Consider Phlebas, first published in 1987, is a space opera novel by Scottish writer Iain M. Banks. It is the first in a series of novels about an interstellar post-scarcity society called the Culture.
The novel revolves around the Idiran–Culture War, and Banks plays on that theme by presenting various microcosms of that conflict. Its protagonist Bora Horza Gobuchul is an enemy of the Culture.
Consider Phlebas is Banks's first published science fiction novel and takes its title from a line in T. S. Eliot's poem The Waste Land. A subsequent Culture novel, Look to Windward (2000), whose title comes from the previous line of the same poem, can be considered a loose follow-up.
This is my third or fourth Culture book, and probably the one I liked least. Basically (theme on all my dislikes) I didn't like the characters, even the protagonist. And his motivation of "this side of the war, I guess" just didn't really feel like it held up.
I think on a re-read I'd be less irritated by how the protagonist (admittedly, realistically) just lurches from situation to situation without any real overarching plan, but as with every other Banks book, I struggle to summarise the plot simply. A lot of things happen but their end relation to the plot on the cover is low.
This is the second Banks I’ve read and I thought they were both terrific. Unlike some epic, galaxy-spanning space operas, this was pacey, smoothly written with great characters and loads of action and adventure.
This is the second Banks I’ve read and I thought they were both terrific. Unlike some epic, galaxy-spanning space operas, this was pacey, smoothly written with great characters and loads of action and adventure.
Space opera #1 in a long series. The plot was like a superhero movie; why are they going there one wonders. Some characters, like those in a bad Western, were clearly introduced so that there was someone to die in the next big fight. I felt sorry for the poor bastards as soon as they were described. The underlying premise, the importance of The Mind, never seemed clear to me. I would have to classify it as an unusually transparent McGuffin. The protagonist's feelings about The Culture were unclear to me. I assume that the nature of the Culture would become more clear if I read more of these novels. (See famous quote attributed to Giacomo Rossini re: Wagner's Ring) Also, there were some attempts at stream-of-consciousness that were unsuccessful.
No real world building even though the world we get a glimpse of is fascinating. We are left wanting and not in a good way. A lot of it was, well, meaningless. We want this book to be more. We actually need it to be more. That it doesn't even com close is what is so depressing. That said, we are eager to read the next recommended book in the series to hopefully see if he does give us more, in a good way.
A ton of imaginative concepts but it doesn't quite work
3 stars
Content warning
Mild spoilers
I appreciate the basic concept of the book to show the effects of a big war on various situations, how people get dragged into it (or worse) against their will. It also shows the costs. The appendix that lists the facts about the war of which the book only covers the beginning is quite sobering. This was my second time reading it and it sure reads differently now in the light of a very real war raging nearby.
Banks introduces a lot of quite imaginative concepts in this book. The Culture, their Minds, huge ships with funny names, Orbitals, Megaships, Damage, a bunker system with huge trains and formidable weapons of various kinds. Almost all of the episodes in the book kould be their own book.
The main problem is that the protagonist we keep following around isn't very sympathetic. On the contrary. Same goes for the rest of the pirates we spend most of the book with. So, it's difficult to be invested in what happens to them. This isn't helped by them dying in stupid ways almost immediately. That does get a bit repetitive after a while. The final showdown in the bunker system was very captivating the second time around, too. The way gender is depicted in this book isn't very progressive, weirdly enough. It's a solid, somewhat traditional sci-fi book.
I remember seeing this in a book shop with a shiny silver highlight on the cover, and recognisng the name of the author of "The Wasp Factory", which I had read and really enjoyed. But what was he doing in the SF section, and what was the "M" all about? I guessed correctly that here was an author living a double life in so-called literature AND my home base of genre fiction, especially SF. And I found his SF was far superior to his realistic fiction or whatever you call that rubbish :-).
On early readings I didn't quite absorb the brilliant creation of Banks' future utopia the Culture, partly because this first novel highlights a character who has turned against this pan-galactic anarchist society, and worked for a religious extremist society sworn to destroy it. It's like Banks wanted to stress-test his perfect society by portraying one of its …
I remember seeing this in a book shop with a shiny silver highlight on the cover, and recognisng the name of the author of "The Wasp Factory", which I had read and really enjoyed. But what was he doing in the SF section, and what was the "M" all about? I guessed correctly that here was an author living a double life in so-called literature AND my home base of genre fiction, especially SF. And I found his SF was far superior to his realistic fiction or whatever you call that rubbish :-).
On early readings I didn't quite absorb the brilliant creation of Banks' future utopia the Culture, partly because this first novel highlights a character who has turned against this pan-galactic anarchist society, and worked for a religious extremist society sworn to destroy it. It's like Banks wanted to stress-test his perfect society by portraying one of its apostates first up.
Anyway, it's a great book, as the horrible Idirans and the Culture operatives race to rescue a stranded "mind" one of the super-powerful artificial intelligences which are at the core of the Culture.
Mostly escapist science fiction because I have an annoying cold and am low on energy. It is about the clash of a post-capitalist culture and an imperialist one though, however unlikely, the "good folks" are human(oid) and the war-making imperialists are not.
It's the first of Banks' Culture novels, which I've read several times; I'm starting over though it will take me a while as I'll save them for when my attention span is low.
Cela faisait un moment que je voulais lire le cycle de la Culture de Iain M. Banks et je me suis enfin décidé à m'y mettre. Je ne sais pas si je dois me réjouir d'avoir autant attendu ou regretter de ne pas l'avoir fait plus tôt, tout est-il que le premier roman du cycle m'a beaucoup plu.
