Surface Detail [Brossura]

It is perhaps appropriate for a book that centres around the battle for the afterlife to begin this review with a confession: this was my first encounter with Iain M Banks' Culture series of science fiction novels. At first, I worried that this put me at a significant disadvantage as for the first 100 or so pages, I spend most of the time being completely confused about what was going on. However, as the strands started to come together, it became apparent that this is partly Banks' style and indeed it's one he uses in his non-science fiction books too. Keep going, it does come together.

As in his non-sci fi works, Banks juggles stories and characters with dazzling effect. He takes a number of characters whose stories may or may not ultimately come together and switches between their stories. And just when you think one line of story is not going anywhere in particular, he twists it round and it all makes perfect sense. The confusion is compounded by the fact that he is covering both the `Real' and `virtual' worlds, and particularly in the virtual worlds, characters may take on different roles and identities. Sound confusing? Well, it is at first but it's also highly entertaining, not to mention clever.

To the uninitiated, the Culture is a fictional interstellar enlightened, socialist, and utopian society operating amongst other, less benevolent and lesser civilized civilizations. This is at least the eighth book to feature the Culture, which first started with Consider Phlebas featuring the Culture's religious war against the Idiran Empire. We are told that the events of Surface Detail occur a millennium and a half after this war.

Surface Detail begins when Lededje Y'breq, a tattooed slave (surface detail, you see?) is attempting to escape from her evil owner, the rich and powerful Veppers who has made his family fortune in virtual war games. He's like an evil cross between Bill Gates and Hugh Heffner.

Meanwhile, in another part of the galaxy, a war rages over the right for Hell to exist. At first the Culture is not directly involved in this war being fought out in a virtual environment with the antagonists agreeing to abide by the outcome in the Real, which strikes me as a very good way of settling disputes. But that will change as the virtual war spills over into the Real.

This is terrifically bad news for the galaxy, but great news for the reader as it brings into play the Culture war ship `'Falling Outside The Normal Moral Constraints'` and it's avatar Demeisen introducing that classic sci fi fall back of entertaining computers communicating with humans. It maybe a well-used trick, but it affords great opportunity for humour. And if you think that ship's title is good, how about the `'Sense Amidst Madness, Wit Amidst Folly'`. I know that in the current economic climate cuts are likely in Defence spending here on Earth, but surely we can put something aside to re-name some of our Navy with these names!

There's double-crossing aplenty, action, revenge, love stories, virtual and real action, tech and humour and some terrific characters. But what sets this book apart is the quality of the writing and the depth of the author's imagination. Amongst all the mayhem, Banks raises some interesting questions about identity, death and the whole point of Hell.

Fans of the Culture series will need no encouragement to grab this latest installment. Sure, it can be confusing at times and Banks does rather leave some stories hanging (although he presents a little potted outcome of the characters at the end) but it's a wonderful trip and I for one will be eagerly diving into the earlier books.

If you can create an immersive virtual reality indistinguishable from the Real then you can build Heaven ... or Hell. Inevitably some civilizations will build their own Hells, to punish sinners and encourage the virtuous. Equally inevitably, other civilizations will want to abolish these virtual arenas of unending torment.

In "Surface Detail", Iain M. Banks' new Culture novel, there is a war in progress on this very issue. Waged for decades in virtuality, the losing side is preparing to cheat and move the war into the Real. Suddenly this issue could drag everybody in.

This novel of 627 pages provides plenty of space for a multitude of story lines to develop and coalesce as the big picture comes slowly into focus. We start, in medias res, with the tattooed girl Lededje fleeing her overbearing boss. We cut to the conscript Vatueil, part of a mediaeval army besieging a castle in an opaque war. We cut to an overwhelming `equivalent tech' assault upon a Culture Orbital and meet Yime Nsokyi fighting in the last ditch. Not all of these events are happening in the Real.

It's a challenge to write compelling descriptions of Hell: how many words for torment are there in the language? How many gruesome tortures do you need to describe? How can you get the reader to empathise with suffering? Banks' solution is to apply a paced plot-driven structure to excursions into the netherworld: we encounter agonies from repeatedly unexpected directions.

