clearer. More than anything it was a case of the tangled chronology working for the emotional energy of the work, rather than undercutting it. So, this is a work that's really benefited from a rereading, and I have to say it's pretty great. Not perfect, and at some level I still admire its construction more than I'm caught up in it, and would still say I prefer The Player of Games by a bit. It's certainly a meaningful narrative, though, and a strong accomplishment.
-So, Zakalwe. Fantastic character, all told. His introductory scene was one of the more striking of the series, and there's an energy and level of detail to him that makes him well-constructed. From his somewhat passive aggressive conversation pretending to be naive to his genuine ambivalence about doing the right thing to his utter ruthlessness in pursuit of an objective--it all hangs together, and produces many moments that are distinctively Zakalwe-ish (except not, obviously, which brings a considerable level of irony).
-On a reread, the fact that he wasn't the real Zakalwe looks pretty obvious. The way he obsesses about the chair, and in the context of actions he's done, not just an atrocity he's witnessed. Plus the point where he imagines being confronted by the ghost of the real Zakalwe--it's phrased ambiguously enough not to be a giveaway at first, but with hindsight it's a pretty clear sign. And of course the whole thing with the bone fragment, once the background on that is given.
-It makes for a powerful twist, but it does leave a little bit too much unanswered. We presume he killed his cousin/lover and forged her bones into a chair not because he was the kind of sadist that would enjoy that sort of thing but for a calculated strategic reason, the cold logic that told him it would drive the real Zakalwe to suicide and allow his forces to breakout. There's a lot of continuity with that and what the Culture asks him to do periodically, and clearly it becomes important that this subsequent ruthlessness have some greater justification, murder in the service of a higher politics rather than just petty ambition. It makes a fair deal of sense. The problem is, how does someone cold-blooded enough to be the Chairmaker and send the result to one's cousin then be so filled with remorse, self-loathing and an effort to block out the whole event? What, in essence, drove him to seek redemption after being such a monster? The whole picture isn't psychologically impossible, but it needs a bit more context, a clear indication of when and why Zakalwe came to see his action as unjustifiable. Did he know it before making the chair but was so focused on victory he didn't care? Was it after he'd lost the battle and realized he'd been so grotesque for nothing? Years after the fact he came to obsess about it more and more? It makes a great deal of difference, and is the pivotal moment of the character's life, but Banks leaves that obscured. To make for the more powerful force of the plot, naturally, but this does make the psychology a bit more dubious.
-On a thematic level, of course, it plays well with the Culture, the question of their own involvement with sordid violence and betrayal in the greater good. I'd say that this story more than the previous one's resists a simplistic stance on the issue. There seem reasonable things at stake for everything the Culture does, they are working to good intents and with generally good results. The story doesn't deliver a message that they should stay uninvolved, keep their hands clean and allow others to suffer/die at a remove. Yet, it's not exactly a full endorsement of Special Circumstances. It's not just the gap between immoral acts and the eventual supposed benefit, in some ways Banks again cheats by having the Minds and statistical record come down in favor of the success rates. It's the mindset that's behind SC, the same presumption as Zakalwe--use of weapons, and everything is a weapon. No limits set a ruthless amoral mentality. I talked with Player of Games about how alarming and self-contained SC seemed, and here that comes in force even more. Not just because they do ugly things but because to be effective they are clearly adopting the same amoral utilitarian view that makes Zakalwe so useful to them.
-On a more direct level, there's also the question of how much Special Circumstances knew about Zakalwe's past. We can take it as a given that Sma and proably the drone were ignorant, but can we vouch the same for others? The Minds? At the end it didn't take the Xenophobe long at all to dig up the records and show that the actual Zakalwe had died. Given that, I don't see a way in which they aren't complicit in his past, and in giving him power after the fact. Either the organization knew, at some level, what he'd done and chose to employ him regardless, or they didn't care to look very hard in the past of their mercenaries. Both are highly dubious.
-As well, I have to say that I found Skaffen-Amtiskaw a much creepier character ultimately, even with the revelation on the chairmaker. Mostly just the way it's slaughter of the medeival troops was set up, how complete its physical power over them was, and the way it took pleasure in ripping them apart. It reminded me a lot of a scene in Richard Morgan's Market Forces, where two (basically) mercenaries head out for some hard drinking on the town. They encounter some people trying to jack their car, one guy shoots and kills them all, including one after he tried to surrender. The man justified it with extended self-defense and them only being criminal scum anyway, but it's clear in retrospect that he went into the zones to provoke a threat, so he could respond with disproportionate force. Reminds me a lot of Skaffen-Amtiskaw, the way it waited until there was an order for defense and then struck back sadistically, knife missile against people with swords. Given that incident Skaffen-Amtiskaw appears consistently shady, and some moments like it caefully looking after Sma and removing her shoes just come across as creepy. This really does raise a question on what kind of people seek out SC. Altruists genuinely seeking to do good, certainly. But as well if there are direct sociopaths in the Culture, they would also have an appeal for this kind of sphere. That Skaffen-Amtiskaw was able to get in through their apparently rigorous selection processes is somewhat alarming.
-When exactly do the two "prologues" take place, the one at the opening and close? It makes a fair difference in interpreting the Zakalwe's journey.
-The setting here is a lot less developed than with Player of Games. There are some interesting details but on the whole it's little more than window-dressing for the moral questions involved with interference or non-involvement.
-It's a testament to how good Banks is as a writer that he can make the crucial plot tension come with effectively an anticlimax. Zakalwe is told to leave the Hegemonarchy that he's been working to build up, ensuring they will lose the war. He struggles for a bit but goes along with it, trusting in the longer-term process that may deliver a greater good. This is anticlimatic not just because things don't happen--his key decision is not calling down an a strike with the starship--but because it's also him failing to assert independence, choosing to be obedient to the dictates of Special Circumstances, confirming himself as a weapon to be used by others for the long-term benefit. It's one of the defining moments for Zakalwe in his effort to be an effective servant of a greater end and so gain some escape from himself and redemption for his acts. And then we find out there there really can't be redemption, that his sins were so bad he'll never be able to forgive himself and will certainly never be forgiven by those that also saw the chair. Makes for a good moment.
-One of the ways the Culture appears more dubious here is that the long-term ends are a bit nebulous. Preventing an apocalyptic war is clearly a good thing, but all SC people approach this as just another mission, the type of catastrophe that will always be happening or not happening somewhere. Important, but not crucial, so in ways the gain from the mission seem less real than the means used to attain it. Perhaps that was always going to be the case with means and ends, but it seems stronger here. Did like the debate over environmentalism that eventually was shown as about altering a gas giant.
-Beychae offers one of the stronger critiques of the Culture's interference. To my knowledge, it's also one of the only ones in the series where a member of the species being interfered with provides an effective objection. Unlike Horza he doesn't presume the Culture is unrelenting and too machine-ey in their actions, instead he sees them as being a bit willfully blind, assuming that their specific standard needs to be applied. Particularly strong is his comment that the Culture "can sometimes appear to be insistent that deliberate intermixing is not just permissible but desirable; almost a duty." Here's one of the more delicious ironies of the whole venture--the Culture is about tolerance and diversity, but in part they're also about stifling that by pushing others to be more tolerant and diverse. It's an inherent paradox--is it really more moral to stand by and let preventable violence occur?--and in the end Beychae does agree that in this case he can no longer be passive, he should work to stop the Humanists. I'd say the point is sustained, though, in the way that the Culture is simultaneously one of the most and least tolerant societies imaginable. At a certain point it's something that has to be dealt with in most interactions, unless one takes state sovereignty as a complete moral absolute which I don't. But the point is worth taking that here a thoughtful, fairly progressive man whose had extended dealings with the Culture's methods speculates that they may be overly simplistic in their assumption of what's better. Pragmatic as the Culture is it does tend to go for some unified constants--basic morality across species, relative hedonist constants, a general progressive narrative of history that leads societies towards a general path. Which is problematic in a number of easily imagined ways, most directly the whole idea of aliens. Maybe it's not just an aesthetic failure on Banks' part that makes most of his alien societies very humanoid, and the non-humanoid ones relatively simplistic. Arguably it's a format necessary for some of the basic assumptions to hold up. Certainly the fact that the main society in Use of Weapons are basically the same as Earth humans is necessary for the basic concept to work as it does.
-Here's the first demonstration of an alternative Special Circumstances operation, a group that agrees in modifying other societies but does so differently than the mainstream Culture would. (Other actions of this type feature in Inversions and, to an extent, in Excession) Specifically with what Zakalwe was doing early on, giving extended life to Ethnarchs in exchange for good behavior and then taking some of that life away. The conclusion here is that Zakalwe's interference was ill considered, very likely to blow up in everyone's faces, and didn't consider obvious things Culture children learned in childhood. To an extent this is obviously a patronizing and somewhat hypocritical attitude, but I'd agree that with this type of substantive meddling in other societies it's probably better not to have one lone renegade with a redemption complex pulling it off. If there's a community, a network, there can be dialog, discussion, some restraint on the crazier ideas. Plus with Zakalwe there's the basic idea why it's not good to give him much unsupervised power. If there is to be top-down restructuring, better to have it as a coherent entity like Special Circumstances rather than an amateur. I'm not sure SC is in itself the best entity for this role, however, and the attitude of exclusion and single-group domination of this process is fairly troubling. See again the whole process of hiring Zakalwe in the first place.
