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Culture #9
Surface Detail
The “War in Heaven”, a simulated war game, rages between civilisations. Its virtual battles have been fought for decades, and the victors will decide the fate of the digital Hells – torturous artificial afterlives with horrors beyond imagination.
In the Sichultian Enablement, Y’breq is one of the Intagliated, her marked body bearing witness to a family shame, her life belonging to a man whose lust for power is without limit.
As the virtual war threatens to spill into the Real, Y’breq is willing to risk everything for her freedom – but she’ll need the Culture, and its help comes at a price. The Culture is going to war with death itself.
In the Sichultian Enablement, Y’breq is one of the Intagliated, her marked body bearing witness to a family shame, her life belonging to a man whose lust for power is without limit.
As the virtual war threatens to spill into the Real, Y’breq is willing to risk everything for her freedom – but she’ll need the Culture, and its help comes at a price. The Culture is going to war with death itself.
640 pages, Paperback
First published October 7, 2010
1182 people are currently reading
17449 people want to read
About the author
Iain M. Banks
58 books6,530 followersIain M. Banks is a pseudonym of Iain Banks which he used to publish his Science Fiction.
Banks's father was an officer in the Admiralty and his mother was once a professional ice skater. Iain Banks was educated at the University of Stirling where he studied English Literature, Philosophy and Psychology. He moved to London and lived in the south of England until 1988 when he returned to Scotland, living in Edinburgh and then Fife.
Banks met his wife Annie in London, before the release of his first book. They married in Hawaii in 1992. However, he announced in early 2007 that, after 25 years together, they had separated. He lived most recently in North Queensferry, a town on the north side of the Firth of Forth near the Forth Bridge and the Forth Road Bridge.
As with his friend Ken MacLeod (another Scottish writer of technical and social science fiction) a strong awareness of left-wing history shows in his writings. The argument that an economy of abundance renders anarchy and adhocracy viable (or even inevitable) attracts many as an interesting potential experiment, were it ever to become testable. He was a signatory to the Declaration of Calton Hill, which calls for Scottish independence.
In late 2004, Banks was a prominent member of a group of British politicians and media figures who campaigned to have Prime Minister Tony Blair impeached following the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In protest he cut up his passport and posted it to 10 Downing Street. In an interview in Socialist Review he claimed he did this after he "abandoned the idea of crashing my Land Rover through the gates of Fife dockyard, after spotting the guys armed with machine guns." He related his concerns about the invasion of Iraq in his book Raw Spirit, and the principal protagonist (Alban McGill) in the novel The Steep Approach to Garbadale confronts another character with arguments in a similar vein.
Interviewed on Mark Lawson's BBC Four series, first broadcast in the UK on 14 November 2006, Banks explained why his novels are published under two different names. His parents wished to name him Iain Menzies Banks but his father made a mistake when registering the birth and he was officially registered as Iain Banks. Despite this he continued to use his unofficial middle name and it was as Iain M. Banks that he submitted The Wasp Factory for publication. However, his editor asked if he would mind dropping the 'M' as it appeared "too fussy". The editor was also concerned about possible confusion with Rosie M. Banks, a minor character in some of P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves novels who is a romantic novelist. After his first three mainstream novels his publishers agreed to publish his first SF novel, Consider Phlebas. To distinguish between the mainstream and SF novels, Banks suggested the return of the 'M', although at one stage he considered John B. Macallan as his SF pseudonym, the name deriving from his favourite whiskies: Johnnie Walker Black Label and The Macallan single malt.
His latest book was a science fiction (SF) novel in the Culture series, called The Hydrogen Sonata, published in 2012.
Author Iain M. Banks revealed in April 2013 that he had late-stage cancer. He died the following June.
The Scottish writer posted a message on his official website saying his next novel The Quarry, due to be published later this year*, would be his last.
*The Quarry was published in June 2013.
Banks's father was an officer in the Admiralty and his mother was once a professional ice skater. Iain Banks was educated at the University of Stirling where he studied English Literature, Philosophy and Psychology. He moved to London and lived in the south of England until 1988 when he returned to Scotland, living in Edinburgh and then Fife.
Banks met his wife Annie in London, before the release of his first book. They married in Hawaii in 1992. However, he announced in early 2007 that, after 25 years together, they had separated. He lived most recently in North Queensferry, a town on the north side of the Firth of Forth near the Forth Bridge and the Forth Road Bridge.
As with his friend Ken MacLeod (another Scottish writer of technical and social science fiction) a strong awareness of left-wing history shows in his writings. The argument that an economy of abundance renders anarchy and adhocracy viable (or even inevitable) attracts many as an interesting potential experiment, were it ever to become testable. He was a signatory to the Declaration of Calton Hill, which calls for Scottish independence.
In late 2004, Banks was a prominent member of a group of British politicians and media figures who campaigned to have Prime Minister Tony Blair impeached following the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In protest he cut up his passport and posted it to 10 Downing Street. In an interview in Socialist Review he claimed he did this after he "abandoned the idea of crashing my Land Rover through the gates of Fife dockyard, after spotting the guys armed with machine guns." He related his concerns about the invasion of Iraq in his book Raw Spirit, and the principal protagonist (Alban McGill) in the novel The Steep Approach to Garbadale confronts another character with arguments in a similar vein.
Interviewed on Mark Lawson's BBC Four series, first broadcast in the UK on 14 November 2006, Banks explained why his novels are published under two different names. His parents wished to name him Iain Menzies Banks but his father made a mistake when registering the birth and he was officially registered as Iain Banks. Despite this he continued to use his unofficial middle name and it was as Iain M. Banks that he submitted The Wasp Factory for publication. However, his editor asked if he would mind dropping the 'M' as it appeared "too fussy". The editor was also concerned about possible confusion with Rosie M. Banks, a minor character in some of P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves novels who is a romantic novelist. After his first three mainstream novels his publishers agreed to publish his first SF novel, Consider Phlebas. To distinguish between the mainstream and SF novels, Banks suggested the return of the 'M', although at one stage he considered John B. Macallan as his SF pseudonym, the name deriving from his favourite whiskies: Johnnie Walker Black Label and The Macallan single malt.
His latest book was a science fiction (SF) novel in the Culture series, called The Hydrogen Sonata, published in 2012.
Author Iain M. Banks revealed in April 2013 that he had late-stage cancer. He died the following June.
The Scottish writer posted a message on his official website saying his next novel The Quarry, due to be published later this year*, would be his last.
*The Quarry was published in June 2013.
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June 19, 2022
Thought experiment time: Would a hardliner faith culture with high tech create a virtual hell to stay in power and make everyone afraid of getting inside that creepy, artificial purgatory if they misbehave?
Reread 2022 with extended review
Illustrative presentation for mind control
This idea could be expanded, for instance with school excursions to hell to show the pupils what happens if one is nasty or for the permanent display of how hellish the sinners are suffering. Sending the one or other poor soul back to earth to tell about the cruelties may be a fine psychological warfare trick against the own population too.
Fear and terror are always the answer
All of this could be seen as an allegory of each time when anachronistic power structures meet technological advancements and aren´t shattered and destroyed by enlightenment and democracy. For instance, a tool like the internet that is so downgraded and censored in dictatorships that some of its core functions, the connection of people and the spreading of ideas, pull media concepts, are eliminated or forced into line. Or to take genetic engineering to awake old eugenic ideas and realize them. Or commercialize hell like a bloody amusement park. It might get quite a long list and that just with using nowadays humans.
Clarketech vs ideology to illustrate the ridiculousness
With the help of time and expansion into the universe, new and old ideologies can be mixed with Clarketech to truly bizarre constellations. Give aliens with different physiology and mentality such as hive minds to the mix and it gets bizarre, freaky, funny, perverted, and entertaining.
Some explicit stuff
A warning, some passages are really sick hardcore, sure, duh!, it´s hell, I didn´t expect it from Banks and it might be too extreme for some readers, quite reminded me of extreme horror, just much better written of course.
Sell me your soul
In such a setting souls, be it in a fleshy, short-lived, poorly constructed (shame on you, nature!) shell or better digitally and multi-dimensionally stored, could become a real, manifested immortality chip and the gateway to power. This would get even more complicated if one would assume that there is not just the real, stored, digital 011001, etc. alter ego, but a real metaphysical being that should reincarnate, change the form or be immortal and is incarcerated in silicon instead. I should be friendlier to my computer and start collecting souls from atheists who think that the whole concept is stupid.
Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...
Reread 2022 with extended review
Illustrative presentation for mind control
This idea could be expanded, for instance with school excursions to hell to show the pupils what happens if one is nasty or for the permanent display of how hellish the sinners are suffering. Sending the one or other poor soul back to earth to tell about the cruelties may be a fine psychological warfare trick against the own population too.
Fear and terror are always the answer
All of this could be seen as an allegory of each time when anachronistic power structures meet technological advancements and aren´t shattered and destroyed by enlightenment and democracy. For instance, a tool like the internet that is so downgraded and censored in dictatorships that some of its core functions, the connection of people and the spreading of ideas, pull media concepts, are eliminated or forced into line. Or to take genetic engineering to awake old eugenic ideas and realize them. Or commercialize hell like a bloody amusement park. It might get quite a long list and that just with using nowadays humans.
Clarketech vs ideology to illustrate the ridiculousness
With the help of time and expansion into the universe, new and old ideologies can be mixed with Clarketech to truly bizarre constellations. Give aliens with different physiology and mentality such as hive minds to the mix and it gets bizarre, freaky, funny, perverted, and entertaining.
Some explicit stuff
A warning, some passages are really sick hardcore, sure, duh!, it´s hell, I didn´t expect it from Banks and it might be too extreme for some readers, quite reminded me of extreme horror, just much better written of course.
Sell me your soul
In such a setting souls, be it in a fleshy, short-lived, poorly constructed (shame on you, nature!) shell or better digitally and multi-dimensionally stored, could become a real, manifested immortality chip and the gateway to power. This would get even more complicated if one would assume that there is not just the real, stored, digital 011001, etc. alter ego, but a real metaphysical being that should reincarnate, change the form or be immortal and is incarcerated in silicon instead. I should be friendlier to my computer and start collecting souls from atheists who think that the whole concept is stupid.
Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...
February 9, 2017
A war in hell, for the fate of hell?
What? Is this a Culture novel, one of huge Space Operatic dimensions, Ship Mega-Minds, nearly ascendant alien cultures and encroaching afterlifes?
Wait. Afterlife? Sure! Virtual hells made for elephantine aliens with enormous virtual wars to take up their attention so it doesn't have to spill over into the real.
It's civilized, don't you know?
Of course, you can't say that for the people being TORTURED FOR ETERNITY within them. *sigh*
This one happens to be my absolute favorite of all the Culture Novels. I haven't read the 10th yet, but it's going to have to work double-time to beat this one.
I love all the characters, from the Eccentric Drones to the debt-enslaved victim of hell and her lover of oh so tragic fate. (Learning how to become a demon to escape the victim's-fate is pretty tragic, after all.)
And through this, the Culture sits and watches and makes noises that they'll never get involved in other species's conflicts unless ordered by Culture, proper, and yet they always seem to find ways to stick their noses in and make epic struggles and full-blown wars out of molehills.
Got to love it. :)
War For Hell! And as always, the ironic humor of the ships, their names, and the situations is all sheer delight. :) I mean, after all, the setting is, in fact, in an Elephant's Graveyard. :)
Lol. Great stuff!
What? Is this a Culture novel, one of huge Space Operatic dimensions, Ship Mega-Minds, nearly ascendant alien cultures and encroaching afterlifes?
Wait. Afterlife? Sure! Virtual hells made for elephantine aliens with enormous virtual wars to take up their attention so it doesn't have to spill over into the real.
It's civilized, don't you know?
Of course, you can't say that for the people being TORTURED FOR ETERNITY within them. *sigh*
This one happens to be my absolute favorite of all the Culture Novels. I haven't read the 10th yet, but it's going to have to work double-time to beat this one.
I love all the characters, from the Eccentric Drones to the debt-enslaved victim of hell and her lover of oh so tragic fate. (Learning how to become a demon to escape the victim's-fate is pretty tragic, after all.)
And through this, the Culture sits and watches and makes noises that they'll never get involved in other species's conflicts unless ordered by Culture, proper, and yet they always seem to find ways to stick their noses in and make epic struggles and full-blown wars out of molehills.
Got to love it. :)
War For Hell! And as always, the ironic humor of the ships, their names, and the situations is all sheer delight. :) I mean, after all, the setting is, in fact, in an Elephant's Graveyard. :)
Lol. Great stuff!
March 29, 2018
I was surprised to find that this book presents an almost perfect example of a philosophical problem that's been bothering me recently, to the extent that I even wrote a short paper about it. Briefly, and without giving away any spoilers, the core thread in Surface Detail is about the ethics of inflicting pain, or what looks like pain, on simulated beings. The conceit is that many societies in the Iain Banks "Culture" universe have traditions of an afterlife which resembles our idea of Hell. Their advanced technologies have made it possible actually to construct these infernal realms in simulated form, copying the mind states of deceased beings to them so that they will undergo a simulation of eternal punishment.
In the book, Galactic society is sharply divided concerning the morality of the idea. Some societies take the traditional line that "Hell" is needed in order to frighten people into behaving better while they are alive; others think that the notion of eternal punishment is barbaric and inhumane. But it seems to me that these are not the only ways to view the issues. Here's my little paper:
Is "mind crime" a coherent concept?
