From the Bookshelf: Consider Phlebas
After spending considerable time steeped in the 1930s and 1940s world of E.E. "Doc" Smith, I suppose I wanted to follow it up with something that also had the term "space opera" attached to it at times but newer, and turned to a copy of Iain M. Banks's first "Culture" novel, "Consider Phlebas." Banks is a British science fiction author (and also a writer of literary novels identified by subtracting the middle initial from his name on book covers), but much of what I've heard about him here and there contains comments to the effect of that he's not reached a wide audience in North America. Those who have managed to hear of him are enthusiastic enough, though, that when I saw a copy of "Consider Phlebas" in my local library five years back, I signed it out and was quite impressed. (I suppose, though, that reading it in the summer of Attack of the Clones led to an flutter or two about visual versus written "space opera" before I decided I could accept both for different reasons...)
The Culture itself as presented in Banks's novels is, to simplify things perhaps for the sake of introduction, the cashless utopia some say Star Trek hints at, but extended far beyond anything that's ever been envisioned in that series. It's controlled by enormously intelligent computers or "Minds," built into huge starships with jokey names like Nervous Energy, Prothetic Conscience, and No More Mr Nice Guy, in such a way as to ensure pleasant lifestyles for the humans also a part of the Culture. As if acknowledging the usual comments that it's difficult to set a story in a world where everything is pleasant, though, the Culture is all but off-stage in "Consider Phlebas." The book is set during a war between the Culture and the Idirans, religious fanatic aliens, and begins with a Mind narrowly escaping the destruction of its ship and winding up on a remote and protected planet. A shapeshifter named Horza, an ally of the Idirans and opponent of the Culture (whose arguments against it aren't just brushed off in the course of the book), more or less stumbles into leading a small group of mercenaries on a mission to capture the Mind. Along the way, he manages to capture a Culture agent and one of its "drones," a floating machine that interacts through "fields" instead of mechanical limbs, and which to me somehow seems faintly reminiscent with its chip-on-a-metaphorical-shoulder attitude of a less cheerful, less fettered See-Threepio.
Things that kept impressing me while reading the book were the complex but casual world-building and a feeling that the action was somehow "cinematic," on a scale grand but easy to visualize. (There are, though, at least two separate instances of immovable forces meeting irresistable objects in it...) That action, though, is also often brutal in a mordant way. The mission is far from glorious; there are no heroes, just people trying to stay alive. I've often seen Banks's work described as having very dark undertones. For me, though, I'm willing to accept that as an occasional change.
The Culture itself as presented in Banks's novels is, to simplify things perhaps for the sake of introduction, the cashless utopia some say Star Trek hints at, but extended far beyond anything that's ever been envisioned in that series. It's controlled by enormously intelligent computers or "Minds," built into huge starships with jokey names like Nervous Energy, Prothetic Conscience, and No More Mr Nice Guy, in such a way as to ensure pleasant lifestyles for the humans also a part of the Culture. As if acknowledging the usual comments that it's difficult to set a story in a world where everything is pleasant, though, the Culture is all but off-stage in "Consider Phlebas." The book is set during a war between the Culture and the Idirans, religious fanatic aliens, and begins with a Mind narrowly escaping the destruction of its ship and winding up on a remote and protected planet. A shapeshifter named Horza, an ally of the Idirans and opponent of the Culture (whose arguments against it aren't just brushed off in the course of the book), more or less stumbles into leading a small group of mercenaries on a mission to capture the Mind. Along the way, he manages to capture a Culture agent and one of its "drones," a floating machine that interacts through "fields" instead of mechanical limbs, and which to me somehow seems faintly reminiscent with its chip-on-a-metaphorical-shoulder attitude of a less cheerful, less fettered See-Threepio.
Things that kept impressing me while reading the book were the complex but casual world-building and a feeling that the action was somehow "cinematic," on a scale grand but easy to visualize. (There are, though, at least two separate instances of immovable forces meeting irresistable objects in it...) That action, though, is also often brutal in a mordant way. The mission is far from glorious; there are no heroes, just people trying to stay alive. I've often seen Banks's work described as having very dark undertones. For me, though, I'm willing to accept that as an occasional change.