Cultured (Iain Banks in general)

Member Name: Andrew1911

Product:	Iain Banks in general
Date:	16/08/01 (19 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Inventive, Detailed, Immersive

Disadvantages: The "Huh ?" factor

I can’t be too knowledgeable about the bulk of this guy’s work as I’ve only encountered three of his books: Consider Phelebas, Excession and The Business. The first two are sci-fi and the second in the vein of Michael Crichton.
I’m writing about the first two; more specifically about the setting they’re in and why I think it’s a work of near-genius.

Consider Phelebas & Excession are set in what IMB calls the Culture Universe. Before I attempt to explain this, I’d like to point out to those of you might go off and get these books that IMB shares a trait of Arthur C Clarkes in that he often introduces concepts, events and references that aren’t immediately followed by an explanation – this happens further down the line. Whilst this often requires a swift re-reading of the previous occurances to fully get what happened, bear with it – its worth the confusion.

The Culture is very hard to describe. It could be in the future or in the distant past. Although he describes human beings in it, the reader is never sure if he’s meaning us in the future/past or just a species very much like us, because Earth is never mentioned. In fact, in this Universe, biological beings aren’t even in charge! Minds (always capital ‘M’!) occupy the top rung – incredibly distant ancestors (I assume) of computers) so intelligent they regularly simulate the evolution of entire Universes from beginning to end just for entertainment (like we paint pictures). This leaves the rest of the inhabited Universe to do pretty much whatever they like.

These Minds travel the galaxy in immense ships, which act as basically mobile enviromnents for hundreds of thousands of people and drones; entire worlds are surrounded by Orbitals - imagine a ribbon thousands of kilometers wide circling a planet with the surface area of thousands of Earths.

And so we ge to the best bit of his books;
his introduction of the possible evolution of Mankind in an incrediable yet beliveable and matter of fact way. Freed from responsibilty, in the Culture, people are left to find their own entertainments, no matter how outlandish. They change sex at whim, have implanted (or engineered) glands to produce a range of drugs and stimulants, can download their conciousness to mechanical drones (eternal life!) or simply Store (hibernate) themselves until something interesting happens! It’s the sheer imagainative scope that IMB uses that makes these books so engrossing. For example, a woman upon becoming pregnant, should she wish, could initiate the change to become a man, storing the egg in a testical and after whatever length of time had passed, could change back to be a woman and continue the development of the foetus! So what, you may say, but I find these concepts to be fascinating. In a couple of throwaway lines, he mentions that traditional families don’t exist. When you’ve got a life span of hundreds of years, family links become tenuous at best and even tiresome. Naturally, because its science fiction, you get the odd space battle. But even here, you get a twist. Forget Star Wars; an entire chapter can be devoted to armadas of ships attacking each other with anti-matter bombs and missiles and executing intricate strategies – only for the reader to discover that such is the sophistication of the Minds / speeeds of the ships involved that the whole thing took place in microseconds.

I may have explained the above badly, but if you appeciate sci-fi and what to experience something a little bit refreshing – then check IMB out. Some times baffling, but always different

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