Allen Shull reviewed Matter by Iain M. Banks (Culture, #8)
Another glimpse of utopia
5 stars
Everything here is about scale, breadth, entwinement, scope, and interdependence. Even utopia must reckon with the cosmos. A utopia must not be exclusive and totalizing—or else it turns dystopic—while the inclusion of non-utopia in the utopian mindset undercuts as well as defines the utopian mindset. In that same way, luckily, the utopian mindset is harbored, sheltered, and fostered within even the most dystopian society. And even within a society that grinds down the individual do we find individuals who resist and rise.