Similar to and better than: Richard Morgan's Woken Furies
Similar to and worse than: Iain M. Banks' Look to Windward
"The need was obvious; to defeat what opposed its life. The method was that taking and bending of materials and people to one purpose, the outlook that everything could be used in teh fight; that nothing could be excluded, that everything was a weapon, and the ability to handle those weapons, to find them and choose which one to aim and fire." (ibid, 154)
-First time I read this it was rather out of 'chronological sequence' with the others, doing it in order of publication I can see how it's a logical next trend in the series. Consider Phlebas was the introduction to the Culture, the most conventional space-opera in some ways. More generally it was a narrative debate on whether the Culture deserved to survive, whether it had the necessary strength to sacrifice comfort in war, and if so whether their continued existence would be a good thing. All the other books are post Idiran War, and about working out different implications of the Culture continuance. The Player of Games shows their interference in an outside dystopia, with a lot more subtlety than just dismantling their empire by force. Player of Games also introduced the idea of mercenaries, outside contractors for Special Circumstances used to do the really dirty business. From that, it's a logical next step to look at one of these mercenaries, and probe the tangled ethics of Serving the Greater Good.
-I'm not generally bothering with spoiler warnings here, my assumption is that being here embraces seeing the endings to all the Culture books. Here, though, I'll emphasize that there is a major twist in the process of the character that will ruin a lot of the benefit of reading it untampered.
-I didn't love this one the first time. Admired the themes and overall flow of the narrative, but wasn't consistently caught up in it, appreciated individual scenes but not the larger whole. I think partly I wasn't properly attuned to the different timeline, the way all the incidents folded together. This time, knowing the big benchmarks for the life of Elethiomel (henceforth to be referred to as Zakalwe) make the focus clearer. More than anything it was a case of the tangled chronology working for the emotional energy of the work, rather than undercutting it. So, this is a work that's really benefited from a rereading, and I have to say it's pretty great. Not perfect, and at some level I still admire its construction more than I'm caught up in it, and would still say I prefer The Player of Games by a bit. It's certainly a meaningful narrative, though, and a strong accomplishment.
-So, Zakalwe. Fantastic character, all told. His introductory scene was one of the more striking of the series, and there's an energy and level of detail to him that makes him well-constructed. From his somewhat passive aggressive conversation pretending to be naive to his genuine ambivalence about doing the right thing to his utter ruthlessness in pursuit of an objective--it all hangs together, and produces many moments that are distinctively Zakalwe-ish (except not, obviously, which brings a considerable level of irony).
-On a reread, the fact that he wasn't the real Zakalwe looks pretty obvious. The way he obsesses about the chair, and in the context of actions he's done, not just an atrocity he's witnessed. Plus the point where he imagines being confronted by the ghost of the real Zakalwe--it's phrased ambiguously enough not to be a giveaway at first, but with hindsight it's a pretty clear sign. And of course the whole thing with the bone fragment, once the background on that is given.
-It makes for a powerful twist, but it does leave a little bit too much unanswered. We presume he killed his cousin/lover and forged her bones into a chair not because he was the kind of sadist that would enjoy that sort of thing but for a calculated strategic reason, the cold logic that told him it would drive the real Zakalwe to suicide and allow his forces to breakout. There's a lot of continuity with that and what the Culture asks him to do periodically, and clearly it becomes important that this subsequent ruthlessness have some greater justification, murder in the service of a higher politics rather than just petty ambition. It makes a fair deal of sense. The problem is, how does someone cold-blooded enough to be the Chairmaker and send the result to one's cousin then be so filled with remorse, self-loathing and an effort to block out the whole event? What, in essence, drove him to seek redemption after being such a monster? The whole picture isn't psychologically impossible, but it needs a bit more context, a clear indication of when and why Zakalwe came to see his action as unjustifiable. Did he know it before making the chair but was so focused on victory he didn't care? Was it after he'd lost the battle and realized he'd been so grotesque for nothing? Years after the fact he came to obsess about it more and more? It makes a great deal of difference, and is the pivotal moment of the character's life, but Banks leaves that obscured. To make for the more powerful force of the plot, naturally, but this does make the psychology a bit more dubious.
-On a thematic level, of course, it plays well with the Culture, the question of their own involvement with sordid violence and betrayal in the greater good. I'd say that this story more than the previous one's resists a simplistic stance on the issue. There seem reasonable things at stake for everything the Culture does, they are working to good intents and with generally good results. The story doesn't deliver a message that they should stay uninvolved, keep their hands clean and allow others to suffer/die at a remove. Yet, it's not exactly a full endorsement of Special Circumstances. It's not just the gap between immoral acts and the eventual supposed benefit, in some ways Banks again cheats by having the Minds and statistical record come down in favor of the success rates. It's the mindset that's behind SC, the same presumption as Zakalwe--use of weapons, and everything is a weapon. No limits set a ruthless amoral mentality. I talked with Player of Games about how alarming and self-contained SC seemed, and here that comes in force even more. Not just because they do ugly things but because to be effective they are clearly adopting the same amoral utilitarian view that makes Zakalwe so useful to them.
-On a more direct level, there's also the question of how much Special Circumstances knew about Zakalwe's past. We can take it as a given that Sma and proably the drone were ignorant, but can we vouch the same for others? The Minds? At the end it didn't take the Xenophobe long at all to dig up the records and show that the actual Zakalwe had died. Given that, I don't see a way in which they aren't complicit in his past, and in giving him power after the fact. Either the organization knew, at some level, what he'd done and chose to employ him regardless, or they didn't care to look very hard in the past of their mercenaries. Both are highly dubious.
-As well, I have to say that I found Skaffen-Amtiskaw a much creepier character ultimately, even with the revelation on the chairmaker. Mostly just the way it's slaughter of the medeival troops was set up, how complete its physical power over them was, and the way it took pleasure in ripping them apart. It reminded me a lot of a scene in Richard Morgan's Market Forces, where two (basically) mercenaries head out for some hard drinking on the town. They encounter some people trying to jack their car, one guy shoots and kills them all, including one after he tried to surrender. The man justified it with extended self-defense and them only being criminal scum anyway, but it's clear in retrospect that he went into the zones to provoke a threat, so he could respond with disproportionate force. Reminds me a lot of Skaffen-Amtiskaw, the way it waited until there was an order for defense and then struck back sadistically, knife missile against people with swords. Given that incident Skaffen-Amtiskaw appears consistently shady, and some moments like it caefully looking after Sma and removing her shoes just come across as creepy. This really does raise a question on what kind of people seek out SC. Altruists genuinely seeking to do good, certainly. But as well if there are direct sociopaths in the Culture, they would also have an appeal for this kind of sphere. That Skaffen-Amtiskaw was able to get in through their apparently rigorous selection processes is somewhat alarming.
-When exactly do the two "prologues" take place, the one at the opening and close? It makes a fair difference in interpreting the Zakalwe's journey.
-The setting here is a lot less developed than with Player of Games. There are some interesting details but on the whole it's little more than window-dressing for the moral questions involved with interference or non-involvement.
-It's a testament to how good Banks is as a writer that he can make the crucial plot tension come with effectively an anticlimax. Zakalwe is told to leave the Hegemonarchy that he's been working to build up, ensuring they will lose the war. He struggles for a bit but goes along with it, trusting in the longer-term process that may deliver a greater good. This is anticlimatic not just because things don't happen--his key decision is not calling down an a strike with the starship--but because it's also him failing to assert independence, choosing to be obedient to the dictates of Special Circumstances, confirming himself as a weapon to be used by others for the long-term benefit. It's one of the defining moments for Zakalwe in his effort to be an effective servant of a greater end and so gain some escape from himself and redemption for his acts. And then we find out there there really can't be redemption, that his sins were so bad he'll never be able to forgive himself and will certainly never be forgiven by those that also saw the chair. Makes for a good moment.
-One of the ways the Culture appears more dubious here is that the long-term ends are a bit nebulous. Preventing an apocalyptic war is clearly a good thing, but all SC people approach this as just another mission, the type of catastrophe that will always be happening or not happening somewhere. Important, but not crucial, so in ways the gain from the mission seem less real than the means used to attain it. Perhaps that was always going to be the case with means and ends, but it seems stronger here. Did like the debate over environmentalism that eventually was shown as about altering a gas giant.
