June 29, 2004

Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks

Nothing like a good space opera fix.

A broth of a book - not particularly bright, but great fun to be with, the life and soul of the party. Rather a Brian Blessed sort of book.

Iain M. Banks

Bora Horza Gobuchul hates machines. Not all machines, just the sentient kind and only for what they represent. He likes the fallibility, the irrational nature and most importantly the social inequalities of the more flawed biological species in the galaxy. He lives in a utopian society, called the Culture, where self-expression and good taste have replaced commerce and industry, but Horza stands against everything that the Culture represents. He considers them fruity, hypocritical and completely dependent on annoyingly superior sentient machines called Minds.

The Idirans, on the other hand, conquer the species they considered inferior and subjugate them into their righteous religious empire. Following their Faith, the immortal Idirans continue to fight and expand until this philosophy brings them in furious contact with the Culture who engage them in war on a matter of principle.

Horza makes his choice. He decides use his Changer status (he is a kind of changeling) to work with the Idirans. His assignment is to capture a Culture Mind that is trapped on a neutral planet which is off-limits to both parties. Nothing, of course, goes as planned ...

Consider Phlebas is the first of the Culture books, and you actually learn a lot about the Culture from it. You can learn it from an antagonistic standpoint too - the main character Horza hates the Culture. That was me trying not to make it boring for the reader. By writing from the point of view of someone who was fighting against it, I made it more interesting for me and, I hope, the reader as well.

Iain M. Banks

The Culture is a posthuman utopian society that forms the basis for one the best space opera series around. The books are never actually about the utopian part of society. The plots concentrate on the dystopian penumbra of the Culture: the department of Special Circumstances and its interactions with the other less utopian societies in the galaxy.

It is not as slick as some of the later Culture books like "Use of Weapons". But you can clearly see incipient ideas for the remaining novels in this book -- for instance the plot of "Player of Games" is prefigured in one part of this book. If you've read a few Culture novels and are wondering if this book is worth tracking down -- it is.

For an exegesis of the title of this book: "Consider Phlebas", taken from the poem "The Wastelands" by T.S. Eliot, read my discussion of another novel by Iain M. Banks called "Look to Windward".

I took the quotes shown here by Iain M. Banks from an interview with the author at the Culture Shock web site which is an excellent resource on the writings of Iain Banks (with the M. and without).


%T Consider Phlebas
%A Iain M. Banks
%I Orbit
%D 1987
%G ISBN: 1857231384 (pb)
%P 471
%K science-fiction

Review written: 1999/12/14

Posted by anoop at June 29, 2004 03:58 PM