Matter

sdedeo writes "Less known than he deserves to be among American science fiction readers is Iain M. Banks. In his native United Kingdom, Banks' work is released in hardcover at the front of bookshops; here, those seeking his science fiction work, at least, must dig down into the trade paperbacks — and often find things out of print. Those who do discover him in the States are usually pleasantly surprised to find the writing far more clever and engagingly written than the low-budget production values imply. With Orbit's release of his latest work, Matter, as well as its planned re-release of some of his earlier classics, things look to change." Read below for the rest of Simon's review.

Matter
author	Iain M. Banks
pages	593
publisher	Orbit
rating	8
reviewer	Simon DeDeo
ISBN	0316005363
summary	Iain M. Banks latest space opera

Banks is one of the leading authors of what might be called the Space Opera Renaissance. While the 1980s saw the creation of the cyberpunk genre, and the 1990s were for many the great era of "Hard SF" — science-centered masterworks such as Kim Stanley Robinson's Martian trilogy and Gregory Benford's Timescape — the 21st century seems to perhaps be an era impatient for the sometimes comical, sometimes tragic galaxy-wide sweep of writers such as John Meaney and Peter Hamilton.

The space opera is not a science-driven work. Unlike the harder stuff, quantum mechanics rarely makes more than a parenthetical and deus ex machina appearance, and relativity's time-bending constraints do not apply. Unlike the cyberpunk genre, epitomized by Neal Stephenson, it is rarely "idea driven"; McGuffins remain solidly unexplained, and society drives technology, not the other way around.

If the hero of Hard SF is a scientist, and the hero of cyberpunk is the wildcat entrepreneur, the hero of the Space Opera would be quite familiar to readers of myth and legend — the Quixotian wanderer, the deposed prince, the second son. Indeed, to the less sympathetic, the space opera can seem closer to the fantasy genre, following the usual dictum that sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Which brings us to the particular flavor of opera in Matter. Over the course of nearly a dozen novels, Banks has tuned and fine-tuned his own version of the Milky Way, one crowded by a huge number of species of wildly differing technologies and abilities. In a largish corner is the Culture, a kind of humanoid amalgam of different species whose point-of-view forms the center of Banks' vision.

This far in the future, technology renders scarcity obsolete, leaving the Culture free to practice a kind of anarchistic benevolence towards less developed species. Emphasis on the anarchistic: this is no Star Trek chain-of-command, but a strange, sometimes disturbing group characterized by a near-fanatical individualism and occasional pangs of guilt. Some of Banks' most charming stories are about various offshoots of the Culture, including the strange choices made by the many sentient AIs.

Banks' prose is free-flowing and liberally dosed with a kind of cynical, post-colonial British humanism; as the Culture meddles and blunders Banks' narrators look on with a sad half-smile. The British charm appears also in his characterization of the artificially intelligent machines, who often play Jeeves to more fallible, biological, Bertie Woosters.

Meanwhile, death and suffering accumulates liberally as the usual plot drivers — competing species at the Culture's level of development, or far less advanced places that hack away with swords, guns and terribly retro fission devices, observed by grains of spy-dust that entertain or horrify the more advanced.

The wide scope of Banks' world gives him plenty of space to play out, in miniature, a number of different genre conventions. Steampunk makes something of an appearance in Matter as the central story putters along with steam engines — beneath an artificial sky created eons ago by a vastly superior race that has long-disappeared.

Matter is perhaps not Banks' best — earlier novels such as Excession or Look to Windward might be a better place for newcomers to Banks. In Matter, things drag from time to time and perhaps fifty of the five hundred pages could be cut without pain. One wishes occasionally for a North-by-Northwest cut past some of the plot development that feels a bit dutiful near the end.

But the sparkle of Banks is largely undimmed, both in the grand sweeps of plot and the dozen-page grace-notes that for a less-talented writer would be the germ of a novella. Neglected since the era of E. E. "Doc" Smith, the space opera is back. And Banks has been there all the time.