In his influential book Superintelligence, Nick Bostrom several times refers to a concept he calls "mind crime". By this, he means inflicting the analogues of pain or death on entities which do not exist in the real, physical world, but only in worlds simulated inside computers. For example, Bostrom at one point suggests that a rogue superintelligence could use mind crime as a form of blackmail, creating simulations containing large numbers of simulated intelligent beings and then threatening to "kill" them by closing down the simulation. Later, he wonders whether it may be unethical to run certain kinds of reinforcement learning algorithms, since the nature of reinforcement learning is such that one is in effect inflecting pain on a simulated being. I think it is reasonable to say that these claims, at least at first sight, are extremely counterintuitive, and I will here argue that they may indeed be incoherent when more closely examined.
The point on which I disagree is whether there really can be anything morally wrong with creating a simulated intelligent entity which feels pain, or in terminating a simulation which contains intelligent entities. Now I can of course see the outlines of the argument in favour of these claims: the intuitive picture is that a simulated intelligent entity is in some (functionalist) sense just as "real" as an intelligent entity in the physical world, a simulation is in some sense a box containing the entity, and it's morally wrong to cause the entity to suffer pain or to throw away the box, which amounts to killing it. But does this argument stand up to critical examination?
It seems to me that there is an important point here which is perhaps being obscured. If the simulated entity is causally connected to the physical world by means of sensors and effectors, then I'm completely happy to grant the claims. In this case, the entity is in effect just another physical being which happens to be implemented in silicon rather than in protoplasm, and the same moral principles should apply to it as to organic entities. But I don't think it's so clear if the entity lives in its own self-contained simulated universe. In this case, I think one can reasonably apply another intuitive picture: the simulated universe, including the entity, is just a mathematical object, and running the simulation amounts to no more than applying a method useful for studying that mathematical object.
Now I am aware that this is dangerous philosophical territory, and one can wonder if it's basically recapitulating some version of the Chinese Room argument. But it seems to me that it's not really the Chinese Room in disguise. I'm not questioning whether the entity is in a valid sense conscious, or whether it has valid moral rights. I'm happy to grant all that. I'm just questioning whether the moral rights have any connection to us. If we think of intelligent entity X as part of a mathematical object, then it seems to me that all the moral issues are internal to that object, by virtue of the supposition that the simulated universe is self-contained. If the entity feels (functionalist) pain, and there is some causal reason in the simulated universe which explains why it's feeling pain, then we may legitimately take a moral position, and consider that it was wrong, say, for entity Y in the simulated universe to have caused entity X to feel pain. That much seems quite reasonable.
But we're outside the universe, so in what way can we say there is anything morally wrong with the fact that this mathematical object has certain properties? It has the properties it has: we can't affect them in any way. All we've done is choose to study this mathematical object rather than another mathematical object. Running the simulation doesn't cause it to exist "more"; it just helps us understand the mathematical object's properties more clearly. We can imagine different ways of studying it. Our initial intuitive picture of the simulation is probably that it proceeds, in some sense, a step at a time in a forward temporal direction, which feels like we're in some way helping it to exist. But we might also in principle perform some kind of integration which reduces the simulation to a closed-form solution. (Of course, in practice this would be extremely difficult). If we have a closed-form solution, we can use the simulation to read off the state of the world at a given time, or along some space-like surface, or whatever. We're just studying it, and there is little temptation to say that we are causing it to exist. If we stop reading off states at space-like surfaces, the only effect is on us.
All of these arguments involve concepts which are outside our normal experience; we have never seen an intelligent entity in a self-contained simulated universe, so our intuitions may be confused. As a reference point in a more familiar domain, it seems to me that the status of characters in a novel has useful commonalities. If Marianne in Sense and Sensibility feels pain, we may reasonably blame Willoughby for his heartless behaviour towards her. But it's not reasonable to blame Jane Austen. Willoughby is part of this universe and has both a casual and a moral relationship with Marianne, but Jane Austen has neither. She's outside the universe of the book. We can, if we like, blame her for causing us pain when we read the novel, but we can't seriously blame her for causing Marianne pain.
To conclude, it seems to me that the above arguments cast some doubt over the validity of "mind crime" as a legitimate concept.
In the book, Galactic society is sharply divided concerning the morality of the idea. Some societies take the traditional line that "Hell" is needed in order to frighten people into behaving better while they are alive; others think that the notion of eternal punishment is barbaric and inhumane. But it seems to me that these are not the only ways to view the issues. Here's my little paper:
Is "mind crime" a coherent concept?
In his influential book Superintelligence, Nick Bostrom several times refers to a concept he calls "mind crime". By this, he means inflicting the analogues of pain or death on entities which do not exist in the real, physical world, but only in worlds simulated inside computers. For example, Bostrom at one point suggests that a rogue superintelligence could use mind crime as a form of blackmail, creating simulations containing large numbers of simulated intelligent beings and then threatening to "kill" them by closing down the simulation. Later, he wonders whether it may be unethical to run certain kinds of reinforcement learning algorithms, since the nature of reinforcement learning is such that one is in effect inflecting pain on a simulated being. I think it is reasonable to say that these claims, at least at first sight, are extremely counterintuitive, and I will here argue that they may indeed be incoherent when more closely examined.
The point on which I disagree is whether there really can be anything morally wrong with creating a simulated intelligent entity which feels pain, or in terminating a simulation which contains intelligent entities. Now I can of course see the outlines of the argument in favour of these claims: the intuitive picture is that a simulated intelligent entity is in some (functionalist) sense just as "real" as an intelligent entity in the physical world, a simulation is in some sense a box containing the entity, and it's morally wrong to cause the entity to suffer pain or to throw away the box, which amounts to killing it. But does this argument stand up to critical examination?
It seems to me that there is an important point here which is perhaps being obscured. If the simulated entity is causally connected to the physical world by means of sensors and effectors, then I'm completely happy to grant the claims. In this case, the entity is in effect just another physical being which happens to be implemented in silicon rather than in protoplasm, and the same moral principles should apply to it as to organic entities. But I don't think it's so clear if the entity lives in its own self-contained simulated universe. In this case, I think one can reasonably apply another intuitive picture: the simulated universe, including the entity, is just a mathematical object, and running the simulation amounts to no more than applying a method useful for studying that mathematical object.
Now I am aware that this is dangerous philosophical territory, and one can wonder if it's basically recapitulating some version of the Chinese Room argument. But it seems to me that it's not really the Chinese Room in disguise. I'm not questioning whether the entity is in a valid sense conscious, or whether it has valid moral rights. I'm happy to grant all that. I'm just questioning whether the moral rights have any connection to us. If we think of intelligent entity X as part of a mathematical object, then it seems to me that all the moral issues are internal to that object, by virtue of the supposition that the simulated universe is self-contained. If the entity feels (functionalist) pain, and there is some causal reason in the simulated universe which explains why it's feeling pain, then we may legitimately take a moral position, and consider that it was wrong, say, for entity Y in the simulated universe to have caused entity X to feel pain. That much seems quite reasonable.
But we're outside the universe, so in what way can we say there is anything morally wrong with the fact that this mathematical object has certain properties? It has the properties it has: we can't affect them in any way. All we've done is choose to study this mathematical object rather than another mathematical object. Running the simulation doesn't cause it to exist "more"; it just helps us understand the mathematical object's properties more clearly. We can imagine different ways of studying it. Our initial intuitive picture of the simulation is probably that it proceeds, in some sense, a step at a time in a forward temporal direction, which feels like we're in some way helping it to exist. But we might also in principle perform some kind of integration which reduces the simulation to a closed-form solution. (Of course, in practice this would be extremely difficult). If we have a closed-form solution, we can use the simulation to read off the state of the world at a given time, or along some space-like surface, or whatever. We're just studying it, and there is little temptation to say that we are causing it to exist. If we stop reading off states at space-like surfaces, the only effect is on us.
All of these arguments involve concepts which are outside our normal experience; we have never seen an intelligent entity in a self-contained simulated universe, so our intuitions may be confused. As a reference point in a more familiar domain, it seems to me that the status of characters in a novel has useful commonalities. If Marianne in Sense and Sensibility feels pain, we may reasonably blame Willoughby for his heartless behaviour towards her. But it's not reasonable to blame Jane Austen. Willoughby is part of this universe and has both a casual and a moral relationship with Marianne, but Jane Austen has neither. She's outside the universe of the book. We can, if we like, blame her for causing us pain when we read the novel, but we can't seriously blame her for causing Marianne pain.
To conclude, it seems to me that the above arguments cast some doubt over the validity of "mind crime" as a legitimate concept.
December 25, 2015
Iain M. Banks was taken away from us too soon. He was a genius of prose, structure, characterization and all kinds of SFnal ideas (by all accounts his mainstream fiction – published under the name of Iain Banks with no M – is also so great).
Reading Iain M. Banks is more challenging than most sci-fi authors though, his novel’s structure and plotline are often very complex, byzantine even; but the reader’s effort is always rewarded. With Surface Detail Banks takes about 70 pages to set up the pieces and introduce the characters before the narrative settles down enough for me to familiarize myself with the characters and the situation. Having said that, the first few chapters are immediately interesting though a little perplexing. In this early section of the book Banks introduces quite a few point of view protagonists in mysterious and weird locations. Banks clears up most of the perplexities by gradually unfolding his more outlandish ideas without the expositions reading like dry infodumps.
As with most Culture books there are multiple plot strands that Banks skillfully juggles and gradually weave together. The main plotline is to do with “Hell”, which is a virtual environment where digitized mind-states (consciousness) of dead people (souls of sorts) are put into perpetual punishment. The virtual Hell depicted in Surface Detail where one of the protagonists spend her time is indeed a very miserable and violent place where death is not an end to the torment as it is immediately followed by reactivation.
In spite of the very dark theme the novel is at times very humorous. The humour mainly comes from the dialogue and behavior of the Minds, the uber AI that controls the Culture civilization. I can't show you examples of the more comical moments out of context though. There is a large element of cyberpunk in this book. Fans of Neuromancer and Altered Carbon should find a lot to enjoy in this book. If Redshirts or The Martian represent your preferred flavor of sci-fi this book may not suit you. Beside great characters, ideas, humour, prose and dialogue, Banks is also brilliant with nomenclatures, the very long ship names and drone names are awesome yet subtly meaningful.
If I have one complaint it would be that the pace sags a little after the half-way point of the book, especially as one character is negotiating to buy a top of the line spaceship. However, the novel’s pace soon picks up again, in fact one confrontation scene between a protagonist and her arch enemy almost had me jump out of my seat. Surface Detail is highly recommended for anyone who enjoys Banks’ Culture series books, I am not sure it is the best entry point into the series, The Player of Games would be better for that I think. I already bought Look to Windward so I am looking forward to that.
Reading Iain M. Banks is more challenging than most sci-fi authors though, his novel’s structure and plotline are often very complex, byzantine even; but the reader’s effort is always rewarded. With Surface Detail Banks takes about 70 pages to set up the pieces and introduce the characters before the narrative settles down enough for me to familiarize myself with the characters and the situation. Having said that, the first few chapters are immediately interesting though a little perplexing. In this early section of the book Banks introduces quite a few point of view protagonists in mysterious and weird locations. Banks clears up most of the perplexities by gradually unfolding his more outlandish ideas without the expositions reading like dry infodumps.
As with most Culture books there are multiple plot strands that Banks skillfully juggles and gradually weave together. The main plotline is to do with “Hell”, which is a virtual environment where digitized mind-states (consciousness) of dead people (souls of sorts) are put into perpetual punishment. The virtual Hell depicted in Surface Detail where one of the protagonists spend her time is indeed a very miserable and violent place where death is not an end to the torment as it is immediately followed by reactivation.
In spite of the very dark theme the novel is at times very humorous. The humour mainly comes from the dialogue and behavior of the Minds, the uber AI that controls the Culture civilization. I can't show you examples of the more comical moments out of context though. There is a large element of cyberpunk in this book. Fans of Neuromancer and Altered Carbon should find a lot to enjoy in this book. If Redshirts or The Martian represent your preferred flavor of sci-fi this book may not suit you. Beside great characters, ideas, humour, prose and dialogue, Banks is also brilliant with nomenclatures, the very long ship names and drone names are awesome yet subtly meaningful.
If I have one complaint it would be that the pace sags a little after the half-way point of the book, especially as one character is negotiating to buy a top of the line spaceship. However, the novel’s pace soon picks up again, in fact one confrontation scene between a protagonist and her arch enemy almost had me jump out of my seat. Surface Detail is highly recommended for anyone who enjoys Banks’ Culture series books, I am not sure it is the best entry point into the series, The Player of Games would be better for that I think. I already bought Look to Windward so I am looking forward to that.
January 17, 2012
How do I love thee, Culture universe? Let me count the ways by playing--
Culture bingo!
Awesome tech: check
For starters, we have the standard fare of neural laces, AIs, drug glands, etc etc, everything that makes the Culture a level 8 civ. Today's main course is a Bulbitian, an ancient ship and a talking singularity. For desert, have a virtual Hell. Oh my.
Cool aliens: sorta-check
A clear majority of pan-human players this time, but you gotta love the GFCF. Plus, the Pavuleans are like...elephants or something? I can't quite remember.
Best AIs in science fiction: check
The Culture ships will never not be amazing. And funny. Oh to be on a GSV just once.
Humour: check
Demeisen, anyone? Banks should get awards for the way writes human/machine interaction. (Minor niggle: Not enough drones this time!)
Physics I don't get: check
Come on. There's a Talking. SINGULARITY. Boom.