-Beychae offers one of the stronger critiques of the Culture's interference. To my knowledge, it's also one of the only ones in the series where a member of the species being interfered with provides an effective objection. Unlike Horza he doesn't presume the Culture is unrelenting and too machine-ey in their actions, instead he sees them as being a bit willfully blind, assuming that their specific standard needs to be applied. Particularly strong is his comment that the Culture "can sometimes appear to be insistent that deliberate intermixing is not just permissible but desirable; almost a duty." Here's one of the more delicious ironies of the whole venture--the Culture is about tolerance and diversity, but in part they're also about stifling that by pushing others to be more tolerant and diverse. It's an inherent paradox--is it really more moral to stand by and let preventable violence occur?--and in the end Beychae does agree that in this case he can no longer be passive, he should work to stop the Humanists. I'd say the point is sustained, though, in the way that the Culture is simultaneously one of the most and least tolerant societies imaginable. At a certain point it's something that has to be dealt with in most interactions, unless one takes state sovereignty as a complete moral absolute which I don't. But the point is worth taking that here a thoughtful, fairly progressive man whose had extended dealings with the Culture's methods speculates that they may be overly simplistic in their assumption of what's better. Pragmatic as the Culture is it does tend to go for some unified constants--basic morality across species, relative hedonist constants, a general progressive narrative of history that leads societies towards a general path. Which is problematic in a number of easily imagined ways, most directly the whole idea of aliens. Maybe it's not just an aesthetic failure on Banks' part that makes most of his alien societies very humanoid, and the non-humanoid ones relatively simplistic. Arguably it's a format necessary for some of the basic assumptions to hold up. Certainly the fact that the main society in Use of Weapons are basically the same as Earth humans is necessary for the basic concept to work as it does.
-Here's the first demonstration of an alternative Special Circumstances operation, a group that agrees in modifying other societies but does so differently than the mainstream Culture would. (Other actions of this type feature in Inversions and, to an extent, in Excession) Specifically with what Zakalwe was doing early on, giving extended life to Ethnarchs in exchange for good behavior and then taking some of that life away. The conclusion here is that Zakalwe's interference was ill considered, very likely to blow up in everyone's faces, and didn't consider obvious things Culture children learned in childhood. To an extent this is obviously a patronizing and somewhat hypocritical attitude, but I'd agree that with this type of substantive meddling in other societies it's probably better not to have one lone renegade with a redemption complex pulling it off. If there's a community, a network, there can be dialog, discussion, some restraint on the crazier ideas. Plus with Zakalwe there's the basic idea why it's not good to give him much unsupervised power. If there is to be top-down restructuring, better to have it as a coherent entity like Special Circumstances rather than an amateur. I'm not sure SC is in itself the best entity for this role, however, and the attitude of exclusion and single-group domination of this process is fairly troubling. See again the whole process of hiring Zakalwe in the first place.
Similar to and better than: Richard Morgan's Woken Furies
Similar to and worse than: Iain M. Banks' Look to Windward
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Culture reread II: The Player of Games
-After reading it the first time my view was that it was very strong, best of the Culture series in terms of plot, stand-out scenes, themes and setting. Reading it a second time, I'm still impressed. Overall this is a very strong, very well-constructed piece, and shows enormous improvement from Consider Phlebas. The prose is top-notch for one thing, it's always competent and frequently very nicely written. There's a lot more humor and little side moments, while the grotesque and tragic sequences also come across more effectively. There's not the proliferation of unnecessary incidents, characterization is a lot better constructed, and the main theme of Culture or anti-Culture emerges with a lot more nuance.
-The plot has the premise of getting a unique person to a designated location so he can do his unique thing. Step three: profit! To this extent it's similar in layout to Consider Phlebas, and the 'present narrative' for Use of Weapons. What makes it interesting and much more satisfying than Consider Phlebas is how the real meaning of the story emerges slowly. Gurgeh is the central character but he's a pawn, not the leading player, until after the fact the final antagonist knows more of what's going on than he does. The machines around him know everything, but pose as less informed. The drone and Za seem like borderline incompetent instead of hardened professionals, and so forth. Reading through this again, I was pleased to find the big twist holds up pretty well. It's reasonable that the masquerade could unfold as it did, there's a clear coherence behind it, and while it's clever it's not so elaborate as to be unbelievable or just absurd. I'm perhaps most struck by the irony of Flere-Imsaho endlessly complaining to Gurgeh about having to put on the idiot bulky drone costume to under-represent itself to Azad, while it is in fact an active SC drone, Mawhrin-Skel, and later on openly threatens the Emperor. It's a guise that's really about fooling Gurgeh, and it works both to drive real tension into the plot and undercut much of Gurgeh's ego.
-The story has a slow first third, naturally. Just watching some talented guy play games and get slowly caught up in the mission to Azad. Much of the pleasure in this the first time was seeing what daily life in the Culture was like, how this kind of high-tech, low-stokes, pro-hedonist lifestyle played out. That was replicated this time, although I had a lot more criticism of Banks' societal model.
-I haven't seen much published critical analysis of Banks' work, for the most part "the scholarship of science fiction" focuses more on Dick or Gibson. One piece I did encounter, though, almost a year ago was Sherryl Vint's Bodies of Tomorrow, which had a chapter on the Culture. She was critical of it as an idealization of liberal humanism, showing a type of absolute embodiment of freedom, autonomy of the self and nonharmful hierarchy. In particular, she pointed out some issues with the politics of the body, the way it promises great diversity of bodies, but reinscribes a form of normality.
My rereading in part had this in mind, and there are ways that the life of the Culture seemed overly restrained, overly conventional. Mostly human in appearance, frequently switching between sexes, but with these taken as binaries that are shifted from. Glanding for different types of drugs, lots of sex and petty gossip related to that, flourishing of artistic forms and hobbies. There are enormously fun and interesting things in here, but as a view of how immortals would live their lives it feels a bit lacking. At points I'd imagine it's more like the society that Banks would like to hang with than an extrapolation for a polity really functioning, in terms of what people would really develop to. I think it should be more alien, more different in terms of what's physically the norm, how people think, what they spend their time on. Certainly portraying the Culture as the rare utopia that's not just an extension of current ideologies, and that would actually be fun to live in, is a worthy project. I think it could have been shown as a safe, benign place without being quite so familiar. On the human end of things, I'd say the drones and Minds come across a lot better. I'm also aware of--in a later book, I believe--there's mention of Cultureites spiralling through different fads of bodies, in some cases being wildly different. The series just happens to be set in an era where the social custom is towards much more conventional things. Right. That's a bit unsatisfying creatively, in similar reasons as the whole question of why Banks populated his cosmos with so many humanoids. I'd say Greg Egan is a lot better at imagining the strange forms a group of immortal transhumans would get up to, from the maniac effort to prevent boredom in Permutation City to unconventional mental forms in Disapora. In 'Player' past a certain point the Culture doesn't seem that innovative a social construct for Banks to have imagined.
-Anyway, even if Banks' portrayal here is a bit drab, bringing up this sort of question is a major accomplishment. What also keeps a good sense of momentum and interest going is Gurgeh. I see him as a very interesting figure, a specialist dissatisfied from his specialty, sort of dancing around his own boredom with existence. "I have no beliefs" he says at one point, and means it, because in many ways he's normalized the Culture's conditions as the way things are. He appears at first as relatively decadent and amoral--his willingness to cheat to gain enduring fame, his using of slight power to taunt an enthusiastic fan also standing out this time--but he is in fact shown to have a strong ethical grounding. If he's no better than the fact that he was born into the Culture, that does give him certain values and norms that are better than the Empire--or modern day people. Although it's not entirely an advantage. I was somewhat troubled by his reflective judgement of Azad on first hearing of them as barbarians--this before he knew anything about their politics or ethical transgressions. Just because they're a distant, unknown and less technologically advanced society, they're judged as basically inferior. One of the stronger moments of imperial psychology in the Culture, most of the more extended descriptions attempt to downplay that.
-He becomes a more intriguing figure though after encountering Azad. Partly because of this own initial fascination with the society. The conviction that the drone is characterizing too harshly, a fetishistic fascination with the uniforms, a vague admiration of Azad's discipline in contrast to the Culture's irregularity. An appreciation of their strength. All rather fascist, really.
-One of the really interesting things about the late saga is Gurgeh's own ambivalent relation to events. He clearly becomes a lot more intense and ruthless after Flere-Imsaho shows him the darker side of Azadian life, and it remains an open question how much of that is his repugnance over their exploitation and how much him taking on characteristics of the society. Clearly he's appalled by the sociopathic elements in Azad and wants to strike against them, but in so doing he's taking on elements of a predatory, competitive, ruthless atmosphere. Certainly by the end of the story he's quite burned out, whether that's because of his own actions, those he saw, the things Azad did, the things SC did, is left pleasantly ambiguous.
-Nicosar is an interesting figure. First time through I just really noticed him with the final game, here I was more alert of his appearances throughout. Shows a sense of humor about his position, very intelligent, put in an impossible position. Still not sympathetic, though.
-In a slightly irreverent note, I wonder if there's much written slash fanfiction on Nicosar/Gurgeh. There's that direct talk about them being through the game closer than lovers, plus the whole "Don't lie to me."/"Nicosar, I would never lie to you." Why should the Doctor/Master Foeyay be the only British SF that gets all the attention? More generally, I wonder if there's a deliberate point here. Didn't someone mention early in the novel mention that Gurgeh (atypically) hadn't switched into female bodies ever, or taken a male lover. And there is that odd moment where at his departure party he sees ten of his former lovers, and wonders if it's significant than six of them have gone over to male form for an extended period. For the most part Gurgeh's sexuality here is characterized negatively--his refusal to accept the sadistic decadence of the court or even be attracted to it--but in this case there seems some deliberate subtext, particularly as Nicosar refers to Gurgeh's Culture-writ-boardgame as seduction and pornography.
