Consider Phlebas: A Culture Novel (The Culture)

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STUART STAROSTA, on our staff from March 2015 to November 2018, is a lifelong SFF reader who makes his living reviewing English translations of Japanese equity research. Despite growing up in beautiful Hawaii, he spent most of his time reading as many SFF books as possible. After getting an MA in Japanese-English translation in Monterey, CA, he lived in Tokyo, Japan for about 15 years before moving to London in 2017 with his wife, daughter, and dog named Lani. Stuart's reading goal is to read as many classic SF novels and Hugo/Nebula winners as possible, David Pringle's 100 Best SF and 100 Best Fantasy Novels, along with newer books & series that are too highly-praised to be ignored. 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.

I don’t care how self-righteous the Culture feels, or how many people the Idirans kill. They’re on the side of life—boring, old-fashioned biological life; smelly, fallible, short-sighted, God knows, but real life. You’re ruled by your machines. You’re an evolutionary dead end.” Maybe that’s what the novel is trying to say, that they’re a better, cleaner breed. But Asimov’s said that already, at considerably less length, with a lower body-count. The Idiran ethos seems to me to be presented particularly crudely, and the epigraph from the Qu’ran doesn’t help. I can’t help feeling that the Japanese Empire of the twenties, thirties and forties would have been a better source. Death World: An unseen example is the Idiran homeworld, which has caused them to evolve into badass warriors. So in the end I would say that Consider Phlebas is not a complete success or failure as a novel, but its primary importance is in establishing the template and introduction to the fantastic and limitless potential of the CULTURE universe. I think the next two novels in the series, The Player of Games (1988) and Use of Weapons (1990), are frequently considered some of the best entries in the series, but I’ve also heard that Banks actually got better the further he refined his understanding of his own universe, so that later books in the series are also very good. That itself is unusual in a genre that is notorious for overlong series that essentially churn out the same stories shamelessly to an audience who reward this behavior by faithfully purchasing the next installment. So it’s quite unusual for an author like Banks to become so popular, but that’s a really good thing in my opinion.

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Don’t you have a religion?” Dorolow asked Horza. “Yes,” he replied, not taking his eyes away from the screen on the wall above the end of the main mess-room table. “My survival.”

Behind it, still expanding, still radiating, still slowly dissolving in the system to which it had given its name, the unnumbered twinkling fragments of the Orbital called Vavatch blew out toward the stars, drifting on a stellar wind that rang and swirled with the fury of the world’s destruction.” Small Name, Big Ego: Kraiklyn, for the most part, comes off as a desperate wannabe badass-mercenary-leader, who, while a reasonably competent fighter, is terrible at planning heists and fails to portray his crew as anything more than the bunch of interstellar thugs they are.Phlebas the Phoenician, a character from T. S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land, part IV and Dans le Restaurant.

Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent:Σίβυλλατίθέλεις; respondebat illa:άποθανεîνθέλω.’ Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Balveda's escape from the Hand of God. Made more awesome by how matter-of-fact she is about it. Mary on Beyond The Exorcist: Five Movies That Explore Possession From Non-Christian Perspectives 3 hours ago This is useful as an introduction to the CULTURE, but not necessary. The plot is often exciting and there are some awesome set pieces which would make a great movie, but there are no characters to root for (they seem to be created as anti-heroes) and the plot, which feels incohesive, takes much too long to accomplish. There are also fewer of the “big ideas” I’ve come to expect from Banks. I would love to see this condensed and produced as a movie.

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A note on the post titles: they are drawn from the names of Culture ships that appear in those novels. Hopefully this is a joke that will not wear thin before the series is out.) Prologue