“Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.”
-T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land (IV)

Like T. S. Eliot’s epic poem, Iain M. Banks‘ first Culture novel, Consider Phlebas, is an incredibly complex book, in which the author packs a massive amount of ideas detailing his startling vision of the future of humanity and the universe itself; ideas that were fated to only grow to complete maturity over the next two decades as he fleshed that vision out into what has become his epic series of Culture novels.

Read 24 years after it was first published in 1987, it is apparent that Consider Phlebas is what might be termed a flawed gem of modern science fiction.

In any other popular science fiction writer’s arsenal, the novel would no doubt be seen as their masterpiece; its engrossing narration, the consideration to which its author gave the world he built in it and the characters he portrays would combine to make the book one of the greats.

However, read in the context of Banks’ other Culture novels, it is clear that when the author published Consider Phlebas, he was struggling with both the form of the novel itself, as well as the need to tell a finite story in the world of infinite complexity and interest that he imagined in the Culture.

As a novel, Consider Phlebas sprawls. It does not have the neat completeness of The Player of Games, nor does it have the contained pathos evident in Look to Windward. It does not go into the right level of detail as Excession does, and it does not contain the balanced level of nostalgic emotion that Use of Weapons does.

What it does have is all of these things; in places too much of one, in other places not enough of another.

None of this is to take anything away from the book. Its entrance into the science fiction genre in 1987 immediately established Banks as a master of that genre, and one of its most creative thinkers and best writers. But it does mean that in 2011, we can appreciate Consider Phlebas as what it is; Banks writing at what was — for him — at an adolescent level. For anyone else, that level itself would probably be out of reach.

The plot of Consider Phlebas represents nothing less than one of the greatest societal events Banks’ futuristic Culture society has ever known.

The Culture — an urbane, pleasure-seeking, genetically modified future version of a human galactic civilisation, which denies itself nothing except the harm of others — is at war with what might be termed its polar opposite; a race of inhuman aliens which believe in one single religion, one discipline, and is spreading itself across the galaxy with the aim of bringing all under its umbrella: The Idirans.

In the midst of this conflict, one of the Culture’s Minds — the supremely intelligent and benevolent artificial intelligences that run their artificially constructed planets and planet-sized spaceships — has become stranded on a distant planet quarantined by an evolved and all-powerful being as some kind of shrine to death.

Into this conflict comes a complex third party; a humanoid shapeshifter, able to change his appearance, identifying marks and much of his basic bodily structure at will.

The mission of this Bora Horza Gobuchul? To steal the mostly defenseless Mind from the planet and hand it over to the Idirans. His motivation? Horza believes The Culture’s dependence on artificial intelligences to run its society — utopian though that makes it — has in truth made the civilisation a society of machines, representing a departure from biological evolution.

Of course, it’s not as simple as that.

Ironically — as he’s not part of it — Horza’s journey to retrieve the Mind becomes a tour by Banks of The Culture itself.

Its complete mastery of technology. Its idiosyncratic artificial intelligences, which normally behave in a more human-like fashion than the humans themselves. Its incredible compassion and implacable desire to live and keep living; but not just living — soaking itself in every pleasure that anyone could believe could exist. Its fearlessness and tolerance of any idea, but conservative nature when it comes to true evolution onto a higher universal plane.

Its complete anarchy; but also its rigid organisation and centralised planning.

Along on the tour bus with Horza and the reader come the normal rogues gallery common to space operas; a violent, self-serving crew who will each gradually divulge their own reasons for living and existing in such a complex galaxy; before they ignomiously die. Of course; not all die ;)

If you were to say anything about Consider Phlebas, you’d say above all, that Banks attempted to pack too much into the book.

In The Player of Games, for example, The Culture is much more gradually and delicately introduced to the reader; Banks allows his characters and the plot itself to explain more about his multi-faceted world than he does through the book’s own exposition.

The vision that Banks has of The Culture is obviously too complex to be fit into one volume; and in fact it can only be told properly through glimpses of its many facets; the way that Banks has told it in many different novels through the 25 years since Consider Phlebas was published.

Then, too, Banks’ characterisation is not fantastic in the book.

Horza’s basic reasons for opposing The Culture with his life are never that convincing; nor does Banks ever really flesh out the rest of the motley crew he constructs for his wide-ranging space opera. Some of them do, but most of the characters never develop and grow much. They remain cardboard cut-outs throughout most of the novel.

Plot, too, suffers; the book is broken up into many segments, and it takes too long to get to its main event. Action scenes are drawn out, meaning suspense is not created as successfully as, say, in later Banks books such as Use of Weapons. Even worse, Banks feels the need to create multiple epilogues after the end of the book to wrap up the whole plot in a nicely tied package.

