"Slight Mechanical Destruction" (Use of Weapons - Iain M. Banks)

Member Name: Deany

Product:	Use of Weapons - Iain M. Banks
Date:	28/01/02 (402 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Engrossing

Disadvantages: None spring to mind

I love books, they’re great. There are not many feelings much better than slouching out on the sofa, soft music tinkling away gently in the background, and opening a new book for the very first time. My eyes run over the first line and I take a mental leap through the author’s looking glass into a fictional world where my imagination can run riot.

Sometimes, of course, I am disappointed. I get halfway through a book and suddenly it is a struggle, an uphill fight against a torrential flow of words that the author surely thought full of meaning but which, to be honest, can sometimes be just plain dull. Nevertheless, I persist. A bad book can be a challenge, an unfinished book an admission of defeat.

And then there is the opposite. Those books that grab you on the first page and just won’t let go. I want to sleep but just have to get to the end of the chapter first, then I read on a bit further, and then I’m hanging on until the end of the next chapter. Or I find myself wishing the bus would get stuck in a traffic-jam so I could read just a couple more pages, or (as has happened on occasion) I miss the stop entirely.

Now, there are never any guarantees in life, but if I want to be sure the book I pick up is the second type of book, one that I will be unable to put down, there is a small circle of authors who I trust not to disappoint me. One of these, as you may have guessed, is none other than one Iain (M) Banks, author of a novel entitled “Use of Weapons”. (For more, see my “Top Ten Sci-Fi” op!)

First, we need some background. Why the brackets in his name, for a start? Well, Banks publishes under two names, as Iain Banks he writes off-centre but generally “straight” fiction, while as Iain M Banks he lets himself go and indulges in galaxy-spanning sci-fi extravaganzas – which includes “Use of Weapons”. (As Banks himself has put it, adding the M to his na
me surely puts him in the running for the world record for “Most Penetrable Pseudonym”).

Second, you need to know a little about the Culture (note the capital “C”). So far, Banks has written six novels set in the Culture – his own vision of a sci-fi utopia where people, aliens and machines live together in harmony. The Culture is a society that is as near perfect as it is possible to get, and it knows about it. There is no crime, no money (to the Culture, money is a sign of poverty), no illness, none of the nasty little things about life that get in the way of having fun. The day-to-day running of the Culture is carried out by Minds, super-intelligent sentient machines that pilot the spaceships, build new habitats, and take most of the important decisions. The average human Culture citizen has nothing more important to worry about than what clothes to put on on a morning or whether to take a couple of years out of their hectic life of partying to go on a space-cruise to get a better view of an imminent supernova.

Which all leaves the Culture with a little too much time on its hands. The Culture long ago reached the level where it was perfectly happy with the way things were running within itself, then turned its attention to the rest of the galaxy and, to put it bluntly, was more than a little disappointed with the way things were being run outside its sphere of influence. So, it began “helping” other races and societies – whether they liked it or not. If the Culture sees an oppressed minority, it will do its best to swing events in their favour. If the Culture sees a planet at war it will send in a covert Contact team to help its favoured side win. If the Culture sees a planet that might benefit from a war……. – well, I’m sure you get the idea.

Which is where I (finally) get to the novel in hand – “Use of Weapons”. You see, the Culture doesn’t
like to get its hands dirty. It has a Contact section for monitoring the development of other races and, within Contact, the euphemistically named Special Circumstances for dealing with slightly more controversial or sensitive matters, but at heart the Culture likes everything to be nice and neat and tidy. If there is anything messy to be done it likes to be able to look the other way and at least pretend that it is not involved.

“Use of Weapons” centres around one of the people chosen by the Culture to do their dirty work for them, one Cheradenine Zakalwe – a soldier rescued from death in some inconsequential little war by a Culture agent and offered the chance to work for them. The Culture want Zakalwe for his tactical expertise and willingness to fight for whatever side they happen to be supporting; Zakalwe in turn uses the Culture in an attempt to set right a horror from his past of which the Culture is blissfully unaware.