Unputdownable: BINGO.
Also, if you, like me, have a habit of browsing the final pages of a book before you're even half-way through? DON'T. Not this time! Or if you must, don't look at the final word of the book. (HOW'S THIS FOR PSYCHOLOGICAL TORTURE). I, for one, didn't, so I didn't see it coming, and my jaw dropped about a mile. Now to read it again, knowing what I do.
Loved this. Despite some slow bits and some characters whose purpose still isn't clear to me (e.g. Yime), I still worship at Banks's altar.
Culture bingo!
Awesome tech: check
For starters, we have the standard fare of neural laces, AIs, drug glands, etc etc, everything that makes the Culture a level 8 civ. Today's main course is a Bulbitian, an ancient ship and a talking singularity. For desert, have a virtual Hell. Oh my.
Cool aliens: sorta-check
A clear majority of pan-human players this time, but you gotta love the GFCF. Plus, the Pavuleans are like...elephants or something? I can't quite remember.
Best AIs in science fiction: check
The Culture ships will never not be amazing. And funny. Oh to be on a GSV just once.
Humour: check
Demeisen, anyone? Banks should get awards for the way writes human/machine interaction. (Minor niggle: Not enough drones this time!)
Physics I don't get: check
Come on. There's a Talking. SINGULARITY. Boom.
Unputdownable: BINGO.
Also, if you, like me, have a habit of browsing the final pages of a book before you're even half-way through? DON'T. Not this time! Or if you must, don't look at the final word of the book. (HOW'S THIS FOR PSYCHOLOGICAL TORTURE). I, for one, didn't, so I didn't see it coming, and my jaw dropped about a mile. Now to read it again, knowing what I do.
Loved this. Despite some slow bits and some characters whose purpose still isn't clear to me (e.g. Yime), I still worship at Banks's altar.
November 14, 2017
Well, it was better than 'Matter'.
But to me at least, Banks flaws are really beginning to start to irritate.
Banks seems completely unwilling to let anything actually challenge his precious 'Culture'. The typical story arc is to develop some sort of nominally galaxy threatening challenge to the Culture, which, near the end of the book, he'll reveal to be pathetically overmatched by the most trivial exercise of Culture might which arrives to aid the protagonist in all of its omnipotent dues ex machina glory right at the end thereby killing the tension he developed so carefully as easily as it kills the mustachioed scenery chomping one dimensional villains.
I mean seriously, Banks would hardly be more transparent if he had Gandalf riding in on the back of some giant eagles. I know what Tolkien is trying to say, but what is Banks trying to say?
Banks stories have become so stagnant and the Culture so impervious to change, that I'm beginning to really sympathize with the in story Sublimed that think the Culture needs to get out of perpetual adolescence and finish growing up. Can't we do at least one story that isn't a zero sum game? I mean these are novels written by one of the greats of modern science fiction, and not episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. At least, I think that they are. Is this 'Culture' really an end state past which no thought is possible? Can't anything even shake their apparently untouchable assumptions? The stories are even beginning to undermine themselves. Supposedly the Idrian War left half the ship Minds involved in it suffering from some cybernetic Post-Traumatic stress disorder and that's been hitherto one of the series major themes; but, it doesn't seem to me like the current generation of Culture Minds is going to have that problem given the relish that they now have for killing things. Is that or is that not positive more civilized growth in The Culture's perspective indicative of a maturing civilization? And at what point is Banks going to end up being as unreflective as the writers of 'The Authority' comic books?
I couldn't tell whether or not Banks was deliberately opening up more and more about the true second class citizen status of humans in the Culture in this book deliberately, or whether the fact that the minds really deep down don't consider humanity to be anything more than beloved, potentially disposable pets (not really persons the way Ships are) had ceased to bother him. And for all the fact that he's getting more explicit in his comparisons to the culture and its enemies to modern political systems or beliefs, he seems for me to be more and more deeply muddling his utopia vs. dystopia comparisons. Is that deliberate, or has he simply ceased to question his own framework?
The more he travels from his initial point of humans and AI's working as legal and moral and even in some cases utilitarian equals to humanity as beloved pet, the more lie it gives to the understanding of the characters in the story to how their world actually works. Take the 'given' in the story that the Culture has no currency. We are told again and again that the Culture has evolved past the need for currency. But if you actually try to examine the text to find out how the seemingly informal currencyless, lawless system actually works you soon realize that it is currencyless and lawless only from the human perspective. Much as the family dog may believe that he lives in a communist utopia of share and share alike when really the dog just simply isn't allowed to use the credit card, the humans in the Culture live in a world with a strictly defined currency - they just aren't allowed to own any of it. Granted, humans don’t exactly use their resources wisely, but is Banks saying that what we really need to do is submit ourselves and our resources wholly to the whims of benevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient beings?
As best as I can tell, the actual currency of the culture, by which I mean the tokens by which labor is allocated in case anyone doesn’t know what money actually is, is the esteem held by the Minds. Now, in humans, 'esteem' is an abstract concept that can't be usefully traded on. But it's quite clear from the nature of Minds, that abstract concepts are in fact concrete, definable, quantifiable and can be traded on. The Minds in fact appear to conduct economic business under an entrepreneurial free market. It's either that, or else there is a central planning committee out there that can order other minds to exert their labor to create 2000 of these half-psychotic high-tech macho warships according to a standard design. As best as I can tell, ordering minds around would be like herding cats, and there is certainly no evidence of a central planning committee. What is really going on isn't communism, it's a free market barter economy tokenized by concrete measurements of esteem and favor that can be traded and probably even speculated on. The real economy is no more something humans are allowed to participate in than they are allowed to understand the way the Culture's actual legal system works. Humans participate in the real economy only in the way that a dog that fetches his master’s slippers and doesn’t doodoo on the bed may get a bigger bone in his Christmas stocking.
I’m not sure that it is exactly capitalism except maybe as idealized version with near infinite buyers and sellers possessing near omniscience, but it’s certainly not communism either. I can’t actually tell if Banks realizes that, or if he honestly believes that that all it would take is genetically reengineering humanity, producing cybernetic demigods of near infallible reason, and putting them in possession a nearly infinite supply of energy and materials to actually make communism work. Because, if it is the latter, then I’m not sure whether that constitutes a damning condemnation of communism as an economic system, or the thinnest attempt at justifying continuing to adhere to a failed murderous ideology since Holocaust denial.
Incidentally, the legal system is described as a ‘Court of Public Opinion’ but apparently actually also quantifiable by similar measures of esteem and some sort of common law framework so that judgments and opinions can actually be measured or discarded to produce a final binding result. The closest modern legal system to it would appear to be Shia Islam’s kritarchy system. Which, I find really ironic.
Don’t get me started on Banks exploration of religion.
Anyway, I enjoyed all the deep onion-like layers of the book and the fact that they didn't seem to have a bottom, but just for a while I'd like the narrator voice in the story to be actually as mature and complex as Banks story seems to be. Here’s to hoping that something will actually happen in the Culture in the future and we’ll get a chance to see a conflict that can’t be resolved by remorselessly and effortlessly blowing things up.
But to me at least, Banks flaws are really beginning to start to irritate.
Banks seems completely unwilling to let anything actually challenge his precious 'Culture'. The typical story arc is to develop some sort of nominally galaxy threatening challenge to the Culture, which, near the end of the book, he'll reveal to be pathetically overmatched by the most trivial exercise of Culture might which arrives to aid the protagonist in all of its omnipotent dues ex machina glory right at the end thereby killing the tension he developed so carefully as easily as it kills the mustachioed scenery chomping one dimensional villains.
I mean seriously, Banks would hardly be more transparent if he had Gandalf riding in on the back of some giant eagles. I know what Tolkien is trying to say, but what is Banks trying to say?
Banks stories have become so stagnant and the Culture so impervious to change, that I'm beginning to really sympathize with the in story Sublimed that think the Culture needs to get out of perpetual adolescence and finish growing up. Can't we do at least one story that isn't a zero sum game? I mean these are novels written by one of the greats of modern science fiction, and not episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. At least, I think that they are. Is this 'Culture' really an end state past which no thought is possible? Can't anything even shake their apparently untouchable assumptions? The stories are even beginning to undermine themselves. Supposedly the Idrian War left half the ship Minds involved in it suffering from some cybernetic Post-Traumatic stress disorder and that's been hitherto one of the series major themes; but, it doesn't seem to me like the current generation of Culture Minds is going to have that problem given the relish that they now have for killing things. Is that or is that not positive more civilized growth in The Culture's perspective indicative of a maturing civilization? And at what point is Banks going to end up being as unreflective as the writers of 'The Authority' comic books?
I couldn't tell whether or not Banks was deliberately opening up more and more about the true second class citizen status of humans in the Culture in this book deliberately, or whether the fact that the minds really deep down don't consider humanity to be anything more than beloved, potentially disposable pets (not really persons the way Ships are) had ceased to bother him. And for all the fact that he's getting more explicit in his comparisons to the culture and its enemies to modern political systems or beliefs, he seems for me to be more and more deeply muddling his utopia vs. dystopia comparisons. Is that deliberate, or has he simply ceased to question his own framework?
The more he travels from his initial point of humans and AI's working as legal and moral and even in some cases utilitarian equals to humanity as beloved pet, the more lie it gives to the understanding of the characters in the story to how their world actually works. Take the 'given' in the story that the Culture has no currency. We are told again and again that the Culture has evolved past the need for currency. But if you actually try to examine the text to find out how the seemingly informal currencyless, lawless system actually works you soon realize that it is currencyless and lawless only from the human perspective. Much as the family dog may believe that he lives in a communist utopia of share and share alike when really the dog just simply isn't allowed to use the credit card, the humans in the Culture live in a world with a strictly defined currency - they just aren't allowed to own any of it. Granted, humans don’t exactly use their resources wisely, but is Banks saying that what we really need to do is submit ourselves and our resources wholly to the whims of benevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient beings?
As best as I can tell, the actual currency of the culture, by which I mean the tokens by which labor is allocated in case anyone doesn’t know what money actually is, is the esteem held by the Minds. Now, in humans, 'esteem' is an abstract concept that can't be usefully traded on. But it's quite clear from the nature of Minds, that abstract concepts are in fact concrete, definable, quantifiable and can be traded on. The Minds in fact appear to conduct economic business under an entrepreneurial free market. It's either that, or else there is a central planning committee out there that can order other minds to exert their labor to create 2000 of these half-psychotic high-tech macho warships according to a standard design. As best as I can tell, ordering minds around would be like herding cats, and there is certainly no evidence of a central planning committee. What is really going on isn't communism, it's a free market barter economy tokenized by concrete measurements of esteem and favor that can be traded and probably even speculated on. The real economy is no more something humans are allowed to participate in than they are allowed to understand the way the Culture's actual legal system works. Humans participate in the real economy only in the way that a dog that fetches his master’s slippers and doesn’t doodoo on the bed may get a bigger bone in his Christmas stocking.
I’m not sure that it is exactly capitalism except maybe as idealized version with near infinite buyers and sellers possessing near omniscience, but it’s certainly not communism either. I can’t actually tell if Banks realizes that, or if he honestly believes that that all it would take is genetically reengineering humanity, producing cybernetic demigods of near infallible reason, and putting them in possession a nearly infinite supply of energy and materials to actually make communism work. Because, if it is the latter, then I’m not sure whether that constitutes a damning condemnation of communism as an economic system, or the thinnest attempt at justifying continuing to adhere to a failed murderous ideology since Holocaust denial.
Incidentally, the legal system is described as a ‘Court of Public Opinion’ but apparently actually also quantifiable by similar measures of esteem and some sort of common law framework so that judgments and opinions can actually be measured or discarded to produce a final binding result. The closest modern legal system to it would appear to be Shia Islam’s kritarchy system. Which, I find really ironic.
Don’t get me started on Banks exploration of religion.
Anyway, I enjoyed all the deep onion-like layers of the book and the fact that they didn't seem to have a bottom, but just for a while I'd like the narrator voice in the story to be actually as mature and complex as Banks story seems to be. Here’s to hoping that something will actually happen in the Culture in the future and we’ll get a chance to see a conflict that can’t be resolved by remorselessly and effortlessly blowing things up.
May 12, 2024
These Culture books just get better and better. Wow, this one was excellent - as good as my previous favorites, Use of Weapons and Excession. Just suberb world-building, gut-wrenching action, kick-ass protagonists, and a complex but fascinating and compelling plot. Love it, just sad that there is only one more :-/
Fino Reviews Iain M Banks Sci-Fi and Culture series
Culture Series
- https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
- https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
- https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
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Non-Culture Sci-Fi
- https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
- https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
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- https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Fino Reviews Iain M Banks Sci-Fi and Culture series
Culture Series
- https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... - https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... - https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... - https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... - https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... - https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... - https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... - https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... - https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... - https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... - https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...Non-Culture Sci-Fi
- https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... - https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... - https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... - https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
December 22, 2015
First things first: does anyone else picture Demeisen as David Tennant? Gaunt, gangling, fast-talking, humorous, with a tendency to switch within moments from cheerful to scarily intense, and with a jaunty enthusiasm for sharing viewpoints that...uh...have a tendency to fall outside the usual moral constraints? Every time Demeisen talked, I heard David Tennant.
