And I think to myself, what a wonderful world!

Book Review: Surface Detail by Iain M Banks

Surface Detail is the latest science fiction novel by Scottish writer Iain M Banks; it was published towards the end of 2010. Banks is generally recognised as being the best modern writer in the genre. He also publishes novels which are not Science Fiction, under the slightly different name of Iain Banks (without the middle initial). There's no good reason for this, other than that he wants to.

Most of Banks's science fiction books, including this one, are set in a future in which the galaxy's most important and prominent civilisation is the 'Culture'. The Culture is in some ways an idyllic place; poverty, hunger and illness have been abolished. Unlimited technology allows people to live as long as they like and to do whatever they want. Civilisation has adopted a live and let live attitude– as long as what you want to do harms no one else, you are free to do it. There are many other civilisations in the galaxy, some the technological equals of the Culture, but most still struggling along the path towards the same goal. While the Culture officially leaves them alone to arrive at their own destiny, in fact it is constantly prodding the other cultures and trying to ensure particular outcomes, often with disastrous results. In many ways the Culture can be likened to America, both in its ideals of freedom and democracy, and its habit of interfering in the running of 'less civilised' countries around it.

In Banks's books, artificial intelligence has been developed to the extent that the most intelligent computers, known as 'Minds', are thousands of times cleverer than humans. These Minds are generally given spaceships to control, so that they can travel throughout the galaxy. In some cases, they run entire worlds. The management of the Culture is more or less left to the Minds, who can effortlessly run a galaxy-wide civilisation better than a huge civil service of humans would ever do.

The other feature of Banks's books is that the state of a human brain can be read and stored. It can be kept as a backup in case the human is accidentally killed, in which case a new body can be produced and the mind state superimposed onto it, effectively resurrecting the person in a new body. Alternatively, the mind state can be introduced into a virtual reality running in a computer system, and the human's personality can live their life inside the virtual world.

Many civilisations within the galaxy have introduced 'afterlifes' which are virtual reality worlds where the mind-states of people who have died can be allowed to live on for as long as they want. So technology has created the Heaven that pre-technology people always dreamt of.

Some civilisations feel that people would not behave themselves if there wasn't a threat of bad things to happen in the future, so they have created special afterlifes which are the equivalent of the traditional 'Hell'. Here the mind-states of people live out an eternal existence of suffering and pain. The Culture doesn't approve of these hells, but is at least officially reluctant to interfere in what 'lesser' civilisations organise for their own citizens.

Surface Detail is about these hells. There's a war going on to decide whether they should be allowed to continue or not. In keeping with the virtual nature of the hells, the war is being fought in virtual worlds and has been going on for years. Throughout the book, the action moves to the war, following the fortunes of a soldier called Vateuil. There are also descriptions of one of the hells, following two individuals, Prin and Chay, who have gone to the hell to prove to their parent civilisation that it really does exist and is not just a fairy tale told to scare people.

The main action of the book follows a young woman called Lededje Y'breq. Her family has fallen into debt to the richest man in the world, Joiler Veppers, and she is born and raised as a slave, owned by Veppers. Surprisingly, almost at the start of the book, Veppers murders her. But in this future, people can be resurrected. Her restored self vows revenge on Veppers and travels across the galaxy to achieve it. Along the way, she encounters the various factions who are somehow involved in the Hell/anti-Hell war.

Before you even start to read this book, you should be warned that some of Banks's writing can be very gruesome. In this book, his description of Hell is disgusting in the extreme. This is no doubt justified in the circumstances, but I wouldn't want my teenaged daughters to read it. Teenaged sons would probably be OK, but I haven't got any of those.

Surface Detail is a long book. At about 620 pages, it is significantly longer than Banks's other 'Culture' books, which are generally in the 400-450 page range. This means that there is room for a lot more description and characterisation, but at times it can be a bit slow.

The book can be confusing, as it tells a number of separate stories, and it is quite some time before the connection between them all becomes evident. But rest assured, by the end of it, you'll be pretty clear on what is actually happening.

Despite the stomach-turning descriptions of Hell, most of this book is quite up-beat and cheery, although at times grotesque. There are a number of comedic characters, particularly Demeisen, the human-like visual representation of a super-intelligent warship. And I'm not really giving anything away to say that it has a happy ending.

Like all Banks's books, it is self contained. Although it refers to the same framework as the other books, it stands on its own even if you have not read any of the others. There is only one minor joke at the end which refers to a character in another book, and it is not important.

I enjoyed this book very much: Banks's writing is like the classic science fiction of the 1930s–1950s, but updated to include things we know will be around in the future such as computers and virtual reality. Definitely worth reading.

Gnomon

07.03.11 Front Page

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