At first sight, the book is a mishmash. It starts with a prologue that takes place in the future, then the story begins in the middle and ends at the beginning, which is also the end, although the prologue continues after the story ends, then a new story begins with a prologue that probably takes place some time during the rest of the book – you following me? Think the film “Memento” with multiple storylines and you are getting somewhere close. It is only when you finish the book and you sit back to contemplate what you have just read that you realise how cleverly all the separate pieces interact. Banks is excellent at this sort of thing – stories with twists in the tale and managing multiple timelines so that they all converge at the same time.

The story itself is sci-fi with a brain. Yes, the huge spaceships are there; yes, the characters run around with laser guns; yes there are lots of names that are impossible to pronounce, but despite these things appearing clichéd,
Banks somehow injects them with new life and a certain amount of humour. Take the whole name issue, for instance – Banks doesn’t settle for half measures and so gives one of the main characters the seemingly ludicrous name of “Rasd-Coduresa Diziet Embless Sma da’Marenhide”, although she goes by “Sma” for short. (If you think this is just nonsense, Banks actually explains the Culture naming process in another novel – basically a Culture name is a combination of family tree and address). And what about a sentient decommissioned warship that has christened itself "Xenophobe"?

Banks isn’t one to smear his literary credentials just because he is writing sci-fi. In a radio interview, Banks once said that his greatest fear was that someone would run an analysis of his books that would prove he used “longer words” in his straight fiction than in his sci-fi. “Use of Weapons” opens with a poem and finishes with a poem – quite a daring innovation in the science fiction arena. The main character – Zakalwe – attempts life as a poet for a while when he realises that the ideal man is either a soldier or a poet and much of his life seems to be an oscillation between these two extremes.

The dual timeline of the novel means that Banks can present many different aspects of Zakalwe’s character. The reader sees him fighting wars for the Culture, at times being on the winning side, at other times loosing despite his best efforts, although it is precisely this defeat that the Culture has conspired to bring about. At other times Zakalwe tries to get away from it all, writing poetry, living in a shack on the beach, having himself frozen for half a century. And then there is Zakalwe acting on his own, a loose cannon trained to be the best in his field and causing untold damage through nothing more sinister than good intentions.

There are a number of supe
rb set-pieces in the flashbacks we see of Zakalwe’s time working for the Culture. One war is played out on a massive iceberg – large enough for two entire armies to hide from each other; another time Zakalwe is escorting the Chosen across the desert to safety and takes part in the local ritual of taking hallucinogenic drugs that bring his past actions crashing back to him; the reader sees him trapped in a crumbling palace, unable to break out as enemy forces advance; and in another crumbling citadel as enemy shells bring the structure crashing down around him. Banks’ inventiveness is breathtaking at times.

Through all this, a past begins to appear. A recurring symbol – a chair – slowly but surely gains in importance, childhood memories are drip-fed to the reader, what is the significance of a grounded battleship called "Staberinde"? Who is Zakalwe, where does he come from, why does he carry out the Culture’s will so blindly, what can they possibly offer him in payment? The weapons referred to in the title become all too apparent, the way that anything can be turned into a weapon of some kind, the destruction brought about through their use. With increasing momentum, the book spirals towards its conclusion, pulling all the strands of the story together and shocking the reader with one final revelation.

I don’t want to say anything more about the plot. I could, I would love to write more, but it would just spoil it too much for anyone who then wanted to go out and read the book. And now for some advice – don’t read this book if you are new to the Culture. Although it is a standalone book – as are all Culture novels – it really is better is you already have some background within which to place it as much of the action takes place on the fringes of the Culture. My advice is to read “Consider Phlebas” first for a general overview (the first Culture novel published)
, then have a bash at “The Player of Games” to see how Contact operates and how sneaky it can be. Then, and only then, would I advise graduating to “Use of Weapons”.

One final point, before I wrap up. Banks originally wrote this book before managing to get a single novel published and yet it was the third sci-fi book he brought out. Initially, he was not going to even try to get it published – the manuscript ran to over 250,000 words and rambled on far too much. It was only when he showed the manuscript to a friend and fellow sci-fi author Ken McLeod that he was encouraged to bring “the old warrior out of retirement” as it says in the acknowledgements. The different timelines were also introduced as part of the rewrite “fitness programme” also referred to there. All I can say, is “thanks Ken” and look forwards to the next Culture novel due out some time in 2004.

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