-The effector-type gear on the ceiling, "could be Homomda stuff". What is it with the Homodans and showing up for side tangents in the last forty pages of the novel? I'm not really sure this is necessary. On the one hand it could be part of a gradual setup for real competition to the Culture, building a lose arc of introduction. On the other hand I'm not sure if a Cultureverse Black Council is really necessary or desirable, and it seems to undermine the core narrative here a little. The eventual revelation shows everything to be carefully controlled by the SC, a tribute to the foresight of the Minds. Except for the very end, where some advanced tech by an unknown and not previously indicated group in the story makes things actually come down to the wire. I think it would have been a stronger piece if it didn't have this element.
-For the Empire of Azad itself, it was pretty well depicted. A blend of socio-political elements, good that it's not just the extenuation of any one political problem. I was a bit less awed by the unfolding of the society this time than initially, but it certainly holds up the story as an extended challenge for the Culture. I think it might have worked to make them be a little less overtly nasty, the whole level three of channel, plus having a band play on Azadian skin. Seems a little theatriaclly grotesque. There's no question that Banks pulls off those kinds of details effectively, but it seems a little unsubtle in the end.
-The overall work is strong, but there are two standout scenes. The first runs from where Gurgeh is shown the real Azad, beyond the tourist view, and then runs up through his new ruthless game ending in the gelding of the judge. The second is the whole last game against, running through the final reign of violence. The final game between Gurgeh and Nicosar is brilliant conceptually and how it plays out for real drama--with the game actually modeling the contrasting political ideologies of Azad and the Culture. It's a pity that this doesn't really make any sense. The game logic of Azad should be very much tied to its elevation of hierarchy and ruthlessness. This is the game that keeps the empire together, after all, and connects to power on many levels. Given that, it seems unlikely that their game would just happen to have a pattern where non-hierarchy, non-slavery would prove the superior form. It's a nice scene and a necessary conceit for Banks to dramatize the Culture winning not just from better tech, but the premise doesn't really hold together.
-In the initial briefing on Azad, the drone mentions that Azad's society was at least as complex as the Culture's, and that "It is pure chance that we've met them when their civilization looks primitive to us: one less ice age on Ea and it could conceivably have been the other way round." I've always thought that would make a much better setup for an OCP against the Culture than the one we got in Excession.
-Another thing I liked a great deal about the first third, and that carried even stronger through the rest, was the way Banks undermines the Culture's stance as a functional utopia. Generally I see the discussion about narrative ambiguity with the Culture relating to a general screwup in Look to Windward, the conspiracy in Excession, or the uncertainty over whether the Culture was justified in the Idiran War in Consider Phlebas. For my money, though, The Player of Games features the more ambiguous stance towards norms in the Culture. Not because I think there's any real ambiguity with the interferrance with Azad, but because of how they operate with respect to their own members. For all the apparent openness and porous borders of the Culture, they definitely undermine themselves in regards to implementing their benevolent stance across the galaxy.
-The issue of course is Special Circumstances, the state within the state for effecting change. There are some basic questions that come up here in a way they didn't in Consider Phlebas--such as where precisely does this group come from and how does it operate? They're clearly restrictive in who they admit, but what keeps them as the only designated group for changing things? What happens if other groups form? How is SC actually organized, how does what's clearly a lot more disciplined than the norm (and more tightly organized than they appear) function?
-Even more disturbing is the mention in the first briefing on Azad that SC has known of the Empire for seventy three years, and keeps it secret because if the case were generally known it would cause an outcry, and force a direct intervention that would be problematic in the long-term. Of course this given rationale could be a ruse to keep Gurgeh feeling all special, but the fact of Azad being secret clearly isn't a lie, and the reasoning for not telling others generally checks out.
Well, so much for the Culture being any kind of democracy. This isn't in the common claim of Minds just keeping biologicals around as pets, it's in SC with Minds and more conventional intelligences keeping the wider populace in ignorance for the interests of following their own directed policy. One thing I've always seen as significant for the Culture stance was that there was a referendum on the Idiran War, the majority supported intervention, a minority that was opposed disengaged with the Culture. Here there's no referendum, a blanket of silence, and notification at most long after the fact.
-It's emphasized that keeping Azad secret is something of a unique case, made possible by the stellar positions of everything. Still, this does serve as a graphic demonstration of some problematic things with Special Circumstances--a self-selected elite, their activities crucial for the Culture to be at ease with itself but carried out basically unchecked. And not always successfully. I'll have to see if the setup in Look to Windward makes the Chelgrian screwup a reasonable mistake or not, if it wasn't that undermines a lot of their ethical sanction. And the issue is especially dodgy because it's not just outsiders being manipulated, but Gurgeh himself. This suggests that, when the need is recognized as great, they don't put restraints or firm principles on themselves.
-Gurgeh speculates near the end that his whole life might have been shaped to deliver the perfect candidate. Flere-Imsaho shoots this down flat, mentioning the need still to use outside mercenaries for the "really dirty work". And then it mentions Za, and a few other minor revelations, in what looks a bit like distraction. Besides, the counter-point doesn't really make sense as a rebutal: it's clear from the explanation that the strategy for undermining Azad needed a Culture player, someone who would share Culture assumptions and outlook. Even if they had a mercenary skilled enough in game-playing rather than the usual rough and tumble, it probably wouldn't work in the same way. For a scheme as intimately involved as this, isn't it possible SC had influence long before the start of the novel? Given we know that the drone doesn't share all the factors, such as being Mawhrin-Skel, this has to remain a really suspect issue. This is, then, a novel about a utopian society triumphing over a dystopian one through secrecy, fraud, blackmail and effective coercion, even while its ostensibly a standout of ideals and the benefits of non-coercion. I find that interesting. More to the point, it more than suggests that the Culture tarnishes itself substantially through becoming involved in changing the universe in this way.
-That last element is prominent in the first hundred pages. On my first reading I was most struck by the scene where Mawhrin-Skel paralyzes Gurgeh as a demonstration of power. This time through, I found that general atmosphere put across the story. There's the unrestrained, carefree Culture here, but right alongside with a clear state in SC, with the subject of military grade encryption, blackmail and levels of secrecy intruding. All while they're representing this as just a free offer to study a new game and have some small impact on Azad.
-Also, there's an interesting note on the language Marain, p. 319-320. Specifically it being designed by Minds to be "phonetically and philosophically as expressive as the pan-human speech apparatus and the pan-human brain would allow", still ranked highly as an accomplishment. And, of course, it's part of how the Culture enables its own society. The intent is one presumes to allow autonomy and diversity--but a Mind also draws a comparison to Flere-Imsaho between Marain and Azad (the game). That's more than a bit creepy, and suggests an interesting level of ambiguity to the whole comparison.
-At one point Flere-Imsaho uses its effectors to monitor Gurgeh's brainwaves, seeing that even his apparent sleep wasn't actually sleep, but some type of controlled lucid dreaming. Now, granted this isn't to the level of reading or modifying his thoughts, but it's surprising to see this incident, it seems a lot more intrusive than the general Culture ethic permits. Which of course raises questions on how thoroughly such are actually enforced.
Similar to and better than: Iain Banks' Look to Windward
Similar to and worse than: Greg Egan's Diaspora
-The plot has the premise of getting a unique person to a designated location so he can do his unique thing. Step three: profit! To this extent it's similar in layout to Consider Phlebas, and the 'present narrative' for Use of Weapons. What makes it interesting and much more satisfying than Consider Phlebas is how the real meaning of the story emerges slowly. Gurgeh is the central character but he's a pawn, not the leading player, until after the fact the final antagonist knows more of what's going on than he does. The machines around him know everything, but pose as less informed. The drone and Za seem like borderline incompetent instead of hardened professionals, and so forth. Reading through this again, I was pleased to find the big twist holds up pretty well. It's reasonable that the masquerade could unfold as it did, there's a clear coherence behind it, and while it's clever it's not so elaborate as to be unbelievable or just absurd. I'm perhaps most struck by the irony of Flere-Imsaho endlessly complaining to Gurgeh about having to put on the idiot bulky drone costume to under-represent itself to Azad, while it is in fact an active SC drone, Mawhrin-Skel, and later on openly threatens the Emperor. It's a guise that's really about fooling Gurgeh, and it works both to drive real tension into the plot and undercut much of Gurgeh's ego.
-The story has a slow first third, naturally. Just watching some talented guy play games and get slowly caught up in the mission to Azad. Much of the pleasure in this the first time was seeing what daily life in the Culture was like, how this kind of high-tech, low-stokes, pro-hedonist lifestyle played out. That was replicated this time, although I had a lot more criticism of Banks' societal model.
-I haven't seen much published critical analysis of Banks' work, for the most part "the scholarship of science fiction" focuses more on Dick or Gibson. One piece I did encounter, though, almost a year ago was Sherryl Vint's Bodies of Tomorrow, which had a chapter on the Culture. She was critical of it as an idealization of liberal humanism, showing a type of absolute embodiment of freedom, autonomy of the self and nonharmful hierarchy. In particular, she pointed out some issues with the politics of the body, the way it promises great diversity of bodies, but reinscribes a form of normality.
