Cropped Will Cardini artwork

January 27th, 2012

The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks

Filed under: SF Reviews — Tags: , , — William Cardini @ 7:13 am

Since my last post, I’ve been staying up late burning through The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks. I loved it. This is now unofficial Banks week at the Hypercastle.

The Player of Games by Iain M Banks
Cover by Mark Salwowski, via qualityapeman’s Flickr stream.

The Player of Games is a much better introduction to The Culture than either of the other books I’ve read, Consider Phlebas (the first published Culture book) and Matter. The Player of Games is a tightly structured story of the confrontation between one Culture person, Jernau Morat Gurgeh, and a very different society. Banks is leisurely in the introduction, showing us “the extended cocktail party” that is the Culture, as Russ Allbery put it in his review. In the latter two thirds of the book, Banks shows us the Culture in contrast to its enemy. I’m usually not very taken with utopias but I find the Culture totally captivating. It’s the perfect escape for a feminist leftist rationalist artist. When I allow myself to hope, I dream that the arc of history is bending humanity towards something similar. Therefore I found it especially thrilling when Gurgeh’s story pits his values against an oppressive capitalist interstellar empire that is the dark shadow of our future. Unlike the other Banks sf books I’ve read, The Player of Games has much more thought than action. The conflict centers around matches of a byzantine board game called Azad. We are told that Azad is incredibly complicated but fortunately Banks leaves all but a few evocative details to our imagination. Another intriguing sf conceit in the book is the three-sexed species that rules the Empire of Azad, especially when the narrator breaks the fourth wall and discusses the reasoning behind pronouns choices. Does it make it easier to see the effects of patriarchy through the twisted mirror of an all together alien gender? Outside of the combined critique of capitalism, imperialism, and patriarchy, what I most enjoyed about this book was reading about Gurgeh excelling at the game bouts. There’s something compelling about following the exploits of a highly competent individual. But if you prefer your protagonist to be more relatable, human, and flawed, this is not the book for you.

January 24th, 2012

Matter by Iain M. Banks – Advanced Aliens in Westeros

This past Sunday I finished Matter by Iain M. Banks. It’s the third sf novel by Banks that I’ve read, and each one is a hefty meal of highly visual action on an enormous scale. They are both alternatingly grotesque and funny – I’ve been keeping my wife up half of the night with my guffaws. Imagine my surpise, then, when I read reviews on the Internet and discover that the ones I’ve read (the aforementioned Matter, The Algebraist, and Consider Phlebas) are considered (the first two more so than the tragic Consider Phlebas) to be some of Iain M Banks’ lesser sf works. Considering how they compare to most fsf, I’m eager to read what fans consider his better ones. I wasn’t entirely satisfied with Matter but it was thought provoking.

Consider Phlebas speculative cover by Luke John Frost
I’m not a huge fan of the current covers of Banks’ books and it was hard to find good images of the Salwowski covers, so I was delighted to find these speculative covers that Luke John Frost made for a school project.

In Matter, I thoroughly enjoyed the philosophical detours, witty dialogue, grand vistas, and the concept of a fantasy faux-European setting nested within a space opera galaxy. Any sf cosmos that includes level upon level of more powerful beings is going to get me. That idea is at the heart of the Hyperverse, after all. Although the climax came and went rather abruptly, I liked how Banks subverted my expectations for how the story was going to end up by destroying two thirds of the knot of plotlines with one bold slice. But I also stumbled on some of the book’s flaws. Although the nerd in me reveled in the pages-long aside that described all of the depths and adjectives of the shellworld Sursamen, the early, heavy chunk of exposition dropped me out of the flow. I think that the information could be more smoothly integrated in the narrative. Similarly, a lot of the plot of the book involves the main characters being pulled from place to place by forces beyond their control. Maybe I’ve read one too many long quests in a fantasy novel, but I got tired of that quickly. However, I simultaneously appreciated how the character’s inability to control their fates related to the larger theme of the insignificance of the individual.

Player of Games speculative cover by Luke John Frost
Another speculative cover by Luke John Frost.

What struck me the most was how the themes and plot structure of Matter reminded me of A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the ultimate meaning behind the violence, oppression, and hopelessness that Martin portrays because of Sean T. Collins’ excellent (and rife with spoilers) tumblr All Leather must be Boiled. In multiple posts, Collins analyzes how Martin uses war, realpolitik, and fanatic warriors to condemn the havoc and tragedy that these forces bring to civilization. Replace magic with incredibly high technology (which, as Wizard Clarke has told us, are indistinguishable) and Banks does the same, with both Consider Phlebas and Matter. Things get even more interesting when you add the moral dimension of the Culture to the mix, who try to assist civilizations in developing past systemic violence and oppression, but do so by sometimes fostering those same tragedies. Basically, you could read Matter as the answer to the hypothetical question, “What if super advanced aliens intervened in the conflicts in Westeros and Essos?”

Excession speculative cover by Luke John Frost
A third speculative cover by Luke John Frost.

I wanted to read Excession next, which sounds like the best, but all they had at my local used book shop was The Player of Games and Use of Weapons so I’ll tackle those. I don’t think I’ll read all of Banks’ sf novels in one go though – I like the idea that there are superb sf novels still out there for me that I know I’ll enjoy. If I have any more thoughts worth sharing, I’ll be sure to post them here. If this post has made you curious about Banks, you should read this article by Annalee Newitz on io9 that summarizes Banks’ most popular creation, the Culture, a utopian vision of what our future could be, and has summarizes of the various books. It’s what got me to check him out originally.