A Pleasing Touch of Culture (Look to Windward - Iain M. Banks)

Member Name: fromage

Product:	Look to Windward - Iain M. Banks
Date:	10/05/01 (105 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Imaginative, clever stuff.

Disadvantages: The Player of Games was better

‘Look to Windward’ marks another visit to Iain M Banks far future utopia, The Culture. I always regard a new culture novel with an expectation of pleasure, and have yet to be seriously disappointed (even if they always seem to fall short of the tremendous ‘The Player of Games’). Part of the reason for this is Banks’ readability; his unflagging humour, his ear for dialogue, and his inventive plotting. But the other reason is that The Culture is a feat of the imagination worth devoting a series of books to (indeed, when writing about the Culture, it occurs to me that Banks could probably get away with an awful lot less of his inventive plotting, but he seems to enjoy it, so why not?).

The Culture, if you are unfamiliar with Bank’s science fiction back catalogue, is a galaxy spanning civilisation of the future, the citizens of which are principally humans, and artificial intelligences referred to as ‘minds’. The society of The Culture is, through the auspices of the staggeringly powerful minds, devoted entirely to leisure, pleasure, and (in some cases, anyway) self-improvement. The minds, indeed, do almost all of the hard work, whether ensconced in enormous, amusingly named starships with dazzling arrays of weapons (‘All Through With This Niceness and Negotiation Stuff’, ‘Reformed Nice Guy’ to name but two), or using their planet sized processing power to look after whole worlds full of humans, leaving said humans to pursue happiness in whatever way suits them best.

Unlike earlier Culture novels, the main protagonists in ‘Look to Windward’ are not humans living in The Culture, but rather aliens, some visiting, some living there in exile. It is through their slightly bemused eyes that we witness what humans do when circumstances dictate that their lives be devoted to the search for happiness. We are introduced to Kabe, of the ancient Homomdan race, and Ziller, of the C
hel (another alien race, evolved from predatory ancestry). Both of these races have suffered, through war or mishap, at the hands of The Culture in the past, and the insight we get from them suggests that it is perhaps less fun to be a neighbour of The Culture than it is to live in it.

I will not speak about the plot, as Banks has constructed it artfully to unfold a detail at a time, only allowing the whole picture revealed at the very end, and I would not wish to undo his fine work. However, within the novel there is also an interesting argument for and against the idea of The Culture as a society to aspire to, which is worth looking at in more detail. In a recent interview Banks stated that he would love to live in The Culture, and I’m pretty sure that most of us would, but is a life of such unchallenged decadence really any way to go on?

Thus our alien protagonists watch in amazement as the humans look for danger in a society designed for safety. In a memorably amusing sequence a group of adrenaline seekers take part in the ‘minimal-safety-factor’ sport of lava-rafting. After watching the humans getting burned, battered and broken for a few minutes, Ziller concludes that ‘They are all quite mad.’ And that is how it seems to the reader, as well, but, as Kabe gently argues in turn, the vast majority of citizens spend the vast majority of their time in more normal pursuits. And we, as readers, recognise from our society and ourselves, that there is always an element that will seek risk, just as there are always elements that will avoid it. In a society without work or inevitable death, Banks suggests, these traits will be accentuated. But this is merely a sign of immaturity as a species. As Kabe the Homomdan reasons, ‘All naturally evolved sentient life is restless, at some scale or stage.’

All well and good, but it would be interesting to know a little more of where Banks feels The Culture is goin
g. There are questions raised about the possibility that such dissolution is an evolutionary dead end, hints of internal threats from some of the nearly omnipotent minds in reaction to the complacence of the society they coddle, but they are taken no further. Perhaps if he answered these questions Banks could turn The Culture series into an intellectual tour de force of the likes of 'Brave New World'. However it is equally possible he could spoil the fun while leaving the reader no wiser. All in all it would be churlish to quibble too much, as ‘Look to Windward’ still contains plenty to enjoy (Banks’ seemingly boundless imaginative powers, for a start), and I would recommend it to those who have read Banks earlier works, or to those who have not.

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