My rereading in part had this in mind, and there are ways that the life of the Culture seemed overly restrained, overly conventional. Mostly human in appearance, frequently switching between sexes, but with these taken as binaries that are shifted from. Glanding for different types of drugs, lots of sex and petty gossip related to that, flourishing of artistic forms and hobbies. There are enormously fun and interesting things in here, but as a view of how immortals would live their lives it feels a bit lacking. At points I'd imagine it's more like the society that Banks would like to hang with than an extrapolation for a polity really functioning, in terms of what people would really develop to. I think it should be more alien, more different in terms of what's physically the norm, how people think, what they spend their time on. Certainly portraying the Culture as the rare utopia that's not just an extension of current ideologies, and that would actually be fun to live in, is a worthy project. I think it could have been shown as a safe, benign place without being quite so familiar. On the human end of things, I'd say the drones and Minds come across a lot better. I'm also aware of--in a later book, I believe--there's mention of Cultureites spiralling through different fads of bodies, in some cases being wildly different. The series just happens to be set in an era where the social custom is towards much more conventional things. Right. That's a bit unsatisfying creatively, in similar reasons as the whole question of why Banks populated his cosmos with so many humanoids. I'd say Greg Egan is a lot better at imagining the strange forms a group of immortal transhumans would get up to, from the maniac effort to prevent boredom in Permutation City to unconventional mental forms in Disapora. In 'Player' past a certain point the Culture doesn't seem that innovative a social construct for Banks to have imagined.
-Anyway, even if Banks' portrayal here is a bit drab, bringing up this sort of question is a major accomplishment. What also keeps a good sense of momentum and interest going is Gurgeh. I see him as a very interesting figure, a specialist dissatisfied from his specialty, sort of dancing around his own boredom with existence. "I have no beliefs" he says at one point, and means it, because in many ways he's normalized the Culture's conditions as the way things are. He appears at first as relatively decadent and amoral--his willingness to cheat to gain enduring fame, his using of slight power to taunt an enthusiastic fan also standing out this time--but he is in fact shown to have a strong ethical grounding. If he's no better than the fact that he was born into the Culture, that does give him certain values and norms that are better than the Empire--or modern day people. Although it's not entirely an advantage. I was somewhat troubled by his reflective judgement of Azad on first hearing of them as barbarians--this before he knew anything about their politics or ethical transgressions. Just because they're a distant, unknown and less technologically advanced society, they're judged as basically inferior. One of the stronger moments of imperial psychology in the Culture, most of the more extended descriptions attempt to downplay that.
-He becomes a more intriguing figure though after encountering Azad. Partly because of this own initial fascination with the society. The conviction that the drone is characterizing too harshly, a fetishistic fascination with the uniforms, a vague admiration of Azad's discipline in contrast to the Culture's irregularity. An appreciation of their strength. All rather fascist, really.
-One of the really interesting things about the late saga is Gurgeh's own ambivalent relation to events. He clearly becomes a lot more intense and ruthless after Flere-Imsaho shows him the darker side of Azadian life, and it remains an open question how much of that is his repugnance over their exploitation and how much him taking on characteristics of the society. Clearly he's appalled by the sociopathic elements in Azad and wants to strike against them, but in so doing he's taking on elements of a predatory, competitive, ruthless atmosphere. Certainly by the end of the story he's quite burned out, whether that's because of his own actions, those he saw, the things Azad did, the things SC did, is left pleasantly ambiguous.
-Nicosar is an interesting figure. First time through I just really noticed him with the final game, here I was more alert of his appearances throughout. Shows a sense of humor about his position, very intelligent, put in an impossible position. Still not sympathetic, though.
-In a slightly irreverent note, I wonder if there's much written slash fanfiction on Nicosar/Gurgeh. There's that direct talk about them being through the game closer than lovers, plus the whole "Don't lie to me."/"Nicosar, I would never lie to you." Why should the Doctor/Master Foeyay be the only British SF that gets all the attention? More generally, I wonder if there's a deliberate point here. Didn't someone mention early in the novel mention that Gurgeh (atypically) hadn't switched into female bodies ever, or taken a male lover. And there is that odd moment where at his departure party he sees ten of his former lovers, and wonders if it's significant than six of them have gone over to male form for an extended period. For the most part Gurgeh's sexuality here is characterized negatively--his refusal to accept the sadistic decadence of the court or even be attracted to it--but in this case there seems some deliberate subtext, particularly as Nicosar refers to Gurgeh's Culture-writ-boardgame as seduction and pornography.
-The effector-type gear on the ceiling, "could be Homomda stuff". What is it with the Homodans and showing up for side tangents in the last forty pages of the novel? I'm not really sure this is necessary. On the one hand it could be part of a gradual setup for real competition to the Culture, building a lose arc of introduction. On the other hand I'm not sure if a Cultureverse Black Council is really necessary or desirable, and it seems to undermine the core narrative here a little. The eventual revelation shows everything to be carefully controlled by the SC, a tribute to the foresight of the Minds. Except for the very end, where some advanced tech by an unknown and not previously indicated group in the story makes things actually come down to the wire. I think it would have been a stronger piece if it didn't have this element.
-For the Empire of Azad itself, it was pretty well depicted. A blend of socio-political elements, good that it's not just the extenuation of any one political problem. I was a bit less awed by the unfolding of the society this time than initially, but it certainly holds up the story as an extended challenge for the Culture. I think it might have worked to make them be a little less overtly nasty, the whole level three of channel, plus having a band play on Azadian skin. Seems a little theatriaclly grotesque. There's no question that Banks pulls off those kinds of details effectively, but it seems a little unsubtle in the end.
-The overall work is strong, but there are two standout scenes. The first runs from where Gurgeh is shown the real Azad, beyond the tourist view, and then runs up through his new ruthless game ending in the gelding of the judge. The second is the whole last game against, running through the final reign of violence. The final game between Gurgeh and Nicosar is brilliant conceptually and how it plays out for real drama--with the game actually modeling the contrasting political ideologies of Azad and the Culture. It's a pity that this doesn't really make any sense. The game logic of Azad should be very much tied to its elevation of hierarchy and ruthlessness. This is the game that keeps the empire together, after all, and connects to power on many levels. Given that, it seems unlikely that their game would just happen to have a pattern where non-hierarchy, non-slavery would prove the superior form. It's a nice scene and a necessary conceit for Banks to dramatize the Culture winning not just from better tech, but the premise doesn't really hold together.
-In the initial briefing on Azad, the drone mentions that Azad's society was at least as complex as the Culture's, and that "It is pure chance that we've met them when their civilization looks primitive to us: one less ice age on Ea and it could conceivably have been the other way round." I've always thought that would make a much better setup for an OCP against the Culture than the one we got in Excession.
-Another thing I liked a great deal about the first third, and that carried even stronger through the rest, was the way Banks undermines the Culture's stance as a functional utopia. Generally I see the discussion about narrative ambiguity with the Culture relating to a general screwup in Look to Windward, the conspiracy in Excession, or the uncertainty over whether the Culture was justified in the Idiran War in Consider Phlebas. For my money, though, The Player of Games features the more ambiguous stance towards norms in the Culture. Not because I think there's any real ambiguity with the interferrance with Azad, but because of how they operate with respect to their own members. For all the apparent openness and porous borders of the Culture, they definitely undermine themselves in regards to implementing their benevolent stance across the galaxy.
-The issue of course is Special Circumstances, the state within the state for effecting change. There are some basic questions that come up here in a way they didn't in Consider Phlebas--such as where precisely does this group come from and how does it operate? They're clearly restrictive in who they admit, but what keeps them as the only designated group for changing things? What happens if other groups form? How is SC actually organized, how does what's clearly a lot more disciplined than the norm (and more tightly organized than they appear) function?
-Even more disturbing is the mention in the first briefing on Azad that SC has known of the Empire for seventy three years, and keeps it secret because if the case were generally known it would cause an outcry, and force a direct intervention that would be problematic in the long-term. Of course this given rationale could be a ruse to keep Gurgeh feeling all special, but the fact of Azad being secret clearly isn't a lie, and the reasoning for not telling others generally checks out.
Well, so much for the Culture being any kind of democracy. This isn't in the common claim of Minds just keeping biologicals around as pets, it's in SC with Minds and more conventional intelligences keeping the wider populace in ignorance for the interests of following their own directed policy. One thing I've always seen as significant for the Culture stance was that there was a referendum on the Idiran War, the majority supported intervention, a minority that was opposed disengaged with the Culture. Here there's no referendum, a blanket of silence, and notification at most long after the fact.
-It's emphasized that keeping Azad secret is something of a unique case, made possible by the stellar positions of everything. Still, this does serve as a graphic demonstration of some problematic things with Special Circumstances--a self-selected elite, their activities crucial for the Culture to be at ease with itself but carried out basically unchecked. And not always successfully. I'll have to see if the setup in Look to Windward makes the Chelgrian screwup a reasonable mistake or not, if it wasn't that undermines a lot of their ethical sanction. And the issue is especially dodgy because it's not just outsiders being manipulated, but Gurgeh himself. This suggests that, when the need is recognized as great, they don't put restraints or firm principles on themselves.