Le récit est rythmé et finalement assez classique. On s'attache énormément aux personnages et on suit avec plaisir leurs aventures et mésaventures. Surtout, l'univers est original, on pressent une grande richesse à explorer dans la suite du cycle. C'est de la science-fiction inventive et intelligente, tout ce que j'aime.
Bad. The setting of the Culture is interesting but the author's sense of storytelling and pacing is horrible. For a series about the Culture, I was surprised that the novel is from the viewpoint of someone who is fighting against them. I learned very little about the thing I wanted to read about.
The story is bogged down by internal monologuing, info dumps, and scene changes to the literal other side of the galaxy. There are a number of chapters that are entirely superfluous -- the worst of which is a digression onto an island of religious fanatics (no spoilers but the chapter name actually tells you what will happen). The writing is so long-winded that you'll start skimming, and then immediately miss a throwaway line that is critical to the next few pages of action. Even during the climax of the novel, the author decides to break up the …
Bad. The setting of the Culture is interesting but the author's sense of storytelling and pacing is horrible. For a series about the Culture, I was surprised that the novel is from the viewpoint of someone who is fighting against them. I learned very little about the thing I wanted to read about.
The story is bogged down by internal monologuing, info dumps, and scene changes to the literal other side of the galaxy. There are a number of chapters that are entirely superfluous -- the worst of which is a digression onto an island of religious fanatics (no spoilers but the chapter name actually tells you what will happen). The writing is so long-winded that you'll start skimming, and then immediately miss a throwaway line that is critical to the next few pages of action. Even during the climax of the novel, the author decides to break up the action with internal monologuing from two entirely new characters.
I was looking to discover more about the Culture but this wasn't that. Apparently all the books are one-shots, so if I am going to attempt this again, I'll sort by highest rating and start there.
Terrible pacing and bad writing -- I strongly recommend against.
The cannibal arc was entirely without redemption, and even the finale in the Command System we have to break it up with sudden interludes from both the pet drone and the lizard (both of them!).
And why is the climax not even about fighting the Culture? It's a ridiculous drawn out search of the underground tunnels, with fighting between two characters that are supposed to be on the same side. There was effectively zero explanation why they were fighting each other - Horza should have just left if he knew he wasn't necessary. But instead everyone dies because whatever, author fiat. Oh, and the Mind was okay? I guess? Was it important to the war?
I found the appendix that gave a summary of the war to be more thrilling than the novel itself.
This is a book about arrogance. The arrogance of going up against a culture (indeed, THE Culture) that can do anything, of going up against the certainty of faith, of going it alone, of reliance on technology or the rejection of it. I spent a while thinking about what this book is "about" after its unusual conclusion. I think it's ultimately about how very important it is to work together, to be together. A culture that destroys individualism so thoroughly that each person is ultimately disconnected from every other is as bad as a religious community that rejects common ground with other communities, which is itself as bad as a man who is driven only to accomplish his own ends. Every bad thing that happens to an individual is either the result of working alone--even with the best intentions--or of an uncaring, random universe inflicting itself on people left unprotected. …
This is a book about arrogance. The arrogance of going up against a culture (indeed, THE Culture) that can do anything, of going up against the certainty of faith, of going it alone, of reliance on technology or the rejection of it. I spent a while thinking about what this book is "about" after its unusual conclusion. I think it's ultimately about how very important it is to work together, to be together. A culture that destroys individualism so thoroughly that each person is ultimately disconnected from every other is as bad as a religious community that rejects common ground with other communities, which is itself as bad as a man who is driven only to accomplish his own ends. Every bad thing that happens to an individual is either the result of working alone--even with the best intentions--or of an uncaring, random universe inflicting itself on people left unprotected.
This is not a happy story. But it's not nihilistic either. Ultimately it's irritated, as if to say "come on, you have everything you need to do anything if you can just get it together!" Banks has chosen some fairly pulpy science fiction to convey this message. The tropes and images Banks uses in most of the story are not complex, literary science fiction. But there are moments, among which the most obvious is the brief aside when the Culture erases a structure from reality, when you glimpse the raw, profound power that is available to these people, power to shape reality, to do incredible things, if they'd get out of their own heads and stop having pulp fiction gunfights with three-legged aliens.
Of course, that leaves me wondering if Consider Phlebas is a talented writer's criticism of a genre that lets you explore literally anything under the stars but spends its time on gunfights with beasties. It seems like something Banks would do. Because, again, this is a book about arrogance, and maybe he's aware that his own might result in a difficult book that doesn't please people as much as it might.
Anyway, this is my second run through Banks' SF books, this time in order. I'm one story in and already sad that he's gone all over again.
I definitely enjoyed this more than (Surface Detail)[https://book.dansmonorage.blue/book/18939]. If nothing else, it is notably shorter, which suggests an instance of "established authors need editing too".
Banks does love to shock, and loves to write "cinematically", which occasionally a bit tiresome.
While I think describing the Culture series as "Literary Science Fiction" is a bit of stretch, there are some interesting big picture ideas, and some of the characters have some depth, or at least some interior life. The choice of having a "bad guy" protagonist already elevates it beyond a lot of more pulpy SF.
I really liked how this started off. A protagonist thrown from one deadly encounter to another, sort of like Indiana Jones. The final act takes a surprising turn into what amounts to a slow dungeon crawl, then the epilogue ties things up in a way that I consider deeply unsatisfying.
This book is a good example of why Goodreads needs a status for books called “Abandoned” or “Didn’t finish”. Ugh, made it 20% of the way through it and decided that it was pointless gore and misery. Too many good books out there to waste time with books like this.
