Iain M. Banks: Look to Windward

Orbit

$29.95


Reviewed by Gilbert Wong*

The culture, the human-based society that is the pre-eminent galactic civilisation in Banks' imaginary future, is a fine metaphor for the more jaded Western nations of today.

A liberal democracy taken to the extreme, the Culture has harnessed technology, principally through its artificial intelligences, the Minds, to free its citizens from the need to work or engage in economic activity. Presented with utopia, most of humanity makes good use of it, engaged in either endless hedonism or protracted study of intellectual and scientific puzzles.

With its vaunted technology the Culture inhabits gigantic spacecraft and even more colossal habitats orbiting around stars. Its citizens are, to all intents and purposes, immortal.

When it encounters other societies the Culture is overpowering in its good intentions, but as we know from history, meaning well is not the same as doing well. Meddle in other people's wars at your peril is Banks' subtext.

The light from the detonation of two suns in a space war fought 800 years earlier is finally due to reach the orbiting habitat Masaq. The habitat is home to Ziller, a renowned composer and exile from his native Chelgria, one of the protagonists in the centuries-old war.

Chelgrian emissary Quilan is dispatched to Masaq to try to convince Ziller to return home as an act of cultural diplomacy.

Chelgria, however, only seems at peace. Like other advanced societies, it has gained the technology to allow its citizens to "sublime" or attain a certain immortality , but the Chelgrian sublimed are not benevolent.

Banks' imagination stretches to encompass the grand scale of the Culture. Particularly engaging is the subplot featuring the biologist Yoleus, who studies the behemothaurs, gigantic creatures with life spans measured in galactic orbits, and their even grander cousins the gigalithine lenticular entities.

Where Banks is best, though, is the labyrinthine plotting and counterplotting involving the Contact section of the Culture. The covert intelligence arm of the society supplies the human scale narrative needed amid the awesome scale of Banks' creation.

That said, this Culture tale has a somewhat contrived conclusion.

The Culture and its Minds and technologies have become a little too omniscient and powerful, dwarfing the threat the Chelgrians pose.

But his underlying intent seems clear. Banks dedicates this book to the Gulf War veterans; and like them, it is the old soldiers on both sides of this imaginary conflict who are no longer combatants but join those they have vanquished as victims.

Banks' challenge must be to keep these tales of the Culture fresh and engaging.

*Gilbert Wong is the Herald's books editor.