-Gurgeh speculates near the end that his whole life might have been shaped to deliver the perfect candidate. Flere-Imsaho shoots this down flat, mentioning the need still to use outside mercenaries for the "really dirty work". And then it mentions Za, and a few other minor revelations, in what looks a bit like distraction. Besides, the counter-point doesn't really make sense as a rebutal: it's clear from the explanation that the strategy for undermining Azad needed a Culture player, someone who would share Culture assumptions and outlook. Even if they had a mercenary skilled enough in game-playing rather than the usual rough and tumble, it probably wouldn't work in the same way. For a scheme as intimately involved as this, isn't it possible SC had influence long before the start of the novel? Given we know that the drone doesn't share all the factors, such as being Mawhrin-Skel, this has to remain a really suspect issue. This is, then, a novel about a utopian society triumphing over a dystopian one through secrecy, fraud, blackmail and effective coercion, even while its ostensibly a standout of ideals and the benefits of non-coercion. I find that interesting. More to the point, it more than suggests that the Culture tarnishes itself substantially through becoming involved in changing the universe in this way.
-That last element is prominent in the first hundred pages. On my first reading I was most struck by the scene where Mawhrin-Skel paralyzes Gurgeh as a demonstration of power. This time through, I found that general atmosphere put across the story. There's the unrestrained, carefree Culture here, but right alongside with a clear state in SC, with the subject of military grade encryption, blackmail and levels of secrecy intruding. All while they're representing this as just a free offer to study a new game and have some small impact on Azad.
-Also, there's an interesting note on the language Marain, p. 319-320. Specifically it being designed by Minds to be "phonetically and philosophically as expressive as the pan-human speech apparatus and the pan-human brain would allow", still ranked highly as an accomplishment. And, of course, it's part of how the Culture enables its own society. The intent is one presumes to allow autonomy and diversity--but a Mind also draws a comparison to Flere-Imsaho between Marain and Azad (the game). That's more than a bit creepy, and suggests an interesting level of ambiguity to the whole comparison.
-At one point Flere-Imsaho uses its effectors to monitor Gurgeh's brainwaves, seeing that even his apparent sleep wasn't actually sleep, but some type of controlled lucid dreaming. Now, granted this isn't to the level of reading or modifying his thoughts, but it's surprising to see this incident, it seems a lot more intrusive than the general Culture ethic permits. Which of course raises questions on how thoroughly such are actually enforced.
Similar to and better than: Iain Banks' Look to Windward
Similar to and worse than: Greg Egan's Diaspora
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Culture reread I: Consider Phlebas
So, I have copies of all of Iain M. Banks Culture series on my shelf, but have yet to read any of these more than the original, in scattered form over the past three years. I've decided to remedy this and reread them all back to back, in order of publication. Partly to pick up connections between the works I might not otherwise notice, partly to immerse myself in the universe a bit, partly to compare quality. In this last element in particular I want to see if my general reaction to Banks as a writer in decline holds up. Have I just gotten burned out from the same general things done consistently? Is the latter work--in particular Matter--better than it struck me on the first pass? In contrast, was I too enthusiastic for the earlier series the first time, and all together it's really not as great as I thought it was? Plus, how does the Culture itself as a civilization emerge, what little details and ambiguities?
To begin with Consider Phlebas.
-The general consensus I've seen from Culture readers is that it's a weaker work, often listed as the least favorite of the series. I've long felt this was overly critical, that the novel did a unique story well, and that it can fully stand up as one of the better in the series. After rereading it, I'd say I was wrong. It's not a bad book by any means, and has enough overall creativity and energy to validate the whole Culture reread project, but it's clumsy in some definite ways. It stands pretty clearly as a first SF novel.
-There's the awkward prose, for one thing. Not at all the graceful writing Banks showed in his later works (and then lost again with Excession and Matter) some fairly clumsy descriptions. Plus weakly integration info-dumping for the background. Presumably I'm a lot more critical of it now that I know the technology, the politics and much of the background info on the universe, but there are still passages that stand out as particularly clumsy.
-An even more pressing weakness is Horza, this reading he doesn't come across as nearly enough of a well-rounded character to hang the story on. There are interesting elements and details that he articulates, but much of the time he's overly flat, and lacks the kind of appealing minor details that would make him intriguing, if still not sympathetic.
-A significant part of the fun with Horza is that he's a case of Wrong Genre Savy. In a lot of space opera universes, his paranoia over unchecked all consuming AI would be entirely correct, and he'd be the ruthless antihero with the right idea on where true danger lay. Here, he's entirely wrong-headed in everything he does. He reminds me a lot of the New Republic from Stross' Singularity Sky--another force that would fit well in old-school space opera, but are obsolete, unethical and ineffective in the framework of Banks' future. Still, as I suggested above the problem is that Horza is too stock in this, he's a stand-in for groups in-universe and meta that fear the Culture, but there's little personal indication of why he became convinced of that, or how his life plays out beyond this obsession (and some rather generic background on romance and exile). Compared to Gurgeh or Zalkawe he's just not that interesting to spend a lot of time with, and for a novel this episodic the weak characterization is a major problem. Additionally, it doesn't help that in this work the fact that the Culture isn't in the wrong comes about too directly. The wider series provides good demonstration of how Minds can be intellectually transcendent to humans without being a threat to them, and how the Culture's sort of altruistic imperialism can actually function effectively. In Consider Phlebas, we're given assurances that stastically it all balances out, that the Culture is actually beneficial. Minds remain quite remote, the baby Mind that sets off the plot remains literally and in plot terms motionless, and the look at its consciousness highlight it's own intellectual capacity and current limitation more than giving an effective counter-demonstration of the Culture's benignity.
-At the same time, this reading some of the ironies of the work struck me as a little thin. Yes, there's a useful point that Horza's hatred of the Culture ignores how similar he is to them--fluid, no fixed identity, embracing ruthless means to fight against the long-term danger--but at the end this is made fairly obvious, and doesn't in the end add up to anything too profound. Yes, Horza has a lot in common with the enemy he fights, and resembles them a lot more then his allies. So? It's a stock characteristic of many war stories, and since the Changer situation is so atypical in-universe it doesn't seem like there's a deep thematic resonance from this particular situation.
-More could have been done with the Idirans, this read I was struck by how comparatively little they're used. The soldiers at the very end make for effective adversaries, but for the most part their history and politics are used as an angle to contrast with the Culture's nature. What we get of their background, biology and ideology is pretty flat, and they're completely off-screen for the majority of the work. As a plot force they seem to be constantly in response to the Culture, and unlike latter groups like Azad, the Chelgrians and even the Affront, they don't feel like a well-developed part of the setting in their own right.
-Also pretty flat was most of the crew of the Clear Air Turbulance, apart from Yalson and Kraiklyn they were basically just redshirts on a path to oblivion, an assmebly of vaguely cyberpunk not very competent mercenaries. The one guy whose whole shtick was carrying a nuke was probably the weakest in this regard, but the failure to establish distinguishing personalities made sections of the novel drag. This reminds me of, but compares unfavorably to, incidents in any given Richard Morgan novel, where an array of violent mercenaries generally less effective than the protagonist do feel a lot more distinguishable and alive.
-On a brighter note, the escape of the Clear Air Turbulence from the Orbital was one of the funnest things in the series. Just how crazy the movement gets, and that no one except Horza has any idea what's going on. Hardly a deep moment or significant insight, but pretty engaging.
-In contrast, the raid on the Temple of Light and the incident where Horza gets separated dragged. Somehow I never felt in the moment for them, which just made me sit back and notice things like how little they served the plot, both setting up basically pointless interludes.
-On that, the chapter with the Eaters was in fact quite pointless. The incident is the epitome of the whole creativity for creativity's sake in this novel. The whole interlude with the cannibals was grotesque, riveting in its fashion, but it could have been excised without damaging the novel and making a tighter narrative. Horza himself reflects that the encounter teaches him nothing, demonstrating only how perverse religion could get, which he already knew. It doesn't change him and doesn't really add anything to the wider setting.
-It didn't strike me the first time, but a lot of the middle section of the novel is reminiscent of Jack Vance. Not in the character intent or entirely the tone, but a lot of the things Gurgeh does before linking up with Kraiklyn again feel like a Vance protagonist--following an exotic galaxy-ranging game, bumping into various signifiers of decadence, pretending to be security to follow his target, threatening an on-site reporter to move forward, and so forth.
-These chapters also show off some of the strength in weird creativity and making for a rich setting. In strict plot terms the Damage-focused section goes on a lot longer then it needs to, but it's an interesting enough concept that I didn't mind. Shades of Douglas Adams in the whole concept of a game at the end of the world and some of the random details, though with a much grimmer tone.
-This does seem weakened a bit by how conventional the milieu is in some ways, however. The emphasis on humans or basically human-looking things as the norm seems an odd loss of vision on Banks' part--it doesn't fit an attempt at real extrapolation that most of the surrounding life would look so much like us, either naturally or choosing to remold itself in that form. Plus, given the whole point of the Culture is supposed to be porous borders, embracing a wide variety of physical types, the relative conventionality so often on display is puzzling. In particular it's a bit too convenient that the biologically strange three-legged aliens are the remorseless adversary at this point. I'm not necessarily expecting Banks-level physical strangeness with the aliens but this element is a bit of a letdown.
-The short segments set from that SC analyst in the Culture should definitely have been cut from the novel. It's a stretch that the individual would be focusing so single-mindedly on the Horza saga, and especially that she'd be angsting over it so much. The notion of standard humanoids that can regularly match the Minds is mystifying and annoying in the same matter as Asimov's Foudnation's Edge ("The man who is always right") and seems a cheat to underwite the gap between Minds and norms.