Now the actual plot. Surface Detail centers around the concept of afterlives, and hell--well, hells-- in particular. Many "civilized" cultures had some basis for hell in their faiths, and when digital afterlives became a reality, they projected these beliefs onto the new realities. Without Hell, they argue, there is no moral center, no consequence for evil actions. Other civilizations--the Culture in particular--consider the idea of entombing sentient beings into eternal torment to be barbaric. And this is something that the reader, presumably, agrees with. But the interesting aspect, to my mind, is the logical extension into the Judeo-Christian belief system: if it's not okay to lock people up in Hell for all eternity, (1) why do we believe a loving God would do it, and (2) if we have some doubt about the reality of our own Hell, is it morally acceptable to threaten to people with that fate? How can we accept that an ultimate being would perform an act we find so repulsive in the virtual? The major distinction between our world and the one Banks creates--and one that Banks doesn't even discuss--is the power of the decision. Hell becomes marginally acceptable in the believer's mind because the ultimate decision is made by an all-perfect, all-knowing, all-forgiving(ish) God. But if your Hell is a piece of software, how can any fallible panhuman have the right to send someone there?
And then there's Interesting Issue Number Two, which again goes mostly unexplored by Banks but which, despite its familiarity, kept me fully preoccupied during the reading of the book: do the ends justify the means? Battlelines have been drawn up between the pro-Hell and anti-Hell factions, virtual battles rage throughout the afterlives, and Hell is winning the war. So the anti-Hell side decides to cheat, and, when all else fails, forswear their oaths and bring battle to the Real. The question: how is that possibly okay? Does the noble task of freeing the inmates of Hell overturn the respect for the rules? If the pro-Hell faction decided to cheat, we would see them as despicable. So why do we accept it when the good guys betray morality? The sum total of recrimination the pro-Hell guys receive is about a page's worth, but the irony echoes throughout the book.
The ideas of Surface Detail are fascinating; the plot and characters, not so much. The whole plot seems to me to be a vehicle for the ideas, to the point that I don't think Banks ever looked back and realized just how futile the characters' actions actually are. Looking back, I think there is exactly one character with meaningful agency in events: Demeisen. Who is awesome, in a David-Tennantish variety of creepy-but-awesome, or possibly awesome-but-creepy. Everyone else? And the villain of the piece is so utterly one-dimensionally evil that his very presence strips the book of nuance and complexity. In the end, only the Minds have real roles in the plot, which, given some of the issues brought up, may be the intent.
I have no idea if Banks was attempting to show the flaws in the Culture or if he genuinely thought their way of doing things is the best way. A few things that come out in this book: first of all, as one of the Minds cheerfully explains to Yime, Minds' lives mean more than human or drone. So everyone in the Culture is equal; it's just that ship Minds are more equal than others. And then there's the socioeconomic side. As another Mind tells Lededje, while SC has been known to off people at will, power and influence make them hesitate. Power and influence make their deeds have consequence in a way that simple life does not. And then there's the touted Culture "Court of Public Opinion.," where decisions regarding right and wrong are decided via peer pressure and social norms. It's absolutely not a democracy: as the Minds carefully point out, different groups' opinions have different weights, with Minds, of course, holding the lion's share. Again, everyone is equal, but some are more equal than others. Majority and "gentlemen's agreements" have been proxy to law for much of history, often notably in times of horrific injustice. Such concepts of honor were highly respected in the American South, for instance, and few saw hypocrisy in maintaining honor with one's peers and enslavement of one's subordinates. And that's leaving out the issues of popularity, presentation, skew, and every other aspect of communication that turns objective fact into subjective experience. Before you assume that openness equals fairness, remember some of the great internet pile-ons and lynching sessions that turned out to be completely unjustified. Whenever anyone starts touting the fairness of the court of public opinion, I get a bad taste in my mouth.
Every scifi author eventually seems compelled to write a book challenging religion and the constraints it puts upon society, and Banks' contribution is certainly thought-provoking. Even though its characters and plot may be superficial, the ideas and questions of Surface Detail have depths worth fathoming.
Now the actual plot. Surface Detail centers around the concept of afterlives, and hell--well, hells-- in particular. Many "civilized" cultures had some basis for hell in their faiths, and when digital afterlives became a reality, they projected these beliefs onto the new realities. Without Hell, they argue, there is no moral center, no consequence for evil actions. Other civilizations--the Culture in particular--consider the idea of entombing sentient beings into eternal torment to be barbaric. And this is something that the reader, presumably, agrees with. But the interesting aspect, to my mind, is the logical extension into the Judeo-Christian belief system: if it's not okay to lock people up in Hell for all eternity, (1) why do we believe a loving God would do it, and (2) if we have some doubt about the reality of our own Hell, is it morally acceptable to threaten to people with that fate? How can we accept that an ultimate being would perform an act we find so repulsive in the virtual? The major distinction between our world and the one Banks creates--and one that Banks doesn't even discuss--is the power of the decision. Hell becomes marginally acceptable in the believer's mind because the ultimate decision is made by an all-perfect, all-knowing, all-forgiving(ish) God. But if your Hell is a piece of software, how can any fallible panhuman have the right to send someone there?
And then there's Interesting Issue Number Two, which again goes mostly unexplored by Banks but which, despite its familiarity, kept me fully preoccupied during the reading of the book: do the ends justify the means? Battlelines have been drawn up between the pro-Hell and anti-Hell factions, virtual battles rage throughout the afterlives, and Hell is winning the war. So the anti-Hell side decides to cheat, and, when all else fails, forswear their oaths and bring battle to the Real. The question: how is that possibly okay? Does the noble task of freeing the inmates of Hell overturn the respect for the rules? If the pro-Hell faction decided to cheat, we would see them as despicable. So why do we accept it when the good guys betray morality? The sum total of recrimination the pro-Hell guys receive is about a page's worth, but the irony echoes throughout the book.
The ideas of Surface Detail are fascinating; the plot and characters, not so much. The whole plot seems to me to be a vehicle for the ideas, to the point that I don't think Banks ever looked back and realized just how futile the characters' actions actually are. Looking back, I think there is exactly one character with meaningful agency in events: Demeisen. Who is awesome, in a David-Tennantish variety of creepy-but-awesome, or possibly awesome-but-creepy. Everyone else? And the villain of the piece is so utterly one-dimensionally evil that his very presence strips the book of nuance and complexity. In the end, only the Minds have real roles in the plot, which, given some of the issues brought up, may be the intent.
I have no idea if Banks was attempting to show the flaws in the Culture or if he genuinely thought their way of doing things is the best way. A few things that come out in this book: first of all, as one of the Minds cheerfully explains to Yime, Minds' lives mean more than human or drone. So everyone in the Culture is equal; it's just that ship Minds are more equal than others. And then there's the socioeconomic side. As another Mind tells Lededje, while SC has been known to off people at will, power and influence make them hesitate. Power and influence make their deeds have consequence in a way that simple life does not. And then there's the touted Culture "Court of Public Opinion.," where decisions regarding right and wrong are decided via peer pressure and social norms. It's absolutely not a democracy: as the Minds carefully point out, different groups' opinions have different weights, with Minds, of course, holding the lion's share. Again, everyone is equal, but some are more equal than others. Majority and "gentlemen's agreements" have been proxy to law for much of history, often notably in times of horrific injustice. Such concepts of honor were highly respected in the American South, for instance, and few saw hypocrisy in maintaining honor with one's peers and enslavement of one's subordinates. And that's leaving out the issues of popularity, presentation, skew, and every other aspect of communication that turns objective fact into subjective experience. Before you assume that openness equals fairness, remember some of the great internet pile-ons and lynching sessions that turned out to be completely unjustified. Whenever anyone starts touting the fairness of the court of public opinion, I get a bad taste in my mouth.
Every scifi author eventually seems compelled to write a book challenging religion and the constraints it puts upon society, and Banks' contribution is certainly thought-provoking. Even though its characters and plot may be superficial, the ideas and questions of Surface Detail have depths worth fathoming.
October 25, 2010
Banks is one of my all time favourites, but had put out some disappointments recently - Algebraist and Matter were just plain no good. Some of the straight fiction stuff had also been really below par, but he's put out Transitions and now this and I'm ready to say 'all is forgiven.' There are some cookie-cutter chapters, where you think that he's repeating scenes and characters and just varying the outlandish architecture/hunt-scene/cruel game/unusual dinner and pretending that it's something else. There are genuinely weak elements... BUT, the Culture is back, baby! The tech is awesome, the aliens are fun. SC is joined by three more Contact departments and throwing around vicious, amoral super Abominator class spaceships and the bad guy is a real bastard. I've been sick for a bit, and this was my company. I can't remember the last time I was as happy to be unwell.
August 21, 2022
Surface Detail reminded me of Matter-- a host of gee wiz ideas, snarky Minds, various aliens and such assembled around a rather simplistic plot. The background for the story emerges gradually and involves a virtual war between Pro and Anti hell factions/species. Once civilizations reach a certain point where they can construct 'heavens' and such, where people can 'retire' to after their bodily death (via 'soul keeper' tech), many species also constructed 'hells'. Banks is in rare form here, with rather pointed musings about morality and religion, for it seems some species believe that the threat of Hell is the only thing that makes people not do evil things. Eventually, the various civilizations decided to address the question of maintaining Hells by having a virtual war between the Pro and Anti Hell factions, with the outcome being the final decider on the issue. This virtual was has been ongoing for 30 years now, but apparently, the Anti Hell faction is losing...
Surface Detail begins with a series of chapters that end in the death of the featured protagonist, only to have them 'revented' later to become the main characters in the story. The basic plot is really simple. One of the revented persons, Lededje, our main protagonist, was basically a debt slave (debts her father owed no less) to a really nasty asshole named Veppers, a big wig in a pan-human society lower on the tech scale than Culture. She is murdered brutally by Veppers in an escape attempt, but due to an unknown neural lace, she is 'revented' by the Culture and wants some payback-- e.g., serious revenge on Veppers. We are also introduced to a soldier in the Hell wars, where it seems each chapter he dies a different way. There is also an alien in a Hell, who went there to make public how horrible it is, but while her partner escaped, she was stuck there. Finally, we have a Culture agent, not in Special Circumstances, but in another branch of Contact that deals with the dead.
As I mentioned in the beginning here, Banks seems content here to toss myriad big ideas and such right and left rather than provide a complex plot. If you are looking to be dazzled by his imagination, you will not be disappointed-- we have several alien species, strange alien habitats, lots of gee wiz Culture tech, including several snarky old ship minds, and a fairly detailed expose of the the society Veppers de facto rules. All good! Yet for me, the side story arcs featuring such dragged on more than one occasion and did not really add much to the overall story. Surface Detail felt more like an amalgamation of ideas (fun, interesting ones) rather than a cohesive story. Banks does give us lots to chew on here, especially with his thinly veiled critique of our scarcity based society and religion, but really did not break any new ground here. YMMV, however! Fun, but definitely not the best in the series. 3 stars.
Surface Detail begins with a series of chapters that end in the death of the featured protagonist, only to have them 'revented' later to become the main characters in the story. The basic plot is really simple. One of the revented persons, Lededje, our main protagonist, was basically a debt slave (debts her father owed no less) to a really nasty asshole named Veppers, a big wig in a pan-human society lower on the tech scale than Culture. She is murdered brutally by Veppers in an escape attempt, but due to an unknown neural lace, she is 'revented' by the Culture and wants some payback-- e.g., serious revenge on Veppers. We are also introduced to a soldier in the Hell wars, where it seems each chapter he dies a different way. There is also an alien in a Hell, who went there to make public how horrible it is, but while her partner escaped, she was stuck there. Finally, we have a Culture agent, not in Special Circumstances, but in another branch of Contact that deals with the dead.
As I mentioned in the beginning here, Banks seems content here to toss myriad big ideas and such right and left rather than provide a complex plot. If you are looking to be dazzled by his imagination, you will not be disappointed-- we have several alien species, strange alien habitats, lots of gee wiz Culture tech, including several snarky old ship minds, and a fairly detailed expose of the the society Veppers de facto rules. All good! Yet for me, the side story arcs featuring such dragged on more than one occasion and did not really add much to the overall story. Surface Detail felt more like an amalgamation of ideas (fun, interesting ones) rather than a cohesive story. Banks does give us lots to chew on here, especially with his thinly veiled critique of our scarcity based society and religion, but really did not break any new ground here. YMMV, however! Fun, but definitely not the best in the series. 3 stars.
October 22, 2018
Banks has outdone himself in what might be the best Culture novel, in a series which never fails to deliver. In typical Banks fashion, he masterfully weaves disparate story threads into a whole, building into a magnificent crescendo of galactic intrigue and confrontation.
The story shines with an intricate plot, featuring vast, multi-nested virtual realities, and a cast of amazingly well developed characters, which of course include some of the wonderfully advanced, witty, sentient ship AIs (Minds). We're also treated to quite a bit of insight into the history and inner workings of many aspects of the Culture itself, Banks' fascinating, ultra advanced, post scarcity civilization.
My only regret is that I'm quickly running out of Culture novels to read :(
The story shines with an intricate plot, featuring vast, multi-nested virtual realities, and a cast of amazingly well developed characters, which of course include some of the wonderfully advanced, witty, sentient ship AIs (Minds). We're also treated to quite a bit of insight into the history and inner workings of many aspects of the Culture itself, Banks' fascinating, ultra advanced, post scarcity civilization.
My only regret is that I'm quickly running out of Culture novels to read :(
December 11, 2011
When one rates an audiobook, is one rating the quality of the underlying written work, the quality of the audio version, or both? I suppose I'll just clarify that my five-star rating applies to both in this case.
