From my youth I’ve been a Star Trek fan. Core to the appeal to me is the vision of a hopeful future, one with dilemmas and danger but no longer a prisoner to scarcity. The appeal has not faded since I’ve become an adult (happy belated 100th to Gene Roddenberry), and while I do enjoy Deep Space Nine and some nuance in my Trek, I think many attempts to make it dark or mature can miss the point. I was drawn to the Iain M. Banks’ Culture series, because Culture itself is a variation of a utopian Federation-adjacent civilization that explores a range of themes while still believing in the possibility of a diverse and abundant future.
The story starts with the tale of a ship’s computer, a Mind, seeking escape and refuge and only partially finding it. In Culture, the question of whether the Enterprise’s computer is alive is unambiguously yes. Indeed the hyper-intelligent life forms captain their own vessels which display their personality with ship names like “No More Mr. Nice Guy” or “Prosthetic Conscience.”
However, while the quest to rescue or capture that Mind is the core quest of the book, its protagonist is not just a sort of human, but an ideological enemy of the Culture: Bora Horza Gobuchul. Horza is a skilled infiltrator capable of slowly changing his shape and more to impersonate another. He works for the Iridians, a tri-legged, potentially immortal species both smarter and stronger than most humans but also typically devout, giving rising to ship names like “The Hand of God 137.” There’s no place for other species in the Iridian religion, but he supports them anyways for reasons he explains when competing to win the loyalty of a planet while opposed by Culture Special Circumstances Agent Perosteck Belveda.
“At least [the Iridians] have a God, Frolk. The Culture doesn’t. . .They at least think the same way way you do. The Culture doesn’t. . .”
“You want to know who the real representative of the Culture is on this planet? It’s not her,” he nodded at the woman [his opposite number], “It’s that powered flesh-slicer she has following her everywhere, her knife missile. She might make the decisions, it might do what she tells it, but it’s the real emissary. That’s what the Culture’s about: machines. You think because Belveda’s got two legs and soft skin you should be on her side, but its’ the Iridians who are on the side of life in this war.”
The novel is not directly about this debate; instead it is full of adventure, often set in epic speculative locations like the a massive ring station that sustains its own ocean and gravity with centrifugal force, or concepts like the absurd game of Danger where players can blast complex emotions at one another and fans will tune into to what players are feeling or be caught in the splash themselves. Whether or not you root for Horza, he is a capable charmer, and he needs to be as he and his rag-tag group of companions face a series of challenges that - despite a captain’s words to the contrary - are anything but “easy in, easy out.”
The tone of this first book is not Star Trek. It’s often satirical, regularly tragic, and frequently more focused on survival than exploration. The start of the story often left me discombobulated, intentionally so I think. One chapter after the one-third mark just put me off, testing boundaries without offering much to hold my interests. For me, the novel truly hits its stride as an ensemble comes together with relationships and competing loyalties shaped in adversity. Indeed, the perspective of the story broadens in the finale as suspense steadily builds and the casualties mount.
Consider Phlebas has its rough patches; at times I had trouble grasping the visuals of some of the settings and wonders, and it took time (and a handy list of names) for me to really come to care about some of the supporting cast. Similarly, as the epigram from the Waste Land that gives the book its title indicates, it helps to have some taste for the outré and the tragic. But for me the story is a triumph that kicks off the Culture series in a such a fitting way, by exploring the perspective of one of its enemies. (For a more critical take, see Abigail Nussbaum). I eagerly look forward to the next book in the series.
After the cut, some light spoilers and a bit of international relations.
A few points that hit me particularly hard: the kidnapped repair drone Unaha Closp just wanting to be called by name, Belveda’s fear that empathy was her weakness, Yalson’s calling Horza on his crap but not going far enough, Wubslin’s love of trains and where it fails him, and one flashback of Horza with another Changer on the frozen and post-apocalyptic Schar’s World:
He kissed her, he hugged her. Looking down over her shoulder, he saw something small and red move on the trampled snow near her feet.
“Look!” he said, breaking away, stooping. She squatted beside him, and together they watched tiny, stick-like insect crawl slowly, laboriously, over the surface of the snow: one more living moving thing on the blank face of he world. “That’s he first one I’ve seen,” he told her.
She shook her head, smiling. “You just don’t look,” she chided.
He put out one hand and scooped he insect into his palm before she could stop him. “Oh, Horza . . “ she said, her breath catching on a tiny hook of despair.
He looked, uncomprehending, at her stricken expression while the snow-creature died from the warmth of his hand.
In international relations (taking a page here from Space the Nation), the Referrer chapters are particularly interesting. Our main view inside the Culture is following one of their top strategists, Fal ‘Ngeestra. Fal takes risks, sets in motion deception ops, and tries very hard to understand the Iridians while still not losing sight of her own side and their strengths. Both she and Belveda, contrary to Iridian and Horza’s assumptions, both reject the idea that the Culture is a decadent civilization, too hedonistic to withstand real pressure and loss. Interestingly enough, this is a view even held by one their callow fellow citizens. The story, including the epilogue, does provide textual evidence for their view rather than the contrary premise that as a civilization moves away from martial origins it will decline. That said, Belveda’s division, Special Circumstances, is often in tension with the larger society and Belveda herself has trouble reconciling what she’s been through. The larger concept of both individually and collectively the Culture’s humans’ need to be useful is an interesting and constructivist concept as the war starts for ideological and religious reasons, as the Culture’s story is threatened more than any material interest. I look forward to exploring the Culture society more, and the Contact Division that has a rather different outlook on intervention than Star Trek’s Prime Directive, in future books.
Image credit: Cover of the book, from the Culture wiki.
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