Towards the end, as battle fleets assemble, the novel picks up pace and Banks has a lot of fun with the Abominator Class General Offensive Unit "Falling Outside The Normal Moral Constraints". This is a ship which could probably destroy a whole galactic spiral arm without really trying and boy, does it waste the bad guys!

So: exuberant, satisfyingly complex, interesting characters, quite a few surprises and a weird echo of "Use of Weapons" on the final page. What's not to like?

If all SF is really reflection on the here-and-now, what's the issue being explored here? No-one is going to feel too surprised that Iain Banks feels that torture is wrong, that virtual reality Hells are a poor idea, that sociopathic plutocrats ought to get their just desserts. So where is the subversive take on received bien-pensant opinion? The nearest I could find is that sometimes being talented, high-ranking and self-important doesn't make you the automatic centre of attention - a somewhat underwhelming truth.

So read it as intelligent, sophisticated entertainment: it's worth the money.

Having read the entire Banks sci-fi catalogue and a smattering of his fiction, I haven't come across a novel of his which didn't have a deeply woven tapestry with subtle accents. His prior novel Inversions didn't impress me much as I found the feudal kingdom a bit tedious to tackle, and the posh lifestyle of the king somewhat dull, but I did find the darkness and humor to my liking yet still received 3/5 stars. Of a similar raring, Feersum Endjinn didn't have voluptuously complex characters or a grand epic-ness. Surface Detail (SD) takes negative aspects from both of these novels and shares the similar rating of 3/5 stars... which I thought I'd do for the release of SD.

Typical of Banksian SF is the plethora of characters strewn across the galactic plane, who have a unique plot line and are fated to be joined together in extreme circumstances in the last 10% of the novel. That sounds about right, doesn't it? Most characters in SD are somewhat flat: generically evil like Veppers, fairly morbid yet motivated Quietus agent Yime, the sarcastic and blood-thirsty AI of Demeisen and the sulky yet revengeful Lededje. The real highlights of the spread of aliens, humans and pan-humans are the hellish plights of Prin and Chay (escaped from hell and stuck in hell for perspective lifetimes, respectively) and the trials and mindset of the cute and conniving Culture-fan of the GFCN species, Bettlescroy. Two separate books could have been written about these characters alone!

Veppers annoyed me the most, undoubtedly. I've read enough of easily unlikable characters that I now know it's pretty simple to create such a beast (aggressive sexual acts ala The Algebraist or maniacal single-mindedness ala Dark Background). Veppers takes on both these traits as well as being filthy rich like King Quience of Inversions but also has an added distasteful trait of acting just like and amoral, spoiled king. This character has been made again and again by Banks and the current version of evil in the guise of Veppers is tried, tested and now getting quite dull.

As for the supposedly galaxy-spanning plot... well, not so much in SD. There's a brief scene on a Hub, horrific depictions of a virtual hell, uninspiring terrestrial life on a bland planet which Veppers resides and a vague description of a series of orbital factories abandoned by an extinct alien species which isn't explored to its fullest. Most of the novel is aboard a few Culture ships or alien vessels, where the plot is talked about and their intentions laid out in full. There were no large surprises behind the intentions of the major caste and the only excitement rally came about via the war-loving, sardonic AI named Demeisen. There are some frivolous and interesting scenes of exotic alien architecture (like the said Tsungarial Disk orbital factory and another derelict monstrosity).

Granted, there were a number of exotic ideas which held my interest and imagination even while at work or exercising, but most of the novel was just uninspiring and untried: the virtual hells should have been better explored to a greater degree but Banks limited it to a single hell, the NR level 8 species is of similar level as the Culture but was left wholly undetailed, and the broader greatness and sustaining quality of the Culture wasn't delved into.

If another Culture novel is written, I do hope Banks steers away from the `glitz and glamour' of Special Circumstances and sticks to grassroots Culture civilization, which is what is draws me back to his universe again and again.