Surface Detail is the latest of the Culture Novels from Iain M. Banks. The wait for this one was worth it. I think I'm ready to say that Use of Weapons has finally been supplanted as the best of the Culture books.
I'll write a proper review of Surface Detail, the book, after I've read the hardcopy. For now I'll make a couple of points.
First, I love how the shock and consequences of the Idiran War continue to resonate across 1,500 years of Culture history. Fascinating stuff. How long will the shock of World War II resonate across our world's history? It seems that, only 65 years after WWII's conclusion, the shock is dissipating fairly rapidly at this point.
Second, this book keeps you going until, literally, the very last word of the epilogue. Obviously, I can't say here what that last word is without hitting the spoiler box. Let's simply say that the last word is worth waiting for, that it imparts a great deal of meaning to the rest of the book, a book already quite full of meaning. Well, maybe I should clarify that the last word imparts meaning to those of us who are Culture fans and have read a certain prior Culture book. Again, I can't say which book, or you might figure out what that last word is, which in turn would spoil some of Surface Detail.
About the audiobook, specifically: Surface Detail is read by my one of my favorite narrators, Peter Kenny. He's a master of voices; at times it seems that each character is being read by a different actor/narrator, but it's all just him. Peter Kenny also read the Transition audiobook, for those interested, and my comments about him in that review apply with equal force here. Peter Kenny's voice and tone sound very much like the book would sound in my head were I reading hardcopy. He and Iain Banks are a match made in heaven. I have since listened to Peter Kenny's readings of Consider Phlebas and Player of Games and, I think, my ears have a man crush.
I suppose, then, I can't recommend Surface Detail, in hardcopy or audio format, strongly enough to those of you who share my love of good sci-fi. Happy listening!
Surface Detail is the latest of the Culture Novels from Iain M. Banks. The wait for this one was worth it. I think I'm ready to say that Use of Weapons has finally been supplanted as the best of the Culture books.
I'll write a proper review of Surface Detail, the book, after I've read the hardcopy. For now I'll make a couple of points.
First, I love how the shock and consequences of the Idiran War continue to resonate across 1,500 years of Culture history. Fascinating stuff. How long will the shock of World War II resonate across our world's history? It seems that, only 65 years after WWII's conclusion, the shock is dissipating fairly rapidly at this point.
Second, this book keeps you going until, literally, the very last word of the epilogue. Obviously, I can't say here what that last word is without hitting the spoiler box. Let's simply say that the last word is worth waiting for, that it imparts a great deal of meaning to the rest of the book, a book already quite full of meaning. Well, maybe I should clarify that the last word imparts meaning to those of us who are Culture fans and have read a certain prior Culture book. Again, I can't say which book, or you might figure out what that last word is, which in turn would spoil some of Surface Detail.
About the audiobook, specifically: Surface Detail is read by my one of my favorite narrators, Peter Kenny. He's a master of voices; at times it seems that each character is being read by a different actor/narrator, but it's all just him. Peter Kenny also read the Transition audiobook, for those interested, and my comments about him in that review apply with equal force here. Peter Kenny's voice and tone sound very much like the book would sound in my head were I reading hardcopy. He and Iain Banks are a match made in heaven. I have since listened to Peter Kenny's readings of Consider Phlebas and Player of Games and, I think, my ears have a man crush.
I suppose, then, I can't recommend Surface Detail, in hardcopy or audio format, strongly enough to those of you who share my love of good sci-fi. Happy listening!
March 18, 2015
If you’re not already a citizen – if only in dreams – of the Culture then Surface Detail is not your path to naturalization. This is not to say that this isn’t a worthy part of the Culture mythology – it is. I enjoyed reading it, meeting a few more of the Culture’s citizens and learning a bit more about how its nonhierarchic, anarcho-communist civilization works. But that may be why non-Culture aficionados shouldn’t start off with this book. It’s heavy with unexplained Culture jargon (e.g., Sublimed races, the Ulteriors, Special Circumstances, the Idiran War); info dumps appear but they’re about new aspects of the milieu (e.g., Quietus, Restoria, the Nauptre Reliquaria and the Gespetian-Fardesile Cultural Federacy (mercifully shorted to GFCF)) and won’t help the novice. The best introductions to the Culture are still the earlier novels like Consider Phlebas and The Player of Games (my favorite).
Surface Detail takes up the Culture’s stance toward death and what happens to your “soul” when you die. Even the less advanced space-faring civilizations of the galaxy have the technology to store the brain states of their citizens. The Culture uses such tech to back up personalities that can be downloaded into new bodies (“revented”) whether in the event of death or simply because a person is tired of the current incarnation. Other civilizations, however, more religiously minded than the Culture, have created virtual Heavens and Hells to which their members migrate upon death. At the time the book opens, a virtual war (a “confliction”) has been waged for 30 real-time years between coalitions of pro-Hell civs and anti-Hell civs to decide the Hells’ ultimate fate. The anti-Hell forces are losing and plot to bring the confliction into the Real by destroying the physical substrates where the virtual Hells are hosted. The Culture, anti-Hell by nature and sympathy, has held aloof from the “war in Heaven” because it had been felt, at the war’s beginning, that its presence would have overbalanced the forces in play and made the anti-Hell coalition’s victory a surety. This doesn’t mean that the usual Culture suspects - i.e., Special Circumstances – aren’t trying to manipulate a win for the anti-Hell forces.
The existential dilemma for the Culture (at least for its biological citizens) is to live lives of meaning and consequence. Most manage to find some hobby or role that satisfies this need. Others find satisfaction by joining Contact (the lucky ones getting invited to join Contact’s black-ops bastard offspring Special Circumstances) or similar organizations (like Quietus). For the less group oriented, there’s always the options of the Ulteriors or the Forgotten. There’s a constant tension between not interfering with other civs and juggling affairs so that its neighbors come closer to the Culture’s ideal.
Against this backdrop, Banks weaves together the stories of six characters: Vatueil, a leader of the anti-Hell forces whose real identity links this novel to Use of Weapons (which is as spoilerish as I’ll get in this review; read the book to find out who); Prin and Chay, two inmates of one of the Hells; Joiler Veppers, the principal “bad guy”: Yime Nsokyi, a Quietus agent; and Lededje Y’breq, Veppers’ former slave. There’s a host of secondary characters as well, including Jasken, Veppers’ chief of security and the Culture Minds Me, I’m Counting (avatar Himerance) and Falling Outside The Normal Moral Constraints (aka FOTNMC, avatar Demeisen).
As I mentioned, I enjoyed this novel but I can’t help but feel that it would have been better focusing on fewer characters – I would opt for Lededje and Yime – and exploring the issue of death a bit more deeply. A case in point is the Veppers’ thread: He’s a disappointing villain because he’s a one-dimensional, mustache twirling figure. You know he’s loathsome and Banks piles on the loathsomeness until Veppers becomes a parody.
Another weakness chronic to the series is that humans are often just gilding – the super advanced tech of the Culture makes its biological citizens irrelevant. Which Banks recognizes: There’s a short subplot about the Culture’s efforts to contain a smatter outbreak* where Auppi Unstril, the human “pilot,” acknowledges that her presence aboard the ship limits its effectiveness. She’s there because it’s exciting, something to do and will make a real difference as opposed to a virtual adventure. Or that the FOTNMC single-handedly takes on the entire GFCF fleet and wins – and the FOTNMC is just a Limited Offensive Unit. Or that Lededje is murdered, resurrected and spends a good chunk of the novel trying to return to her homeworld to murder Veppers, only to have Demeisen deliver the coup de grâce. Banks is at his best when exploring the motivations of the Culture’s biological citizens or those who are reacting to its presence in their lives, and I think the book would have been better had he stuck more with Lededje and Yime.
I think with the last few Culture novels, Banks has been more focused on having fun with his universe than seriously exploring weightier themes, even though – as the jacket blurb says – “and it will not end until the Culture has gone to war with death itself.” He only tangentially raises the issues of consciousness and the meaning of death, and that’s primarily in the Prin/Chay thread, where the implicit conclusion is that the virtual Hells are cheats. They are constructed versions of what a particular species thinks is Heaven or Hell. Their denizens, copies of individuals whose “real” souls (whatever those might be) are forever lost to the perceptions of non-Sublimed cultures (and even then…).
To sum up, while Banks is more than capable of serious fiction, if you’re looking to find an in-depth exploration of consciousness (a la Blindsight) and life and death, you won’t find it here. You’ll also be disappointed if this is your first Culture exposure since you’ll need some background to fully understand what’s happening. However, if you’re already into the Culture and/or Banks, I think you’ll enjoy his latest space opera. In terms of quality, it falls somewhere in the middle of the spectrum – I liked it more than Matter or Look to Windward but not as much as his more focused, weightier efforts like Consider Phlebas or The Player of Games.
Surface Detail takes up the Culture’s stance toward death and what happens to your “soul” when you die. Even the less advanced space-faring civilizations of the galaxy have the technology to store the brain states of their citizens. The Culture uses such tech to back up personalities that can be downloaded into new bodies (“revented”) whether in the event of death or simply because a person is tired of the current incarnation. Other civilizations, however, more religiously minded than the Culture, have created virtual Heavens and Hells to which their members migrate upon death. At the time the book opens, a virtual war (a “confliction”) has been waged for 30 real-time years between coalitions of pro-Hell civs and anti-Hell civs to decide the Hells’ ultimate fate. The anti-Hell forces are losing and plot to bring the confliction into the Real by destroying the physical substrates where the virtual Hells are hosted. The Culture, anti-Hell by nature and sympathy, has held aloof from the “war in Heaven” because it had been felt, at the war’s beginning, that its presence would have overbalanced the forces in play and made the anti-Hell coalition’s victory a surety. This doesn’t mean that the usual Culture suspects - i.e., Special Circumstances – aren’t trying to manipulate a win for the anti-Hell forces.
The existential dilemma for the Culture (at least for its biological citizens) is to live lives of meaning and consequence. Most manage to find some hobby or role that satisfies this need. Others find satisfaction by joining Contact (the lucky ones getting invited to join Contact’s black-ops bastard offspring Special Circumstances) or similar organizations (like Quietus). For the less group oriented, there’s always the options of the Ulteriors or the Forgotten. There’s a constant tension between not interfering with other civs and juggling affairs so that its neighbors come closer to the Culture’s ideal.
Against this backdrop, Banks weaves together the stories of six characters: Vatueil, a leader of the anti-Hell forces whose real identity links this novel to Use of Weapons (which is as spoilerish as I’ll get in this review; read the book to find out who); Prin and Chay, two inmates of one of the Hells; Joiler Veppers, the principal “bad guy”: Yime Nsokyi, a Quietus agent; and Lededje Y’breq, Veppers’ former slave. There’s a host of secondary characters as well, including Jasken, Veppers’ chief of security and the Culture Minds Me, I’m Counting (avatar Himerance) and Falling Outside The Normal Moral Constraints (aka FOTNMC, avatar Demeisen).
As I mentioned, I enjoyed this novel but I can’t help but feel that it would have been better focusing on fewer characters – I would opt for Lededje and Yime – and exploring the issue of death a bit more deeply. A case in point is the Veppers’ thread: He’s a disappointing villain because he’s a one-dimensional, mustache twirling figure. You know he’s loathsome and Banks piles on the loathsomeness until Veppers becomes a parody.
Another weakness chronic to the series is that humans are often just gilding – the super advanced tech of the Culture makes its biological citizens irrelevant. Which Banks recognizes: There’s a short subplot about the Culture’s efforts to contain a smatter outbreak* where Auppi Unstril, the human “pilot,” acknowledges that her presence aboard the ship limits its effectiveness. She’s there because it’s exciting, something to do and will make a real difference as opposed to a virtual adventure. Or that the FOTNMC single-handedly takes on the entire GFCF fleet and wins – and the FOTNMC is just a Limited Offensive Unit. Or that Lededje is murdered, resurrected and spends a good chunk of the novel trying to return to her homeworld to murder Veppers, only to have Demeisen deliver the coup de grâce. Banks is at his best when exploring the motivations of the Culture’s biological citizens or those who are reacting to its presence in their lives, and I think the book would have been better had he stuck more with Lededje and Yime.
I think with the last few Culture novels, Banks has been more focused on having fun with his universe than seriously exploring weightier themes, even though – as the jacket blurb says – “and it will not end until the Culture has gone to war with death itself.” He only tangentially raises the issues of consciousness and the meaning of death, and that’s primarily in the Prin/Chay thread, where the implicit conclusion is that the virtual Hells are cheats. They are constructed versions of what a particular species thinks is Heaven or Hell. Their denizens, copies of individuals whose “real” souls (whatever those might be) are forever lost to the perceptions of non-Sublimed cultures (and even then…).
To sum up, while Banks is more than capable of serious fiction, if you’re looking to find an in-depth exploration of consciousness (a la Blindsight) and life and death, you won’t find it here. You’ll also be disappointed if this is your first Culture exposure since you’ll need some background to fully understand what’s happening. However, if you’re already into the Culture and/or Banks, I think you’ll enjoy his latest space opera. In terms of quality, it falls somewhere in the middle of the spectrum – I liked it more than Matter or Look to Windward but not as much as his more focused, weightier efforts like Consider Phlebas or The Player of Games.
May 28, 2020
*This is a spoiler-free review.*
Surface Detail by Iain M. Banks is the ninth book in his Culture series and the twelfth science fiction novel that he wrote. Each book in the series can be read as a standalone, but that being said; I would not recommend starting here.
