Surface Detail, Iain M. Banks

I just finished Surface Detail, by Iain M. Banks: one of his Culture novels (2010). I’ve read and reviewed several of his novels in this series before, so I’ll be brief (note: although the Culture novels are a ‘series’, each novel is a stand-alone story).

I thought this was one of the better Culture novels, with an interesting idea of a virtual-reality hell, which is used by certain societies as a punishment system to purportedly maintain a moral civilization. The virtual hells are only a part of the novel’s story, but I found it difficult to slog through these sections (it is an interesting idea, but I could have done with fewer pages devoted to the depictions of hell).

As usual, Mr. Banks provides some interesting characters with differing motivations that move the plot along quite successfully.

My favourite quote (p. 540):

“They set off, whirling down the steps so fast it was almost falling.” (my emphasis on the last two words, which were the key to my enjoyment)

Recommended.

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The Use of Weapons, a book review

The Culture is a fictitious, galactic civilization; a hedonistic, socialist utopia, which is populated with intelligent, biological species, but overseen by sapient machines called Minds, which not only rule the Culture, but also control massive star-ship-colonies  that house billions of beings. The Culture books form a ‘series’ of stand-alone novels, written by Iain M. Banks (aka Iain Banks, without the M., when he isn’t writing science fiction, e.g.: The Wasp Factory). The Culture, managed by the machine Minds, sometimes needs difficult, non-Culture-related tasks taken care of, which come under the auspices of Contact. The most sordid activities are directed to Contact’s Special Circumstances  branch. The Culture utilizes psychological and political schemes to ‘persuade’ other civilizations to adopt the Culture’s philosophy as a means to assure the Culture way of life is not endangered; many times, persuasion leads to war.

I’ve read three of the Culture novels. I have obsessive-compulsive tendencies, so I began with the first Culture novel published (Consider Phlebas (1987), which I didn’t like much), then I read the second Culture novel (The Player of Games (1988), which I did like), and I just finished the third Culture novel, Use of Weapons (1990), which I think is the best so far, by a country kilometer.

Use of Weapons unfolds in alternating-chapter plot-streams: one plot moves forward in time (chapters one through fourteen), and the other stream flows backward in time (from XIII to I). The forward moving chapters reveal the current activities of Diziet Sma (to be precise, Rasd-Coduresa Diziet Embless Sma da’ Marchehide), Special Circumstances agent,  in her latest assignment as the handler of Cheradenine Zakalwe, a non-Culture, human-norm Soldier-of-fortune/General who does the Culture’s dirty-work. Zakalwe has dark, hidden memories that haunt him, and these memories are motivation to fight for the ‘good guy’, but Zakalwe is forever questioning the tactics of the Culture (do the ends justify the means?), and I don’t think I’m giving anything away when I suggest that Zakalwe is one of the weapons being used. The chapters that flow backward in time move resolutely toward an event that Zakalwe would rather forget.

This book includes graphic violence in several sections, and Mr. Banks’ imagination has a morbid steak, but I enjoyed this book more and more as the plot moved along. The ending was well set-up and presented, and the revelation sent reverberations back through to the beginning of the novel.

If you can manage your way through the plasma-guns, spaceships, and graphic violence, the book is quite enjoyable.

Recommended