More Human Than Human

"I recognise civilisation when I see it" - Kenneth Clark

I’ve had more than one run at reading the Culture novels. It turns out that Use of Weapons was the place to start, at least for me. Even though it was the third book in the series to be published , Iain M Banks actually wrote it first. Perhaps some of that novelty found its way into the final product, calling out to the sensitive reader to start here.

Cheradenine Zakalwe is the hook. An ultra-competent mercenary who is poised and in control under all circumstances, traveling around the galaxy, playing a pivotal role in global and sometimes interstellar conflicts. Diziet Sma is the icing on the cake. A beautiful and cunning woman who works for the Special Circumstances division of Contact and manipulates Zakalwe, in turn.

In spite of the fact that the book is populated with sentient spaceships (some of them with curious personality quirks) and drones and the like, Banks wears his science fiction Mythos lightly, only parceling out enough information as might be pertinent to the character’s own understanding of their situation. There is scant exposition, where the story stops and the characters, or even a narrator, explain what the Culture, Contact, Special Circumstances, GSVs, etc. actually are.

That is my excuse for making a hash of describing the Culture, when I volunteered that I had started reading the third book in the series (my conversation partner had never heard of the Culture novels nor Iain M Banks). Let’s see if I can do better here: The Culture is a galaxy-spanning human(oid) civilisation with an ultra-materialist understanding of philosophy and history; a post-scarcity society that fulfills either the communist or libertarian utopia (delete according to preference), in which sentient AIs allow people to live lives without want, free of disease and even unencumbered by ageing, for those who choose that path.

Not every civilisation is as advanced as the Culture and those that are (arguably) its peers do not all accept the Culture’s ethical framework. What the Minds within the Culture call guiding lesser civilisations along the true path, others term manipulation—and that is the backdrop against which our story is set (how did I do?).

It is typical in reviews to venture a plot synopsis but I am not so inclined. Use of Weapons is a novel of moods and flavours much more than plot. Zakalwe’s romance with a beautiful alien woman is tender and well-observed, particularly the bedroom scene in which his lover, half-curious, half-mocking, asks him to tell her about his many scars and their stories.

Time to give Player of Games another go, I think.