(If you are interested in jumping into the Culture I would suggest starting with The Player of Games or Consider Phlebas.)
Surface Detail is also the second to last book that Banks wrote under this name before he died of cancer in 2013.
I normally wouldn't mention much about an author or their personal/health situations in a review, but I believe that the topic is so closely linked to the subject matter found within the story of Surface Detail, that it would be a disservice not to mention it.
This is - above all - a story about death, what it means to die and, therefore, the value of life. Within the Culture - this society that Banks has created - death is fixable, avoidable and repeatable. Using personality back-up and custom body re-growing technology, a person can "revent" within a few days, with all but the most recent of their memories fully intact. This is just one perk of such advanced technology.
Another option to those faced with death is a digital afterlife. A technically artificial heaven in which you can do whatever you so desire - with a potentially endless time frame for an individual to enjoy all the pleasures and entertainment conjurable. These afterlives can be as realistic as life in the Real and it is often hard to differentiate between them in quality alone.
BUT. Not all is perfect. Other involved societies that have taken to the galactic stage, (some of which rival the Culture in size, but never in technological know-how) have created Hells.
These digital Hells were created for the express purpose of torturing their inhabitants. Unending pain, mutilation and suffering. Many of the occupants go mad, losing all sense of themselves, knowing nothing but a huge array of the most creative pains that any being could possibly imagine.
*I should note that whilst some of these scenes are rather disturbing, it is never overly gratuitous or fetishised, but it's worth knowing it's there for those who try to steer clear of such writings.*
But yes, death is a dominant theme throughout the book and it doesn't shy away from asking, and sometimes trying to answer, the myriad of difficult questions associated with it.
The book follows 6 main character perspectives and a handful of smaller peripheral ones too.
- Our first is a young lady called Lededje Y'breq. Lededje is from a non-Culture world and her family is indebted to the wealthiest person in the system. She herself is part of the debt owed and is marked as property with a full body tattoo.
(This tattoo, and it's perceived importance, is what inspired the title Surface Detail.)
- Next is Joiler Veppers, an industrialist, playboy and the aforementioned wealthiest and most powerful man in the system - the owner of Lededje Y'breq.
- The third perspective is Vatueil, a soldier who is fighting on multiple levels of the virtual war between the pro and anti-hell societies of the galaxy.
- The next characters come as a pair. Prin and Chay are academics and lovers. They plan to expose the truth of the horrendous goings-on in the various Hell's to those ignorant of it back in the Real.
- Lastly is Yime Nsokyi, a Culture agent. She is part of a team known as Quietus, whose purview is dealing with and assisting those entities who have either retired from biological existence into a digital form, or those who have died and been resurrected/revented back into the Real.
I thought at first that this was too many perspectives. I felt as though I was bouncing around a lot and felt myself getting a bit confused at the beginning, but about 1/3 of the way through it all fell into place and I realised just how important each story was to the others, and to the story as a whole.
Whilst I do not know if Banks had yet been faced with his diagnosis at the point of writing this, it is very clear to me that he put a lot of thought into the importance and significance of death (or lack of) and the role it plays within a society.
Elevating these ideas, and many more, to a scope such as we are used to him doing within the Culture series, gives him a lot of space and time to really get creative and explore the themes through a multitude of lenses.
If you cannot tell from my ramblings, I adore Banks' writing and his imagination. The Culture novels are some of my all time favourites and I truly believe that anyone can find something in his books to enjoy, from the cool tech and his progressive thinking, to his wit and humour and his mind-bending ideas.
Whilst this isn't my favourite of his works, it's still lightyears ahead of many of the other sci-fi adventures out there.
This is another superb addition to the best Space Opera series available today.
4 stars.
_________________________
Thank you for reading this (once again) somewhat overlong review. I struggle to refrain myself when it comes to finishing and reviewing a Banks book and it is a real challenge to stay spoiler free.
I hope you are all doing well and that you are enjoying your current reads!
Up next for me will be Elantris by Brandon Sanderson!
Surface Detail by Iain M. Banks is the ninth book in his Culture series and the twelfth science fiction novel that he wrote. Each book in the series can be read as a standalone, but that being said; I would not recommend starting here.
(If you are interested in jumping into the Culture I would suggest starting with The Player of Games or Consider Phlebas.)
Surface Detail is also the second to last book that Banks wrote under this name before he died of cancer in 2013.
I normally wouldn't mention much about an author or their personal/health situations in a review, but I believe that the topic is so closely linked to the subject matter found within the story of Surface Detail, that it would be a disservice not to mention it.
This is - above all - a story about death, what it means to die and, therefore, the value of life. Within the Culture - this society that Banks has created - death is fixable, avoidable and repeatable. Using personality back-up and custom body re-growing technology, a person can "revent" within a few days, with all but the most recent of their memories fully intact. This is just one perk of such advanced technology.
Another option to those faced with death is a digital afterlife. A technically artificial heaven in which you can do whatever you so desire - with a potentially endless time frame for an individual to enjoy all the pleasures and entertainment conjurable. These afterlives can be as realistic as life in the Real and it is often hard to differentiate between them in quality alone.
"The vast, coruscating landscape below was probably the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in his long and varied existence.
It was heartbreaking that they had come here to destroy it utterly."
BUT. Not all is perfect. Other involved societies that have taken to the galactic stage, (some of which rival the Culture in size, but never in technological know-how) have created Hells.
These digital Hells were created for the express purpose of torturing their inhabitants. Unending pain, mutilation and suffering. Many of the occupants go mad, losing all sense of themselves, knowing nothing but a huge array of the most creative pains that any being could possibly imagine.
*I should note that whilst some of these scenes are rather disturbing, it is never overly gratuitous or fetishised, but it's worth knowing it's there for those who try to steer clear of such writings.*
But yes, death is a dominant theme throughout the book and it doesn't shy away from asking, and sometimes trying to answer, the myriad of difficult questions associated with it.
The book follows 6 main character perspectives and a handful of smaller peripheral ones too.
- Our first is a young lady called Lededje Y'breq. Lededje is from a non-Culture world and her family is indebted to the wealthiest person in the system. She herself is part of the debt owed and is marked as property with a full body tattoo.
(This tattoo, and it's perceived importance, is what inspired the title Surface Detail.)
- Next is Joiler Veppers, an industrialist, playboy and the aforementioned wealthiest and most powerful man in the system - the owner of Lededje Y'breq.
- The third perspective is Vatueil, a soldier who is fighting on multiple levels of the virtual war between the pro and anti-hell societies of the galaxy.
- The next characters come as a pair. Prin and Chay are academics and lovers. They plan to expose the truth of the horrendous goings-on in the various Hell's to those ignorant of it back in the Real.
- Lastly is Yime Nsokyi, a Culture agent. She is part of a team known as Quietus, whose purview is dealing with and assisting those entities who have either retired from biological existence into a digital form, or those who have died and been resurrected/revented back into the Real.
I thought at first that this was too many perspectives. I felt as though I was bouncing around a lot and felt myself getting a bit confused at the beginning, but about 1/3 of the way through it all fell into place and I realised just how important each story was to the others, and to the story as a whole.
“Naturally, also, both sides were convinced they had right on their side, not that either was remotely naive enough to think that had any possible bearing on the outcome whatsoever.”
Whilst I do not know if Banks had yet been faced with his diagnosis at the point of writing this, it is very clear to me that he put a lot of thought into the importance and significance of death (or lack of) and the role it plays within a society.
Elevating these ideas, and many more, to a scope such as we are used to him doing within the Culture series, gives him a lot of space and time to really get creative and explore the themes through a multitude of lenses.
"At such moments she felt she was the very heart and soul of the ship; the tiny animal kernel of its being, with every other part, from her own drug-jazzed body out, like force-multiplying layers of martial ability and destructive sophistication, each concentricity of level adding, extrapolating, intensifying.
She plunged into the storm of swirling motes."
If you cannot tell from my ramblings, I adore Banks' writing and his imagination. The Culture novels are some of my all time favourites and I truly believe that anyone can find something in his books to enjoy, from the cool tech and his progressive thinking, to his wit and humour and his mind-bending ideas.
Whilst this isn't my favourite of his works, it's still lightyears ahead of many of the other sci-fi adventures out there.
This is another superb addition to the best Space Opera series available today.
4 stars.
“All you ever were was a little bit of the universe, thinking to itself. Very specific; this bit, here, right now."
_________________________
Thank you for reading this (once again) somewhat overlong review. I struggle to refrain myself when it comes to finishing and reviewing a Banks book and it is a real challenge to stay spoiler free.
I hope you are all doing well and that you are enjoying your current reads!
Up next for me will be Elantris by Brandon Sanderson!
December 16, 2015
It begins in the realm of the Real, where matter still matters.
Iain M. Banksov Culture serijal me je oduševio već od prvog romana Consider Phlebas. Uvijek mi je trebalo malo da "uđem" u svaki roman, ali što sam dalje otkrivao Culture svijet mi je bio sve zanimljiviji, a Culture civilizacija mi je postala omiljena utopija. Vjerovatno je i jedina koja bi i mogla opstati jer u njoj ljudi nisu bitan faktor pa ni ne mogu dovesti do korupcije sistema i njegovog pada.
Culture civilizacijom vladaju Minds (kako i samo ime kaže Umovi) koji su učitani u ogromne brodove ili Orbitale - rijetko gdje Culture građani žive na planetima, većina je na ogromnim brodovima i svi žive u blagostanju. Nema novca, gladi, a resursi su gotovo neograničeni. Naravno, tu onda nema ni drame pa je radnja svakog romana iz serijala van Culture civilizacije, na planetima gdje ne vlada takvo blagostanje. I naravno kroz svaki taj scenarij Iain M. Banks se obračunavao, odnosno pokazivao nam naše moralne i općenito civilizacijske nedostatke. Uz to, uvijek je uspio stvoriti i zanimljive i jake likove, nerijetko su mi najzanimljiviji likovi bili dronovi (inteligentni "strojevi", koji jedva skrivaju prijezir prema ljudima, i nerijetko ih podbadaju svojim britkim humorom i zajedljivim dosjetkama).
Surface Detail je predzadnji Culture roman i možda sam i zato, barem nesvjesno, odugovlačio, jer je Iain M. Banks umro sredinom 2013., pa ima još samo jedan roman i onda moram napustiti taj svemir.
U svakom novom Culture romanu se detaljnije otkriva neki dio tog svemira, ovdje je najveći fokus na virtualnim svjetovima, koji su univerzumi za sebe, od raznih verzija Pakla, do bojnih polja sa virtualnim ratovima kojima se odlučuju sudbine cijelih civilizacija u Stvarnom svemiru (The Real).
Ovaj roman mi je najslabiji u serijalu. Matter, prethodni roman, izvukao je odličan kraj, a rasplet ovoga, iako zadovoljavajući, ostavio me bez osjećaja oduševljenja.
Banks piše dobro, iz svakog romana se može izvući mnogo zanimljivih citata, ali mi ga je ponekad i teško pratiti jer su mu neke rečenice nezgrapne ili jednostavno preduge.
Sama radnja mi nije bila toliko zanimljiva, a i likovi me nisu zainteresirali kao u prethodnim romanima. To može biti i zbog toga što sam roman čitao gotovo punih godinu dana, sa dugačkom pauzom od nekoliko mjeseci nakon pročitanih prvih 15%. Također malo kritičnije ocjenjujem otkad pišem i ove osvrte, tako da ovome ide četvorka, i to slaba.
Iain M. Banksov Culture serijal me je oduševio već od prvog romana Consider Phlebas. Uvijek mi je trebalo malo da "uđem" u svaki roman, ali što sam dalje otkrivao Culture svijet mi je bio sve zanimljiviji, a Culture civilizacija mi je postala omiljena utopija. Vjerovatno je i jedina koja bi i mogla opstati jer u njoj ljudi nisu bitan faktor pa ni ne mogu dovesti do korupcije sistema i njegovog pada.
Culture civilizacijom vladaju Minds (kako i samo ime kaže Umovi) koji su učitani u ogromne brodove ili Orbitale - rijetko gdje Culture građani žive na planetima, većina je na ogromnim brodovima i svi žive u blagostanju. Nema novca, gladi, a resursi su gotovo neograničeni. Naravno, tu onda nema ni drame pa je radnja svakog romana iz serijala van Culture civilizacije, na planetima gdje ne vlada takvo blagostanje. I naravno kroz svaki taj scenarij Iain M. Banks se obračunavao, odnosno pokazivao nam naše moralne i općenito civilizacijske nedostatke. Uz to, uvijek je uspio stvoriti i zanimljive i jake likove, nerijetko su mi najzanimljiviji likovi bili dronovi (inteligentni "strojevi", koji jedva skrivaju prijezir prema ljudima, i nerijetko ih podbadaju svojim britkim humorom i zajedljivim dosjetkama).
Surface Detail je predzadnji Culture roman i možda sam i zato, barem nesvjesno, odugovlačio, jer je Iain M. Banks umro sredinom 2013., pa ima još samo jedan roman i onda moram napustiti taj svemir.
U svakom novom Culture romanu se detaljnije otkriva neki dio tog svemira, ovdje je najveći fokus na virtualnim svjetovima, koji su univerzumi za sebe, od raznih verzija Pakla, do bojnih polja sa virtualnim ratovima kojima se odlučuju sudbine cijelih civilizacija u Stvarnom svemiru (The Real).
Ovaj roman mi je najslabiji u serijalu. Matter, prethodni roman, izvukao je odličan kraj, a rasplet ovoga, iako zadovoljavajući, ostavio me bez osjećaja oduševljenja.
