Iain Banks: Surface Detail
Dec. 7th, 2010 09:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
varjohaltiaI was genuinely stoked to read Banks' latest Culture novel. It was a proper hardcover with a neat dust jacket and really pretty fractal endsheets.
Banks's books are not entirely formulaic, but there are some setting-related elements that keep repeating, and he does seem to pick somewhat similar story lines. Again, we have a (demi)god-like General Systems Vehicle or two, a spunky non-Culture world heroine, a crazy war ship, and scheming protagonists. On the negative side, there are also some rather painful threads and outcomes, and I'm not entirely certain they were necessary. Then again, whenever reading Banks, I keep getting the impression that I'm missing several levels of the book and only following the most basic, obvious storyline.
One of the central pieces in Banks' universe (as well as several other contemporary sci-fi), most of the advanced civilizations (such as the various ship AIs, Culture citizens and others) can back up and transfer their mind-states. If they get killed, they just reset to their latest back-up, so they're somewhat immortal, and biological minds can operate in an AI and virtual environments and vice versa.
Moreso than any of the previous Culture novels, Banks starts to examine just what this means, what death means, what hell and salvation are, and what some of the limitations and drawbacks of immortality are. The issues raised are pretty fascinating. Also, there are some implicit examples of just why some of the Culture warships types have designations such as "psychopath class" and how an entity designed to wage war interacts in a society at peace.
4.5/5.
Banks's books are not entirely formulaic, but there are some setting-related elements that keep repeating, and he does seem to pick somewhat similar story lines. Again, we have a (demi)god-like General Systems Vehicle or two, a spunky non-Culture world heroine, a crazy war ship, and scheming protagonists. On the negative side, there are also some rather painful threads and outcomes, and I'm not entirely certain they were necessary. Then again, whenever reading Banks, I keep getting the impression that I'm missing several levels of the book and only following the most basic, obvious storyline.
One of the central pieces in Banks' universe (as well as several other contemporary sci-fi), most of the advanced civilizations (such as the various ship AIs, Culture citizens and others) can back up and transfer their mind-states. If they get killed, they just reset to their latest back-up, so they're somewhat immortal, and biological minds can operate in an AI and virtual environments and vice versa.
Moreso than any of the previous Culture novels, Banks starts to examine just what this means, what death means, what hell and salvation are, and what some of the limitations and drawbacks of immortality are. The issues raised are pretty fascinating. Also, there are some implicit examples of just why some of the Culture warships types have designations such as "psychopath class" and how an entity designed to wage war interacts in a society at peace.
4.5/5.
