For years I’ve been looking for Consider Phlebas, the first science fiction novel by Iain M. Banks, and was happy to find a copy at the used book stores on Castro Street a few weeks ago. Of course, as soon as I finished reading it I found it on the Big Guy’s bookshelf, grrr! After all, since my copy was used Banks didn’t get any dosh either way but what can you do?
Consider Phlebas (1987) is also the first of Banks’ Culture novels. In an excellent twist, though, the story is told through the eyes of an outsider, a shapeshifter called Bora Horza Gobuchel. Horza is an agent of the Idirans and the Idirans are locked in a galaxy-spanning war with the Culture; the latter have realized that the formers’ religious beliefs in combination with their military technology mean war is an unfortunate necessity.
Horza works for the very large lizard-like aliens not because he agrees with the religion but because he believes the Culture is an evolutionary dead end strong enough to ultimately starve out all competition. As the novel begins he’s captive and nearly dead after being caught out impersonating a government minister on a backwards planet, exposed by Perosteck Balveda, an operative of the Culture’s Special Circumstances group.
Special Circumstances is the iron fist within the Culture’s velvet glove, intelligence agency and, when need be, military force. While battling the Idirans from system to system as their weapon manufactories spin up, they work intrigues to win in other ways. Yet the opposition doesn’t always lose; in one battle a Mind (an ultra-advanced artificial intelligence) fashions an escape from the warship body it normally wears and hides in the tunnels of a Planet of the Dead, a world protected by a sentient race evolved far beyond either of our combatants.
Horza escapes when his masters storm the castle in which he’s imprisoned, capturing Balveda in the process, only to have the Idiran ship detected and destroyed by her allies. Horza takes an escape capsule getaway, stranded in space and rescued by a mercenary company more interested in his high tech spacesuit than him, though he cons the captain out of jettisoning him.
Eventually Horza turns the tables, taking command of the mercenaries to complete the mission assigned to him and his Idiran commander, to retrieve or at least destroy that stranded Mind. Balveda and a small Culture machine intelligence are along for the ride, as it got launched a bit precipitously. To say the least. Doing the deed, if he can, is an even more massive.
Though the Idiran War is a seminal event through most of the Culture novels and stories he wrote afterwards, Banks does something few other authors would and essentially puts it in the background of Phlebas. He’s such a masterful storyteller that this works. I think anyone reading this who aspires to write fiction, science or otherwise, owes it to themselves to not only read this novel but to study it for character development, scene coloration and ways to twist reader expectations.
absolutely recommended
BillSaysThis 