Banks piše dobro, iz svakog romana se može izvući mnogo zanimljivih citata, ali mi ga je ponekad i teško pratiti jer su mu neke rečenice nezgrapne ili jednostavno preduge.
Sama radnja mi nije bila toliko zanimljiva, a i likovi me nisu zainteresirali kao u prethodnim romanima. To može biti i zbog toga što sam roman čitao gotovo punih godinu dana, sa dugačkom pauzom od nekoliko mjeseci nakon pročitanih prvih 15%. Također malo kritičnije ocjenjujem otkad pišem i ove osvrte, tako da ovome ide četvorka, i to slaba.
November 24, 2011
I'm a big Banks fan in both of his incarnations. He's one of the giants for me, of SF and plain fiction in general. As with all the Culture novels he has the outstanding Culture 'mythos' backdrop to the story and like all his books he mixes original ideas with a range of characters that evoke sympathy and dislike in the reader, sometimes in the same character. This book has a brilliant central idea (do read this to find out what it is) and several threads to the plot-line. Now this where a lot of writers mess up - too many strands and a dislocation for the reader from the narrative - Banks manages this well in most of his books but in this one I was a little disappointed with the lack of development of one or two characters. Hence the 3 stars and not 4 rating.
However, it's still very enjoyable and a welcome return for the Culture.
However, it's still very enjoyable and a welcome return for the Culture.
March 9, 2024
This book is not for the weak hearted. The way Banks describes pain and torture and violence and assault is like nothing I've ever read. I literally had to take a break of almost 3 months reading this book after one scene. It was just too too real for me.
Now after I've finished it, I can't say it's my favourite Culture novel, that's still Use of Weapons, but man, can Banks write. The ideas and the imagination this man has, wow!
One more Culture to go...
Now after I've finished it, I can't say it's my favourite Culture novel, that's still Use of Weapons, but man, can Banks write. The ideas and the imagination this man has, wow!
One more Culture to go...
May 2, 2023
Another excellent installment in what's probably my favorite ongoing SF series. Banks plays with themes of life, death, illusion and virtual reality, in a number of permutations and twists that's dizzying right from the beginning. There's more sheer old-fashioned sense of wonder in this book than you can shake a stick at. Some of the story lines are painfully intimate, others relate to the galaxy-wide politics of the "In-Play" civilizations, one of which is the post-scarcity Mind-run Culture we've all come to know and love. Also, the epilogue provides a delicious little twist that connects Surface Detail to a previous book in the series. I'll write a longer, full-length review later, but for now I'd say this is a very strong addition to a superb series. 4.5 stars.
September 1, 2018
With the ability to create any kind of Virtual Reality imaginable, some civilisations have created Hell. Each respective society would punish those they deemed to deserve with virtual eternal torment, but no less real to the mind experiencing it.
I found this an incredibly imaginative way of dealing with the idea of death and the afterlife without making the story supernatural. It’s almost even believable. It’s quite easy to imagine the justifications presented for creating a virtual Hell to punish people – it sounds similar to justifications for the death penalty. It’s also interesting to imagine the ways fundamentalist religious people may justify actually creating the afterlives of their religion, something that Surface Detail unfortunately doesn’t touch upon.
Of course, many other civilisations find this practice of eternal torture barbaric. The galactic community therefore decided to host a ‘confliction’ – a way of preventing conflict in the ‘Real’ world by fighting a war in virtual reality, with both sides swearing to abide by the outcome. In this case, should the anti-Hell side win, the Hells would be abolished. However, this arrangement can only work when you can be certain each side will adhere to the result. Consequently, the Culture did not take part in the confliction in order to deny the pro-Hell side the opportunity to call foul; “Of course you were always going to win with the Culture on your side!”
Unfortunately, the premise is one of the better things about an otherwise disappointing novel.
The antagonist of the story is a cartoonishly evil capitalist called Joiler Veppers, whose lack of emotional depth makes his POV chapters a real slog. The book opens with him murdering his chattel slave when she attempts to escape. The murdered slave, Lededje, is then unexpectedly reincarnated aboard a Culture ship because sci-fi stuff. She immediately decides to return to her home to kill Veppers. Lededje is an enjoyable enough character, and her journey back home with the Culture Mind Falling Outside the Normal Moral Constraints has to be my favourite human/ship-Mind pairing of the series so far.
Vatueil is a soldier who has fought the War over the Hells for several lifetimes, working his way through the ranks until he is now in a position to decide policy. When the anti-Hell side seems set to lose he chooses break the agreement of the confliction and cheat, first attempting to hack into the Hells and, when that doesn’t work, to bring the war into the Real.
Yime Nsokyi is a Culture agent who spends most of the book attempting to reach Lededje to stop her from killing Veppers, as killing the most powerful man in the region without carrying out the proper calculations isn’t the way of Culture interventionism.
Chay and Prin are academics belonging to an elephantine-esque herd species, and they abhor their society’s use of Hell. However, they haven’t been able to mobilise the public to fight against the virtual Hell, as their leaders deny its very existence, saying it’s simply a rumour, though a useful one for keeping general population in line. As a result, Chay and Prin decide to enter Hell, in order return with evidence of its existence and work to mass public opposition towards it.
Surface Detail uses these different strands of the story to gradually reveal a plot regarding the War over the Hells but I’m sure it needs so many. Yime Nsokyi was an mildy interesting character but she had very little to do. Veppers was disappointingly unambiguous, especially given Iain Banks refusal to include any true ‘villains’ in his previous Culture novels, instead always opting to flesh out his characters to the point where you can’t even bring yourself to call the most heinous crimes the work of an ‘evil’ person. This isn’t the case here. There’s absolutely nothing redeeming about Veppers. Lededje is…just okay.
Finally, there’s a reveal at the end of the novel which actually cast the story in a more negative light for me personally, as the reveal makes you realise that the Vatueil character had MUCH more potential.
The only story I consistently enjoyed was Chay and Prin’s. Hell has driven Chay to madness and she’s convinced there was never any life before Hell, and that the ‘Real’ was just a myth in order to keep them hoping, and thus making their torment worse. It’s therefore down to Prin to break them both out of Hell, as per the original plan to get back to the Real and expose its existence to the public. But something goes wrong and only Prin gets through, leaving Chay in the Hell alone to face even worse punishment for their escape attempt.
If you’ve read much Banks, especially books like The Wasp Factory and Use of Weapons, then you know he takes a sadistic pleasure in the obscene. He must have been in his element thinking up horrific punishments dished out in Hell. One particularly horrific element of the torture was his description of the demon’s semen burning like acid, and that it leads to the conception of some kind of parasitic monster which will agonisingly bite and claw and rips its way out of the victims they rape. This can happen to both men and women, no womb required – Hell doesn’t discriminate.
But I digress. I liked quite a few elements of Surface Detail, some of the side characters are fantastic and I adore the overall concept of what would if some societies used them to bring create virtual manifestations of afterlives. But many of the main characters are one-note and the gradually revealed conspiracy isn’t all that interesting. Overall I didn’t enjoy the book very much.
So, after reading six-out-of-ten Culture novels, the score sits at 3-3; I loved The Player of Games, Use of Weapons and Look to Windward but didn’t enjoy Consider Phlebas, Excession or Surface Detail. However, the best thing about the Culture series is you can really dislike a book (or even many books) but still find that my love for the series as a whole is more than the sum of its parts.
I found this an incredibly imaginative way of dealing with the idea of death and the afterlife without making the story supernatural. It’s almost even believable. It’s quite easy to imagine the justifications presented for creating a virtual Hell to punish people – it sounds similar to justifications for the death penalty. It’s also interesting to imagine the ways fundamentalist religious people may justify actually creating the afterlives of their religion, something that Surface Detail unfortunately doesn’t touch upon.
Of course, many other civilisations find this practice of eternal torture barbaric. The galactic community therefore decided to host a ‘confliction’ – a way of preventing conflict in the ‘Real’ world by fighting a war in virtual reality, with both sides swearing to abide by the outcome. In this case, should the anti-Hell side win, the Hells would be abolished. However, this arrangement can only work when you can be certain each side will adhere to the result. Consequently, the Culture did not take part in the confliction in order to deny the pro-Hell side the opportunity to call foul; “Of course you were always going to win with the Culture on your side!”
Unfortunately, the premise is one of the better things about an otherwise disappointing novel.
The antagonist of the story is a cartoonishly evil capitalist called Joiler Veppers, whose lack of emotional depth makes his POV chapters a real slog. The book opens with him murdering his chattel slave when she attempts to escape. The murdered slave, Lededje, is then unexpectedly reincarnated aboard a Culture ship because sci-fi stuff. She immediately decides to return to her home to kill Veppers. Lededje is an enjoyable enough character, and her journey back home with the Culture Mind Falling Outside the Normal Moral Constraints has to be my favourite human/ship-Mind pairing of the series so far.
Vatueil is a soldier who has fought the War over the Hells for several lifetimes, working his way through the ranks until he is now in a position to decide policy. When the anti-Hell side seems set to lose he chooses break the agreement of the confliction and cheat, first attempting to hack into the Hells and, when that doesn’t work, to bring the war into the Real.
Yime Nsokyi is a Culture agent who spends most of the book attempting to reach Lededje to stop her from killing Veppers, as killing the most powerful man in the region without carrying out the proper calculations isn’t the way of Culture interventionism.
Chay and Prin are academics belonging to an elephantine-esque herd species, and they abhor their society’s use of Hell. However, they haven’t been able to mobilise the public to fight against the virtual Hell, as their leaders deny its very existence, saying it’s simply a rumour, though a useful one for keeping general population in line. As a result, Chay and Prin decide to enter Hell, in order return with evidence of its existence and work to mass public opposition towards it.
Surface Detail uses these different strands of the story to gradually reveal a plot regarding the War over the Hells but I’m sure it needs so many. Yime Nsokyi was an mildy interesting character but she had very little to do. Veppers was disappointingly unambiguous, especially given Iain Banks refusal to include any true ‘villains’ in his previous Culture novels, instead always opting to flesh out his characters to the point where you can’t even bring yourself to call the most heinous crimes the work of an ‘evil’ person. This isn’t the case here. There’s absolutely nothing redeeming about Veppers. Lededje is…just okay.
Finally, there’s a reveal at the end of the novel which actually cast the story in a more negative light for me personally, as the reveal makes you realise that the Vatueil character had MUCH more potential.
The only story I consistently enjoyed was Chay and Prin’s. Hell has driven Chay to madness and she’s convinced there was never any life before Hell, and that the ‘Real’ was just a myth in order to keep them hoping, and thus making their torment worse. It’s therefore down to Prin to break them both out of Hell, as per the original plan to get back to the Real and expose its existence to the public. But something goes wrong and only Prin gets through, leaving Chay in the Hell alone to face even worse punishment for their escape attempt.
If you’ve read much Banks, especially books like The Wasp Factory and Use of Weapons, then you know he takes a sadistic pleasure in the obscene. He must have been in his element thinking up horrific punishments dished out in Hell. One particularly horrific element of the torture was his description of the demon’s semen burning like acid, and that it leads to the conception of some kind of parasitic monster which will agonisingly bite and claw and rips its way out of the victims they rape. This can happen to both men and women, no womb required – Hell doesn’t discriminate.
But I digress. I liked quite a few elements of Surface Detail, some of the side characters are fantastic and I adore the overall concept of what would if some societies used them to bring create virtual manifestations of afterlives. But many of the main characters are one-note and the gradually revealed conspiracy isn’t all that interesting. Overall I didn’t enjoy the book very much.
So, after reading six-out-of-ten Culture novels, the score sits at 3-3; I loved The Player of Games, Use of Weapons and Look to Windward but didn’t enjoy Consider Phlebas, Excession or Surface Detail. However, the best thing about the Culture series is you can really dislike a book (or even many books) but still find that my love for the series as a whole is more than the sum of its parts.
August 25, 2025
Close to being the best of the Culture novels I have read. I think Use of Weapons is still my favorite. 3 seemingly disparate stories/threads of course coming together at the end. I found all of them intriguing. Lededje's thread was more straightforward, future tech allowing her to come back from the dead and her navigating the Culture trying to get some revenge.
The Heaven/Hell war was more thought provoking, particularly the part where if you have no hope, you can't really be tortured.
As usual the Culture ships are what I keep coming back for.
The Heaven/Hell war was more thought provoking, particularly the part where if you have no hope, you can't really be tortured.
As usual the Culture ships are what I keep coming back for.
July 27, 2015
There seems to be an epidemic of weak editing these days. Surface Detail is sadly not immune, either on the typographical (words and punctuation missing or misplaced) or stylistic (poor word choice, lack of clarity) front. It's not a major impediment, but it's disappointing.
Iain M. Banks' Culture books tend to exceptionally well-written, but also be dry, distant, and complex. Surface Detail is no exception. Characters with long, difficult names abound, and there are several plots and sub-plots, most of which come loosely together at the end. In fact, the epilogue relies on readers' memory of another Culture book from some years back. (I didn't get it and had to look it up).
Briefly, Surface Detail is about both an indentured servant/slave who breaks free, and a disagreement about the future of virtual "Hells". As always, Banks' writing is generally excellent, engaging, and witty. (Though there are some rough patches during which the editor seems to have fallen asleep.) Almost everything is plausible, though one key character is decidedly ex-machina and both inconsistent and non-credible in his actions. I'm always amazed at Bank's ability to keep a complex, multi-element plot moving smoothly through a massive book.