-In a minor note I liked Kraiklyn's voice recording, and how awkward and unpolished it is, rather than the sleek overview of info that's customary. it emphasizes certain more natural elements of the characters, for all the grotesqueness.
-The drone Unaha-Closp is easily the most entertaining and effective character. Somewhat cheesy and obvious compared to later drones, but memorably different and coherent. I'd have liked a little more fleshing out on the norms for machine intelligences outside the Culture, but in terms of appeal what we got was about right here.
-On the topic of machine intelligences, what was up with that shuttle that rescued Horza from the Eaters? It certainly didn't seem to be top tier mentally, even compared with drones, explained through old construction. What's puzzling is that it said it had asked to be upgraded and the Culture refused. There are a few slightly troubling indicators of the use of machine hierarchy and restriction across the Culture series, but this one I haven't seen commented on previously. It appears at points that some elements might not have been greatly thought through effectively. Most criticism circulating on the Culture deals with 'but what if the Minds do turn evil after all?' but I think the more viable issue is how AI hierarchies operate. Certainly the Culture is the better alternative in giving real rights--better compared to other civilizations in-universe and compared with most other SF--but there are some ambiguities here I'll be interested in checking across the series. I recall some details about how warcraft Minds are made in Excession in particular, but I'll come to that later.
-Then there's the whole notion of the Sublimed, which for the only book feature as a major driving element of the plot (taking the Excession thing as somewhat different in tone). The whole idea of the Sublimed is probably the biggest weakness of the Cultureverse, a kind of vague mention of Elder Species power through meditation that seems awkwardly borrowed from Star Trek. It doesn't really work in a lot of ways, part of which can be seen in this novel--the Darzon creature/group just act as a powerful, arbitrary and unexplained issue to drive a specific standoff. There are some interesting ways it undermines the setting, but overall it's more problematic than useful.
-The novel ends on a high note, at least. The last fifty pages of the narrative are very good--building tension, then the ruthless tragedy of Horza's end. And of course the appendix to fill out the whole background of the Culture-Idiran war is fabulous. In particular I like the whole description of the Homoda's involvement--being a whole faction like Horza that fears the Culture more than they support the Idirans. It definitely helps flesh out the setting and make it more nuanced, rather than just two rival polities slugging it out. I'm also intrigued by the mention that the Homoda "were far from alone in having this feeling, though unique in acting on it overtly". That suggests a story worth seeing, at some point. Is it also possible that one or more of the other Involved feared the Culture enough to combat it subtly at this time? And could there be any connection between this and the group that sponsored the Chelgrian terrorism in Look to Windward? I'm also intrigued by the mention that some Idirans fled to Andromeda. More directly there's the major fact of this whole appendix being provided to Earth as part of a Contact-approved information packet as of 2110. Clearly the non-interference from State of the Art doesn't last forever.
-So overall a clumsy and seriously flawed narrative, but with some stand out points, an interesting theme and a lot of nice details. As well, a strong re-introduction to the setting, and finishing with a lot of strength. Looking forward to the next volume.
Similar to and better than: Jack Vance's Planet of Adventure
Similar to and worse than: Ursula K. Le Guin's The Dispossessed
To begin with Consider Phlebas.
-The general consensus I've seen from Culture readers is that it's a weaker work, often listed as the least favorite of the series. I've long felt this was overly critical, that the novel did a unique story well, and that it can fully stand up as one of the better in the series. After rereading it, I'd say I was wrong. It's not a bad book by any means, and has enough overall creativity and energy to validate the whole Culture reread project, but it's clumsy in some definite ways. It stands pretty clearly as a first SF novel.
-There's the awkward prose, for one thing. Not at all the graceful writing Banks showed in his later works (and then lost again with Excession and Matter) some fairly clumsy descriptions. Plus weakly integration info-dumping for the background. Presumably I'm a lot more critical of it now that I know the technology, the politics and much of the background info on the universe, but there are still passages that stand out as particularly clumsy.
-An even more pressing weakness is Horza, this reading he doesn't come across as nearly enough of a well-rounded character to hang the story on. There are interesting elements and details that he articulates, but much of the time he's overly flat, and lacks the kind of appealing minor details that would make him intriguing, if still not sympathetic.
-A significant part of the fun with Horza is that he's a case of Wrong Genre Savy. In a lot of space opera universes, his paranoia over unchecked all consuming AI would be entirely correct, and he'd be the ruthless antihero with the right idea on where true danger lay. Here, he's entirely wrong-headed in everything he does. He reminds me a lot of the New Republic from Stross' Singularity Sky--another force that would fit well in old-school space opera, but are obsolete, unethical and ineffective in the framework of Banks' future. Still, as I suggested above the problem is that Horza is too stock in this, he's a stand-in for groups in-universe and meta that fear the Culture, but there's little personal indication of why he became convinced of that, or how his life plays out beyond this obsession (and some rather generic background on romance and exile). Compared to Gurgeh or Zalkawe he's just not that interesting to spend a lot of time with, and for a novel this episodic the weak characterization is a major problem. Additionally, it doesn't help that in this work the fact that the Culture isn't in the wrong comes about too directly. The wider series provides good demonstration of how Minds can be intellectually transcendent to humans without being a threat to them, and how the Culture's sort of altruistic imperialism can actually function effectively. In Consider Phlebas, we're given assurances that stastically it all balances out, that the Culture is actually beneficial. Minds remain quite remote, the baby Mind that sets off the plot remains literally and in plot terms motionless, and the look at its consciousness highlight it's own intellectual capacity and current limitation more than giving an effective counter-demonstration of the Culture's benignity.
-At the same time, this reading some of the ironies of the work struck me as a little thin. Yes, there's a useful point that Horza's hatred of the Culture ignores how similar he is to them--fluid, no fixed identity, embracing ruthless means to fight against the long-term danger--but at the end this is made fairly obvious, and doesn't in the end add up to anything too profound. Yes, Horza has a lot in common with the enemy he fights, and resembles them a lot more then his allies. So? It's a stock characteristic of many war stories, and since the Changer situation is so atypical in-universe it doesn't seem like there's a deep thematic resonance from this particular situation.
-More could have been done with the Idirans, this read I was struck by how comparatively little they're used. The soldiers at the very end make for effective adversaries, but for the most part their history and politics are used as an angle to contrast with the Culture's nature. What we get of their background, biology and ideology is pretty flat, and they're completely off-screen for the majority of the work. As a plot force they seem to be constantly in response to the Culture, and unlike latter groups like Azad, the Chelgrians and even the Affront, they don't feel like a well-developed part of the setting in their own right.
-Also pretty flat was most of the crew of the Clear Air Turbulance, apart from Yalson and Kraiklyn they were basically just redshirts on a path to oblivion, an assmebly of vaguely cyberpunk not very competent mercenaries. The one guy whose whole shtick was carrying a nuke was probably the weakest in this regard, but the failure to establish distinguishing personalities made sections of the novel drag. This reminds me of, but compares unfavorably to, incidents in any given Richard Morgan novel, where an array of violent mercenaries generally less effective than the protagonist do feel a lot more distinguishable and alive.
-On a brighter note, the escape of the Clear Air Turbulence from the Orbital was one of the funnest things in the series. Just how crazy the movement gets, and that no one except Horza has any idea what's going on. Hardly a deep moment or significant insight, but pretty engaging.
-In contrast, the raid on the Temple of Light and the incident where Horza gets separated dragged. Somehow I never felt in the moment for them, which just made me sit back and notice things like how little they served the plot, both setting up basically pointless interludes.
-On that, the chapter with the Eaters was in fact quite pointless. The incident is the epitome of the whole creativity for creativity's sake in this novel. The whole interlude with the cannibals was grotesque, riveting in its fashion, but it could have been excised without damaging the novel and making a tighter narrative. Horza himself reflects that the encounter teaches him nothing, demonstrating only how perverse religion could get, which he already knew. It doesn't change him and doesn't really add anything to the wider setting.
-It didn't strike me the first time, but a lot of the middle section of the novel is reminiscent of Jack Vance. Not in the character intent or entirely the tone, but a lot of the things Gurgeh does before linking up with Kraiklyn again feel like a Vance protagonist--following an exotic galaxy-ranging game, bumping into various signifiers of decadence, pretending to be security to follow his target, threatening an on-site reporter to move forward, and so forth.
-These chapters also show off some of the strength in weird creativity and making for a rich setting. In strict plot terms the Damage-focused section goes on a lot longer then it needs to, but it's an interesting enough concept that I didn't mind. Shades of Douglas Adams in the whole concept of a game at the end of the world and some of the random details, though with a much grimmer tone.
-This does seem weakened a bit by how conventional the milieu is in some ways, however. The emphasis on humans or basically human-looking things as the norm seems an odd loss of vision on Banks' part--it doesn't fit an attempt at real extrapolation that most of the surrounding life would look so much like us, either naturally or choosing to remold itself in that form. Plus, given the whole point of the Culture is supposed to be porous borders, embracing a wide variety of physical types, the relative conventionality so often on display is puzzling. In particular it's a bit too convenient that the biologically strange three-legged aliens are the remorseless adversary at this point. I'm not necessarily expecting Banks-level physical strangeness with the aliens but this element is a bit of a letdown.
