Consider Phlebas, Iain M Banks (1987)
Following Iain Banks's untimely death I resolved to push my unread book pile to one side and re-read (or in some cases read), in order of publication, his Culture books. For reference, these are:
Consider Phlebas (1987)
The Player of Games (1988)
Use of Weapons (1990)
The State of the Art (1991) - short stories, three Culture-related.
Excession (1996)
Look to Windward (2000)
Matter (2008)
Surface Detail (2010)
The Hydrogen Sonata (2012)
I am not counting Inversions because it is not strictly a Culture novel (although it is very clearly set in the Culture universe). I may re-read it later. I may also skip Surface Detail as I read it relatively recently. I have to confess that I rather bounced off Matter and so haven't read it yet, and I hadn't got round to reading The Hydrogen Sonata when Banks died.
So; Consider Phlebas. I remember reading this not long after it came out, but that was a quarter of a century ago so I actually had little to no memory of the plot when I re-read it. I found that some of Banks' memorable set-pieces had stuck in my mind: Horza's initial predicament, the cult of the Eater, and the fugitive Mind skulking in the tunnels of Schar's World. But the plot that hung them together was effectively fresh to me. I remembered that the book was about the Culture-Idiran War, but had forgotten about the Idirans themselves, who are much more interestingly imagined and depicted than I'd thought.
This was actually the third Culture book written by Banks, in that he'd been drafting The Player of Games and Use of Weapons since the early 1970s. (As an aside, I was at the FUTURA mini-con in Wolverhampton on Saturday, where Ken MacLeod devoted much of his GoH talk to reminiscences of Banks, including reading the early drafts of his novels as a student.) That shows in the way the Culture is depicted so fully-formed, but that it was an early Banks also shows in the plot. I couldn't help feel that Banks had come up with some spectacular set pieces and then wrote his plot so as to get Horza from one to the next. The plot only really gets into gear when Horza and his less-than-willing accomplices land on Schar's World and have to deal with both enemies who should be friends and friends who should be enemies.
I vaguely recall Banks saying that he wrote one particular scene in Consider Phlebas because it would be utterly impossible to film and worked far better in the imagination. (It's the one involving the rather unorthodox departure of the Clear Air Turbulence from the ex-GSV The Ends of Invention). I rather suspect that various CGI teams would consider themselves game for the challenge now, although it would probably break one of the standard Hollywood Film Models to put the biggest explosions in the middle. Mind you, Banks nearly makes up for it at the end, and the final battle - and its consequences - make for a memorable climax to the book.
It's perhaps very typical of Banks and what is to come in his Culture novels that the character you may find yourself identifying with most is the shanghaied and rather put-upon Drone Unaha-Closp.
Consider Phlebas (1987)
The Player of Games (1988)
Use of Weapons (1990)
The State of the Art (1991) - short stories, three Culture-related.
Excession (1996)
Look to Windward (2000)
Matter (2008)
Surface Detail (2010)
The Hydrogen Sonata (2012)
I am not counting Inversions because it is not strictly a Culture novel (although it is very clearly set in the Culture universe). I may re-read it later. I may also skip Surface Detail as I read it relatively recently. I have to confess that I rather bounced off Matter and so haven't read it yet, and I hadn't got round to reading The Hydrogen Sonata when Banks died.
So; Consider Phlebas. I remember reading this not long after it came out, but that was a quarter of a century ago so I actually had little to no memory of the plot when I re-read it. I found that some of Banks' memorable set-pieces had stuck in my mind: Horza's initial predicament, the cult of the Eater, and the fugitive Mind skulking in the tunnels of Schar's World. But the plot that hung them together was effectively fresh to me. I remembered that the book was about the Culture-Idiran War, but had forgotten about the Idirans themselves, who are much more interestingly imagined and depicted than I'd thought.
This was actually the third Culture book written by Banks, in that he'd been drafting The Player of Games and Use of Weapons since the early 1970s. (As an aside, I was at the FUTURA mini-con in Wolverhampton on Saturday, where Ken MacLeod devoted much of his GoH talk to reminiscences of Banks, including reading the early drafts of his novels as a student.) That shows in the way the Culture is depicted so fully-formed, but that it was an early Banks also shows in the plot. I couldn't help feel that Banks had come up with some spectacular set pieces and then wrote his plot so as to get Horza from one to the next. The plot only really gets into gear when Horza and his less-than-willing accomplices land on Schar's World and have to deal with both enemies who should be friends and friends who should be enemies.
I vaguely recall Banks saying that he wrote one particular scene in Consider Phlebas because it would be utterly impossible to film and worked far better in the imagination. (It's the one involving the rather unorthodox departure of the Clear Air Turbulence from the ex-GSV The Ends of Invention). I rather suspect that various CGI teams would consider themselves game for the challenge now, although it would probably break one of the standard Hollywood Film Models to put the biggest explosions in the middle. Mind you, Banks nearly makes up for it at the end, and the final battle - and its consequences - make for a memorable climax to the book.
It's perhaps very typical of Banks and what is to come in his Culture novels that the character you may find yourself identifying with most is the shanghaied and rather put-upon Drone Unaha-Closp.