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Look to Windward
I can't go into any great detail about Iain M. Banks' latest novel of the highly-advanced Culture civilization without giving away too much of the plot. The book opens as the light of two suns which were induced to explode in a war 800 years past -- the Idiran wars, the gigadeathcrimes mentioned in previous Culture books -- is about to fall upon the scene. The stage is set.
Unlike some of his other Culture books, this is not an action novel. While there is some action, that isn't the focus of the novel. Rather than rushing ahead, this book takes a leisurely pace through an exploration of war. Where Use of Weapons didn't give you time to think, Look to Windward gives you nearly infinite time - the rest of your life, in fact - to consider the consequences of war.
Ponder, if you will, a shell of light 1600 light-years in diameter. Outside of that shell, a war is still going on -- two planetary systems are still full of life. Inside that shell, the war is over and nothing remains of those systems but two stars gone nova. If this image moves you, so will the book.
Banks is intent upon sculpting a symphony, a tribute to war veterans of all times and places. Threads wax and wane, appear and disappear. Lifelines are cut short. Heroes aren't. Soldiers do their duty. As with most of his science fiction works, things are not as they seem, and you won't figure out just how things are put together until the final bars are being played. It is easy to imagine this book played aloud.
I still might start new Banks readers on Use of Weapons or Player of Games. But this would be an excellent second novel for them. Well, I take that back. Consider Phlebas should be read before Look to Windward.
(As an aside, does anyone else remember "All The Way Back", a short story by Michael Shaara?)
Try before you buy and read the prologue online.
-- Anne Marie
Hrm, I didn't even realize it was a book review for a sec. Maybe a 'Book Review: " would be appropiate? Maybe a book review section?
Putting it under news just didn't feel right.
Offtopic blah blah.. at least I'm not trolling or flaming. Constructive critism!
I also ordered and read _Look to Windward_ from the UK, and I'm having a hard time believing that this guy and I read the same book. _Look to Windward_ is disjointed, shallow, lacking in characterization, and definitely lacking in the complexity that was present in _Use of Weapons_ and _Consider Phlebas_. It's two hundred pages of a single character doing absolutely nothing besides moping around, followed by two pages of actual story ... and if we want that, Dave Sim did it brilliantly in _Melmoth_. There's material about life in the Culture that was done better in _Player of Games_, material about Minds that was done better in _Excession_, material about Special Circumstances's screwups that was done better in _Use of Weapons_ ... this is, basically, a pretty lousy book all by itself, and once you compare what qualities it *does* have with other books by Banks, it suffers - badly - in the comparison. If you have to have all Banks's work ... wait for paperback. Possibly even wait for it to appear in paperback in used bookstores.
Anyway, I love Banks stuff. He is my favourite SF writer. He is not really a 'hard' SF writer, I think he concentrates on the society rather than the technology - hence 'the Culture', and this is what makes him so interesting. Indeed one of the attributes of the Culture is that technology no longer advances from the perspective of the average citizen. Once you are capable of manufacturing anything, anywhere, and effectively for free what more can you do that will affect the average human?
Also, his work is very refreshing when compared to that of most other SF writers, as it regards communism as inevitable, something I would agree with, in the long term. The only other writer I can think of writes about this is Ken MacLeod, his fellow Scot. I think Americans especially, who dominate the field, tend to write about future Megacorporations and the like. Is this because they really think this or because they are scared of losing sales - I mean Americans (rightly) have been totally opposed to communism for decades, so possibly their SF writers are scared of being branded commies?
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
There is no
Iain Banks is a sick writer. I cannot think of any other author so inventively grim. The Wasp Factory and Song of Stone are just incredibly depressing.
Iain M. Banks is a sick writer. He has created one of the great future civilisations (Galactic Empire? pulease!), which he describes as "a fucking utopia", and yet within it, he manages to set stories every bit as fucked up as the Wasp Factory and Song of Stone.
I love his writing, but I try and make a point of never reading two of his novels back to back, lest I be tempted to orphan my children.
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E_NOSIG
Consider how different Banks' fictional world is. He was, AFAIK, the first SF writer to disassociate his future civilisation from the planetary-centred Civs. that preceded him. The Culture exists entirely in space, it has no central authority, no real territorial claims. Also, human beings are reduced to the status of fleas on a dog - they are not necessary. And the concept of this civilisation being so jaded and purposeless, now that it has solved all of it's physical problems, that it needs to make it it's mission to 'help' lesser civilsations is fantastic. This seems to me to be a reference to the USA & the West today - we are in a similar situation ;) . In fact, that book has so many complexities I reread it even now, and never fail to notice something new.
But by far his greatest creation, IMO, are the Minds themselves. Most other Computer Intelligences in SF come across as humans with funny voices, but the Minds are a truly brilliant creation. It's very difficult to write of such beings convincingly, and make the reader believe they transcend humanity, but Banks pulls it off.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
There is no
"Everyone dies pointlessly and then the story just stops."
If the purpose of art is to hold up a mirror to life, then this succeeds admirably I think.
Elgon