-The short segments set from that SC analyst in the Culture should definitely have been cut from the novel. It's a stretch that the individual would be focusing so single-mindedly on the Horza saga, and especially that she'd be angsting over it so much. The notion of standard humanoids that can regularly match the Minds is mystifying and annoying in the same matter as Asimov's Foudnation's Edge ("The man who is always right") and seems a cheat to underwite the gap between Minds and norms.
-In a minor note I liked Kraiklyn's voice recording, and how awkward and unpolished it is, rather than the sleek overview of info that's customary. it emphasizes certain more natural elements of the characters, for all the grotesqueness.
-The drone Unaha-Closp is easily the most entertaining and effective character. Somewhat cheesy and obvious compared to later drones, but memorably different and coherent. I'd have liked a little more fleshing out on the norms for machine intelligences outside the Culture, but in terms of appeal what we got was about right here.
-On the topic of machine intelligences, what was up with that shuttle that rescued Horza from the Eaters? It certainly didn't seem to be top tier mentally, even compared with drones, explained through old construction. What's puzzling is that it said it had asked to be upgraded and the Culture refused. There are a few slightly troubling indicators of the use of machine hierarchy and restriction across the Culture series, but this one I haven't seen commented on previously. It appears at points that some elements might not have been greatly thought through effectively. Most criticism circulating on the Culture deals with 'but what if the Minds do turn evil after all?' but I think the more viable issue is how AI hierarchies operate. Certainly the Culture is the better alternative in giving real rights--better compared to other civilizations in-universe and compared with most other SF--but there are some ambiguities here I'll be interested in checking across the series. I recall some details about how warcraft Minds are made in Excession in particular, but I'll come to that later.
-Then there's the whole notion of the Sublimed, which for the only book feature as a major driving element of the plot (taking the Excession thing as somewhat different in tone). The whole idea of the Sublimed is probably the biggest weakness of the Cultureverse, a kind of vague mention of Elder Species power through meditation that seems awkwardly borrowed from Star Trek. It doesn't really work in a lot of ways, part of which can be seen in this novel--the Darzon creature/group just act as a powerful, arbitrary and unexplained issue to drive a specific standoff. There are some interesting ways it undermines the setting, but overall it's more problematic than useful.
-The novel ends on a high note, at least. The last fifty pages of the narrative are very good--building tension, then the ruthless tragedy of Horza's end. And of course the appendix to fill out the whole background of the Culture-Idiran war is fabulous. In particular I like the whole description of the Homoda's involvement--being a whole faction like Horza that fears the Culture more than they support the Idirans. It definitely helps flesh out the setting and make it more nuanced, rather than just two rival polities slugging it out. I'm also intrigued by the mention that the Homoda "were far from alone in having this feeling, though unique in acting on it overtly". That suggests a story worth seeing, at some point. Is it also possible that one or more of the other Involved feared the Culture enough to combat it subtly at this time? And could there be any connection between this and the group that sponsored the Chelgrian terrorism in Look to Windward? I'm also intrigued by the mention that some Idirans fled to Andromeda. More directly there's the major fact of this whole appendix being provided to Earth as part of a Contact-approved information packet as of 2110. Clearly the non-interference from State of the Art doesn't last forever.
-So overall a clumsy and seriously flawed narrative, but with some stand out points, an interesting theme and a lot of nice details. As well, a strong re-introduction to the setting, and finishing with a lot of strength. Looking forward to the next volume.
Similar to and better than: Jack Vance's Planet of Adventure
Similar to and worse than: Ursula K. Le Guin's The Dispossessed
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
The Steel Remains
The Steel Remains, Richard Morgan.
Morgan's latest novel, and his first fantasy. Resembles a lot the themes of Mieville's stuff (particularly Iron Council) and some of Morgan's own earlier stuff. The resemblance is a bit unfortunate, because The Steel Remains isn't nearly as strong, and might have been more enjoyable if I hadn't set really high sights on it. Ultimately I have mixed reactions. The book feels in some ways more like the middle volume in a trilogy than the first one it is, all the characters and the setting coming in with a lot of stuff already in action. Partly this makes it feel decently fleshed out, like a lived-in world with a lot of history, but it's also alienating to connect with the characters. There's a lot of anger in this book, against homophobia, against the selling and domination of people, against varied forms of militarism, exploitation, hypocrisy and fanaticism. Morgan's story is tight enough that this isn't just a case of the character or author stopping the narrative to lecture, or filling the world with strawman. It's a grim environment, but a complex one, with few easy moral decisions and an overall believability. I was reminded several times of Iran late under the shah--repressive, corrupt, and with the waiting forces in the wing preparing to launch the society into an even more repressive and homophobic theocracy. I'll be interested to see if the later volumes follow up this parallel at all. Clearly one of Morgan's main projects in this was to take the standard fantasy template and add a whole awareness of homosexuality, homophobia, slavery, sexual violence--common to human societies, and aren't going to change just because of magic.
One standout element in this work is the relation of the main character to violence. He's from a very violent context, and he inhabits this type of position to earn his living, as well as to assert his own way of living, but this isn't presented as a redemptive thing. It's a basically destructive force, even when used against all-slaughtering invaders or bigoted fanatics it doesn't make a hero, it produces an extremely dangerous man. The most notable moment of this is the flashback shown where
Ringil kills a child. About the most extreme provoking circumstances one could imagine--the child was throwing stones as part of the torture of Ringil's lover--but the act of violence was excessive, unhesitating and basically unthinking, and it brings home the problems with both the society and Ringil's own actions in relation to it.
Still, I find the project far less satisfying or interesting than Market Forces. Partly because the fantasy tropings and mystical invasion forces do give a tone of unreality that make the grim focus of the human environment appear too polemical. The biggest factor, though, is that the plot through this deconstruction isn't that engaging. While George R. R. Martin is good at anchoring his darkness to an interesting narrative and Mieville is fantastic at it, The Steel Remains doesn't work great as an actual plot. At least one too many eldritch menacing forces, and a bit too much circling the wagons in terms of political intrigue and resuce-the-slave. The character stuff is more engaging, and it's apparent that Morgan was really quite ambitious in setting up this kind of work, but there are significant areas where I don't think it fully delivers. I'll be interested in reading the rest of the series and in following Morgan's work, but this particular story isn't top tier fantasy for me.
Better than: Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon
Worse than: China Mieville's Iron Council
Morgan's latest novel, and his first fantasy. Resembles a lot the themes of Mieville's stuff (particularly Iron Council) and some of Morgan's own earlier stuff. The resemblance is a bit unfortunate, because The Steel Remains isn't nearly as strong, and might have been more enjoyable if I hadn't set really high sights on it. Ultimately I have mixed reactions. The book feels in some ways more like the middle volume in a trilogy than the first one it is, all the characters and the setting coming in with a lot of stuff already in action. Partly this makes it feel decently fleshed out, like a lived-in world with a lot of history, but it's also alienating to connect with the characters. There's a lot of anger in this book, against homophobia, against the selling and domination of people, against varied forms of militarism, exploitation, hypocrisy and fanaticism. Morgan's story is tight enough that this isn't just a case of the character or author stopping the narrative to lecture, or filling the world with strawman. It's a grim environment, but a complex one, with few easy moral decisions and an overall believability. I was reminded several times of Iran late under the shah--repressive, corrupt, and with the waiting forces in the wing preparing to launch the society into an even more repressive and homophobic theocracy. I'll be interested to see if the later volumes follow up this parallel at all. Clearly one of Morgan's main projects in this was to take the standard fantasy template and add a whole awareness of homosexuality, homophobia, slavery, sexual violence--common to human societies, and aren't going to change just because of magic.
One standout element in this work is the relation of the main character to violence. He's from a very violent context, and he inhabits this type of position to earn his living, as well as to assert his own way of living, but this isn't presented as a redemptive thing. It's a basically destructive force, even when used against all-slaughtering invaders or bigoted fanatics it doesn't make a hero, it produces an extremely dangerous man. The most notable moment of this is the flashback shown where
Ringil kills a child. About the most extreme provoking circumstances one could imagine--the child was throwing stones as part of the torture of Ringil's lover--but the act of violence was excessive, unhesitating and basically unthinking, and it brings home the problems with both the society and Ringil's own actions in relation to it.
Still, I find the project far less satisfying or interesting than Market Forces. Partly because the fantasy tropings and mystical invasion forces do give a tone of unreality that make the grim focus of the human environment appear too polemical. The biggest factor, though, is that the plot through this deconstruction isn't that engaging. While George R. R. Martin is good at anchoring his darkness to an interesting narrative and Mieville is fantastic at it, The Steel Remains doesn't work great as an actual plot. At least one too many eldritch menacing forces, and a bit too much circling the wagons in terms of political intrigue and resuce-the-slave. The character stuff is more engaging, and it's apparent that Morgan was really quite ambitious in setting up this kind of work, but there are significant areas where I don't think it fully delivers. I'll be interested in reading the rest of the series and in following Morgan's work, but this particular story isn't top tier fantasy for me.
Better than: Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon
Worse than: China Mieville's Iron Council
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