This is not something an accomplished author would do.

Yet, for all the flaws in Consider Phlebas, it remains a striking vision.

It’s hard to believe that Neuromancer, William Gibson’s vision of a future dystopia, was published just three years before Consider Phlebas, and that Dan Simmons’ epic Hyperion was published two years later. Because Banks’ book ranges much further than either of these two masterpieces do.

There are many similarities between Hyperion and Consider Phlebas, in fact; both feature futuristic galactic civilisations which have virtually mastered technology, including the use of phenomenally powerful artificial intelligences.

And yet Banks, in Consider Phlebas, has thought through the mechanics of his world in far greater detail than Simmons did. And his characters are more real, less cartoonish. Their sharp emotions cut the reader, while their flaws remind us of so much that is human about ourselves.

Consider Phlebas doesn’t have the polish of Hyperion; and it doesn’t have the raw intensity of Neuromancer. But in many ways it doesn’t have to. Because the scope of Banks’ vision is so much grander than those of his compatriots. And in later novels, he would refine his technique and his energy to a high art.

If you’ve read this far, I probably don’t need to tell you that the book is worth reading; and in fact you’re probably actually reading this review itself for nostalgia value only. But if you haven’t read Consider Phlebas, Banks’ first science fiction masterpiece, get out there and do so. It’s a flawed gem, but one that belongs in the hall of fame.

J. K. Rowling

Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling has joined Twitter, signing up for a verified account with the social networking and micro-blogging platform.

The British author joins other science fiction and fantasy writers such as Kevin J. Anderson, Brandon Sanderson and William Gibson, who all use Twitter to various degrees. William Gibson has become a prolific Twitterer over the past six months.

Rowling has only made three posts on the service so far, writing:

“I am told that people have been twittering on my behalf, so I thought a brief visit was in order just to prevent any more confusion!

However, I should flag up now that although I could twitter endlessly, I’m afraid you won’t be hearing from me very often … as pen and paper is my priority at the moment.”

The author is not following anyone on Twitter, although more than 60,000 Twitterers are already watching her every move.

Rowling is known to currently be working on several books after her completion of the seven book Harry Potter series, including a ‘political fairy tale’ for children and another book for adults.

William Gibson

Science fiction author William Gibson has emerged as a prolific user of the Twitter social network platform, publishing some 2,149 updates since he first started using the service in early April this year.

“My poor old blog’s just sitting here while I write this book” the author wrote on his Google Blogger blog in late July. However, he added, directing fans to his Twitter page, @GreatDismal, “I really do find micro-blogging congenial (not to mention collegial) and most of what I was doing here, before, was exactly that.”

Gibson is best-known for his 1980′s Sprawl trilogy, consisting of the Neuromancer, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive books, in which he is credited with coining the term “cyberspace” and helping to birth the cyberpunk genre. However he has continued to publish other science fiction works over the years, and is currently working on a new book, entitled Zero History.

When Gibson first started using Twitter, he wrote in a blog post on 1 May, he had “not much of idea” what the platform was. “Still have no idea what it is, or where it’s going, but will hang on to GreatDismal for simplicity’s sake,” he wrote.

Since that time, however, the author has posted an average of almost 12 tweets per day, more than most other authors who use the service, although others such as fantasy author Brandon Sanderson and sci-fi author Kevin J. Anderson also use Twitter quite a lot.

Gibson has attracted 14,194 followers to his account, but is only following 68 people on Twitter, although he uses the service to interact directly with people (@ replying) rather than just posting updates. His tweets cover everything from the recent dust storms in Australia to pop culture and re-tweeting links posted by others.

Commentary
It makes a strange kind of sense that Gibson, who pioneered much of the vernacular and ideas that drove the birth of the cyberpunk genre, should be participating in early stage technologies such as Twitter, which are really changing the way people interact.

And there is no doubt that Gibson is highly aware of the way that modern day technology is bringing to reality many of the ideas he was only dreaming about twenty years and more ago.

For example, I remember that the internet — even then not a totally understood phenomenon by many people — featured heavily in Gibson’s 2003 book Pattern Recognition, and that similarly iPods were used as a plot device in 2007′s Spook Country.

Given the way that people are using Twitter for ever-developing new purposes, I would guess that Gibson is not only using Twitter to create a dialogue with fans, but also may be planning to feature the social networking platform in his new book Zero History or maybe other works. However I can’t find much at all online about the book so far, so probably Gibson is keeping most of it to himself in his usual cryptic way :)

Vernor Vinge‘s 2006 book Rainbows End constitutes a veritable cornucopia of dazzling ideas about where the current crop of internet web 2.0 technologies such Wikipedia and Google could be leading human society, strung together with a well-planned plot that aspires to explore the sort of trans-human ideas that similar authors like William Gibson favour.