Although currently 30,000 feet over the Atlantic, Simon DeDeo is usually at home in Chicago, Illinois, where he works as an astrophysicist at the University of Chicago and moonlights as a literary critic. He last wrote for slashdot on the politics of blogging.

You can purchase Matter from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

A good series

[MLCT]

I have read two of the culture books, The player of games, and Consider Phlebas. Both were impressive and I would like to get caught up with the rest (two more bought but on the long term reading list). His work is very enjoyable to read, and paints pictures that are more than escapist SF. There is a lot of nuance in the political structure and its implications.

I am glad that he is still writing on the series, the review for Matter suggests an enjoyable read.

Which Iain Banks?

[gEvil (beta)]

I have to admit that I've only read one Iain M. Banks novel (Look to Windward, because for some reason my local library has a copy), but I've had Consider Phlebas and Player of Games on order with Amazon waiting for their US (re)issues for the past few months. However, I've read nearly every Iain Banks novel and have absolutely loved almost every word he's written. Actually, I'll be finishing up The Wasp Factory in the next day or so. If you aren't familiar with him, I strongly suggest you pick up something right away (most of his fiction is fairly readily available in the States; his scifi is a bit harder to come by until those reissues come out over the next few months). Absolutely amazing author.

I can't agree enough...

[Stochastism]

that Iain M. Banks is one of the most underrated Sci-Fi authors out there. He does "large scale" on an unprecedented... err.. scale. From the description of worlds, to the intelligence of the minds, to the battles they fight across the galaxy.

His descriptions of Lazy Guns is one of the funniest things I've ever read (Use of Weapons or Against a Dark Backround, I can't remember now).

But his contemporary Iain "no M" Banks stuff is not nearly as good (not bad though). What is it about Sci-Fi that lets otherwise average authors become great? Is is the chance to suspend disbelief?

Or am I just biased towards Sci-Fi?

Re:Matter

[Andy_R]

The reference to Gravitas was an in-joke. The superintelligent AI-run spaceships of the Culture are rather more playful than one might expect in a traditional space opera. Names the ships have chosend for themselves include "Zero Gravitas", "Very Little Gravitas Indeed" and in "Matter", "Experiencing A Significant Gravitas Shortfall".

Re:Hamilton

[fastest fascist]

Hamilton reads like a Hollywood blockbuster - gratuitous sex aplenty, big explosions, fast action. Banks has those too, but generally is more skillful and balanced in his writing. Also Hamilton seems to have issues with endings. Everything I've read from him either ends in a deus ex machina or comes damn close. "Ok, so the universe is going to shit if we don't find this supercomputer-übermind-whatever and get it to help us. Let's go do that! Hey here it is! Hello please help us? Woo, everything was fixed!" - If it's not that bad, then at least you can see the ending coming about a thousand pages away because Hamilton's idea of a plot is to have the characters come up with a plan and then execute it to the letter. Seriously, once you've read what the characters intend to do, you know what's going to happen at the end: Exactly what they say they're going to do.

That said, I do enjoy his works in the way I enjoy bubblegum, but damnit, writing huge trilogies with endings as unclimactic as Hamilton's is just sadistic.

Against a Dark Background

[Ground0]

I've read almost all of his books, including "The Business", "The Bridge" and other non-science fiction works. "Matter" is one of his best but I have to say "Against a Dark Background" [wikipedia.org] has to be his best work. Nothing beats a lazy gun [wikipedia.org] !

possibly an oxbridge thing

[sdedeo]

I've seen his releases get front-alcove treatment in the Waterstones in Oxford, and Heffers' in Cambridge, but perhaps that's because they know their nerds. I do agree, in lesser doses, that the problems you describe are the failure modes of Banks' sci-fi -- but I disagree that it happens as often as you suggest.

Re:Hamilton

[jollyreaper]

Peter F. Hamilton is the Stephen King of scifi. The world-building and storytelling is unbelievably good but the endings are pulled out of his ass. The end of Night's Dawn was the biggest Deus Ex Machina since the Stand.