At the same time, while I enjoy Banks' writing, I often have difficulty remembering much about the Culture books afterwards. That may in part be because they're complex. However, I think it has more to do with the characters. They're likeable and realistic, but they seldom seem to have very deep emotions, and I always feel at a fairly great level of remove from them. Every now and then, I'm afraid with them, but more often I relate to them somewhat clinically. In this book, that's true of the central character, to whom many bad things have happened. I accept her desire for revenge, but I never really feel it, and since it's a plot driver, that's problematic. At the other end is a couple to whom bad things continue to happen. There, I felt a little more empathy, but always at some distance.
In short, in Surface Detail, as with other Culture books (and unlike the only Iain Banks [no M.] book I've read, A Song of Stone), I finished the book and thought "That was really well written." I did not think "I'm really relieved that Character X came out of it okay." My appreciation was much more technical than emotional.
This book won't change your mind about Banks. If you've liked other Culture books, you'll like this one. If you're new to Banks, you can start here, but you might be better of with Consider Phlebas or Use of Weapons.
Iain M. Banks' Culture books tend to exceptionally well-written, but also be dry, distant, and complex. Surface Detail is no exception. Characters with long, difficult names abound, and there are several plots and sub-plots, most of which come loosely together at the end. In fact, the epilogue relies on readers' memory of another Culture book from some years back. (I didn't get it and had to look it up).
Briefly, Surface Detail is about both an indentured servant/slave who breaks free, and a disagreement about the future of virtual "Hells". As always, Banks' writing is generally excellent, engaging, and witty. (Though there are some rough patches during which the editor seems to have fallen asleep.) Almost everything is plausible, though one key character is decidedly ex-machina and both inconsistent and non-credible in his actions. I'm always amazed at Bank's ability to keep a complex, multi-element plot moving smoothly through a massive book.
At the same time, while I enjoy Banks' writing, I often have difficulty remembering much about the Culture books afterwards. That may in part be because they're complex. However, I think it has more to do with the characters. They're likeable and realistic, but they seldom seem to have very deep emotions, and I always feel at a fairly great level of remove from them. Every now and then, I'm afraid with them, but more often I relate to them somewhat clinically. In this book, that's true of the central character, to whom many bad things have happened. I accept her desire for revenge, but I never really feel it, and since it's a plot driver, that's problematic. At the other end is a couple to whom bad things continue to happen. There, I felt a little more empathy, but always at some distance.
In short, in Surface Detail, as with other Culture books (and unlike the only Iain Banks [no M.] book I've read, A Song of Stone), I finished the book and thought "That was really well written." I did not think "I'm really relieved that Character X came out of it okay." My appreciation was much more technical than emotional.
This book won't change your mind about Banks. If you've liked other Culture books, you'll like this one. If you're new to Banks, you can start here, but you might be better of with Consider Phlebas or Use of Weapons.
February 8, 2016
I am taking a break from Iain M. Banks, I have decided. To be precise, I decided this about halfway through this book, when the meandering plot and lots of torture (not approval of torture, but lots of it) were taking their toll. I stand by that. I was initially thinking of it as a permanent break, but the end of Surface Detail somehow convinced me that while I might need a break, perhaps even of a year or two, I may come back and finish off the Culture novels at some point.
Note: The rest of this review has been withheld due to the changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision here.
In the meantime, you can read the entire review at Smorgasbook
Note: The rest of this review has been withheld due to the changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision here.
In the meantime, you can read the entire review at Smorgasbook
May 25, 2017
О, какъв финал само! Без да променя нещо същностно, без да преосмисля или мами, неочаквано дава (за челите Use of Weapons) фантастична нова перспектива към всичките 700 страници досега, към скритата и очевидната философия на Културата и въобще към механиката на тоя свят. Втората най-добра книга за Културата досега.
March 10, 2023
Banks, as usual, packs a ton of ideas into each novel and delves into them with a stylistic flair like no other. In this case, we're focusing on the fascinating moral quandary of virtual torture - what if a highly religious civilisation gained enough technological expertise to actually make their religion real? To actually create a virtual heaven and a virtual hell to reward/punish people's souls after their bodies have died? Banks's assessment of this idea is understandably one-sided given his ideology (which I happen to agree with) but I don't see that as a downside, since I don't think there really is a strong argument to be found in favour of eternal torture.
As usual for the Culture series you can expect a lot of wry humour, weird aliens, and sarcastic AIs. There's not much variety in Banks's characterisations (particularly when it comes to character voice) but for me sci-fi is all about the ideas first so I can live with that, and even if his characters are one-note they're still very entertaining.
One criticism I will make, and this applies to Matter as well, is that the last few Culture books have been getting longer than the earlier ones, and I don't feel that they really justified this extra length. The plot to this book didn't seem complex enough to justify 600+ pages, rather the page count was used to give a multitude of POVs and plot threads that weren't strictly necessary to tell the core story. For the most part this is acceptable because I like Banks's writing style so it was rarely a slog to get through, but there were a couple of points where I was thinking "okay, get to the point Iain." He could easily have cut two or three POVs from this book and still had a functioning story with all the same thematic content and emotional beats.
Still, that wasn't enough to ruin the book for me so I still award it 4.5/5
As usual for the Culture series you can expect a lot of wry humour, weird aliens, and sarcastic AIs. There's not much variety in Banks's characterisations (particularly when it comes to character voice) but for me sci-fi is all about the ideas first so I can live with that, and even if his characters are one-note they're still very entertaining.
One criticism I will make, and this applies to Matter as well, is that the last few Culture books have been getting longer than the earlier ones, and I don't feel that they really justified this extra length. The plot to this book didn't seem complex enough to justify 600+ pages, rather the page count was used to give a multitude of POVs and plot threads that weren't strictly necessary to tell the core story. For the most part this is acceptable because I like Banks's writing style so it was rarely a slog to get through, but there were a couple of points where I was thinking "okay, get to the point Iain." He could easily have cut two or three POVs from this book and still had a functioning story with all the same thematic content and emotional beats.
Still, that wasn't enough to ruin the book for me so I still award it 4.5/5
January 12, 2011
Wow! The first three quarters of this book are so stunning in the sheer scale of their creativity while managing to move the plot along at a more than acceptable pace. My head swam every time I put the book down, and most of the time I was only putting it down in order to allow my tiny brain to catch up with the depth, the detail, and the creative heights that this book reaches, and also to absorb and reflect on the consequences of some of the concepts and customs he introduces.
The characters are, as always, utterly convincing. I can think of no other author who can create such deeply technical and outre worlds, technology and people, while staying as relaxed and smirkingly amusing as Banks seems to do in such an off-hand way!
There were times, such as during the introduction to the virtual Hells, that I found myself with a lump in my throat and a tear in my eye, and had to go sit quietly and consider the subtexts being delivered to me.
Banks has been going through a very purple patch with his last few sci-fi novels in my opinion, with this one even managing a quick nod to a previous classic of his at the conclusion, and he shows very little sign of letting up any time soon. This is fine by me!
I wrestled with giving this only four stars as I think this novel does plateau towards the end, but given the overall standard of this work that would be churlish, like complaining that Macbeth's not quite up to the standards of Othello!
Greatest-living-science-fiction-author, I urge you to read him!
The characters are, as always, utterly convincing. I can think of no other author who can create such deeply technical and outre worlds, technology and people, while staying as relaxed and smirkingly amusing as Banks seems to do in such an off-hand way!
There were times, such as during the introduction to the virtual Hells, that I found myself with a lump in my throat and a tear in my eye, and had to go sit quietly and consider the subtexts being delivered to me.
Banks has been going through a very purple patch with his last few sci-fi novels in my opinion, with this one even managing a quick nod to a previous classic of his at the conclusion, and he shows very little sign of letting up any time soon. This is fine by me!
I wrestled with giving this only four stars as I think this novel does plateau towards the end, but given the overall standard of this work that would be churlish, like complaining that Macbeth's not quite up to the standards of Othello!
Greatest-living-science-fiction-author, I urge you to read him!
May 14, 2024
10/10
Maybe not my favorite Culture book, but this is certainly right up there! Themes of loyalty/betrayal, the role of religion in society, hope/despair, revenge/justice—plenty of meaty topics to ponder.
What I liked: There was a fair amount of plot and action involving the Culture ships; the ships and their Minds are such great characters! The various ship avatars were quite a collection of personalities. There were several pan-human characters whose storylines were interesting and who were people I wanted to read about, especially Lededje, Yime, and Vatueil. I thought Vatueil’s sections were a great commentary on war—how stupefying and pointless it is. Even though he learned from his mistakes and failures, still the war just dragged on and on—new battlefields, different weapons, but endless death.
What I didn’t like: Veppers was too predictable and flat as a villain, although I did not expect that ! The Pavulean Hell was beyond horrific and it was hard to read those sections .
Maybe not my favorite Culture book, but this is certainly right up there! Themes of loyalty/betrayal, the role of religion in society, hope/despair, revenge/justice—plenty of meaty topics to ponder.
What I liked: There was a fair amount of plot and action involving the Culture ships; the ships and their Minds are such great characters! The various ship avatars were quite a collection of personalities. There were several pan-human characters whose storylines were interesting and who were people I wanted to read about, especially Lededje, Yime, and Vatueil. I thought Vatueil’s sections were a great commentary on war—how stupefying and pointless it is. Even though he learned from his mistakes and failures, still the war just dragged on and on—new battlefields, different weapons, but endless death.
What I didn’t like: Veppers was too predictable and flat as a villain, although I did not expect that ! The Pavulean Hell was beyond horrific and it was hard to read those sections .
June 12, 2023
4.5 stars. Another banger from Banks. Conspiracy, murder, war taking place in Inception-esque levels of digital realities (including a truly horrifying version of Hell), and all the other stuff you expect from the Culture. From all angles of this story we have an in-person view of the events as they unfold, via each of several POV characters - all of whom were interesting to read. As a result of this style choice, there is a lot of showing, and not so much telling, which is wonderful. The whole thing comes together at the end in a satisfying way, and there are some cool last minute revelations that build on the plot and develop certain characters simultaneously too, which was also great.
I hear a lot of folks say this is one of the weaker ones, but shit guys, I can’t see why. Personally, I liked this one as much (if not marginally more) than Matter.
Banks’ writing has impressed me so much over the course of this series that I intend to check out some of his non-sci-fi works soon as well. RIP to an absolute legend.
I hear a lot of folks say this is one of the weaker ones, but shit guys, I can’t see why. Personally, I liked this one as much (if not marginally more) than Matter.
Banks’ writing has impressed me so much over the course of this series that I intend to check out some of his non-sci-fi works soon as well. RIP to an absolute legend.
November 22, 2010
It's His Party and You're Invited...
As in "Matter," the last Culture installment, Banks waxes at length in "Surface Detail." Happily, SD is more interesting than its predecessor, and features more tidbits about the Culture - that industrious, indefatigable, galaxy-spanning civilization that has always been the most interesting character in a series that is essentially a collection of character pieces. The plot and writing and characters are competent at best, and tedious at their worst. Really, the main reason I read these is because Banks has created a hell of a sandbox to play in, and when he's at his most exuberant, his creations achieve a scale that steals all of the oxygen out of the room. I still get chills when he delves into the nitty-gritty of a General Systems Vehicle.
As I say above: Banks has thrown a party, and you're invited. It's his party, though, so expect some indulgence on his part.
As in "Matter," the last Culture installment, Banks waxes at length in "Surface Detail." Happily, SD is more interesting than its predecessor, and features more tidbits about the Culture - that industrious, indefatigable, galaxy-spanning civilization that has always been the most interesting character in a series that is essentially a collection of character pieces. The plot and writing and characters are competent at best, and tedious at their worst. Really, the main reason I read these is because Banks has created a hell of a sandbox to play in, and when he's at his most exuberant, his creations achieve a scale that steals all of the oxygen out of the room. I still get chills when he delves into the nitty-gritty of a General Systems Vehicle.
As I say above: Banks has thrown a party, and you're invited. It's his party, though, so expect some indulgence on his part.
April 22, 2011
Oh, I love Iain Banks.
He consistently manages to create books which are compelling, complex and challenging while remaining action-filled, exciting and even humorous.
This is the latest of his Culture novels (the ninth, if I'm correct). As with most of the books, it works as a stand-alone, with only a few tie-ins to other books for the pleasure of the devoted reader.
This novel entwines the story of Lededje Y'Breq, a woman seeking revenge against her former master and abuser, with the story of an interstellar conflict over the right to maintain virtual "hells" in which the preserved consciousnesses of the deceased are tormented.
As the topics imply, there's in-depth exploration of questions of ethics, all wrapped in a kick-ass story with plenty of space battles, virtual conflicts and grisly, violent action.
He consistently manages to create books which are compelling, complex and challenging while remaining action-filled, exciting and even humorous.
This is the latest of his Culture novels (the ninth, if I'm correct). As with most of the books, it works as a stand-alone, with only a few tie-ins to other books for the pleasure of the devoted reader.
This novel entwines the story of Lededje Y'Breq, a woman seeking revenge against her former master and abuser, with the story of an interstellar conflict over the right to maintain virtual "hells" in which the preserved consciousnesses of the deceased are tormented.
As the topics imply, there's in-depth exploration of questions of ethics, all wrapped in a kick-ass story with plenty of space battles, virtual conflicts and grisly, violent action.
August 25, 2024
ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME WITH LITERALLY THAT VERY LAST WORD :O
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