There is no doubt that the book can be a stimulating ride at times. However, the selection of a 75-year-old man as the main protagonist enforces a sometimes glacial pace. And readers who prefer their science fiction to use the evolution of technology to better understand what it truly means to be human will finish the novel feeling Vinge’s ideas only go skin-deep. The book does a fantastic job of probing the human cerebellum … but not the human soul.

The main character of Rainbows End is Robert Gu, a world-famous poet and an unlikely man to be forced to grapple with the latest next-generation technology. Gu has always preferred paper and a pen to Wikipedia.

But when he awakens from a twenty year sleep in the year of 2025, with the Alzheimers’ disease that took him out of action cured due to new medical research and much of his physical and mental frailties similarly taken care of, it’s technology that Gu must confront.

Digital paper and clothes that let you interface with the 2025 version of the internet, augmented/virtual reality, an economy heavily based on the fusion of content and software production … pretty tough going for a 75-year-old, even with the help of his grand-daughter Miri and her fellow school student Juan Orozco.

When Gu and much of his immediate circle are drawn into an elaborate plot involving a mysterious, probably artificial intelligence known only as Mr Rabbit and international security implications, the parallels between Rainbows End and Lewis Carroll’s subversive 1865 book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland are too many to ignore. Gu is lost in a world he barely understands, grappling with confusing and contradictory forces.

In some ways, Vinge is wise to use the naïve Gu — a man who even back in 2005, found computers hard to understand — as a lens through which to gradually gain a full picture of what 2025 might look like, with internet starting to realise its true full potential as an immense knowledge-gathering and information creation machine.

This character device, I can imagine, would be particularly useful for readers who perhaps don’t spend so much of their day online, both at work and at home, as today’s Generation Y does, or who aren’t comfortable with the sorts of concepts commonplace in the amazingly popular Japanese manga and anime Ghost in the Shell.

And of course, Vinge can use the viewpoint of the technologically adept youngster Miri when Gu’s headspace gets a little frustrating.

However, ultimately I felt that the choice of Gu as the main protagonist hamstrung the book, due to the slow pace it enforces upon the development of the story. Many reviewers have described Rainbows End as a roller-coaster ride, with dozens of new concepts being thrown at the reader every few pages. Nothing, in fact, could be further from the truth.

The ability to access all kinds of data on the run is not new in the middle of this decade; devices such as iPhones, BlackBerrys and laptops have made this a virtual normality. But while Gu is still stumbling around trying to understand how that concept has become entrenched into all forms of human perception, the reader starts to become bored.

Personally, I wanted to know about the advanced members of the technological society in Rainbows End, not the bumbling experiences of Gu, who at the start of the book, can barely find his way around Microsoft’s year 2000 operating system Windows Me. I always had a feeling that the really interesting characters in the book were operating behind the scenes of the plot.

Turning to the plot and character development of the book, similar problems can be found.

When writing Neuromancer, which shares many ideas with Rainbows End when it comes to both plot and technology, William Gibson was forced to work at breakneck speed due to the one-year deadline on his book contract, and the need to get enough work to feed his family.

That speed, and the influence of JG Ballard on Gibson, fuelled the lightning pace of his book and drove reader excitement.

In comparison, Vinge took no less than seven years to publish Rainbows End, after his preceding book, A Deepness in the Sky, was a Nebula and Hugo award nominee back in 2000. The lengthy genesis of the book shows; in my opinion, Rainbows End is over-edited and over-thought. Instead of going with his feelings and raw gut instinct, Vinge’s painstaking writing approach makes the book feel dry. A book of this type should feel fresh and challenging.

The plot is meticulously laid out. But reader interest in it suffers because of a lack of character development in the book. In fact, many of the characters are almost cardboard cut-outs … the shadowy organism hinted at being an artificial intelligence, the government security types, the Gen Y youngsters etc.

The last problem with Rainbows End is the lack of deeper philosophy behind it. The technology found in Neuromancer is not ever examined closely; Gibson forces the reader to take it for granted, at face value, and then shifts the readers’ focus to the implications of the adoption of that technology on human nature itself.

Vinge does attempt this feat in Rainbows End, with some limited success. But in general, I feel he didn’t look into the human psyche closely enough; perhaps a failing drawn from his similarly dry background as a professor of mathematics and computer science.

The glory of science fiction is its focus on future world, technologies, and intelligences. The irony of science fiction, an irony I would argue Vinge does not yet completely understand, is that the best science fiction uses those worlds to illustrate purely human stories and better illuminate an-age-old question: What it means to be human.