| Date: 14 April 2011, 02:01
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The title of Banks' latest Culture novel comes from the 4th part of T.S. Eliot's 1922 landmark poem, "The Wasteland." The full text of lines 325-326:
Gentile or jew,
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward, Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.
Those familiar with Banks' work will immediately recognize the two words immediately following "look to windward" as the title of another Banks' Culture novel. What's going on here?
Not every SF author can get away with titling his books from one of the 20th century's greatest poems. A lot of them have the chutzpah, but can't bring their word craft up to their pretensions. Banks can. While _Look to Windward_ doesn't have the machine gun pacing or extraordinary violence of earlier Banks' works, it does offer remarkably good writing, generally good characterization, and a further display of Banks' astonishing imaginative powers. Masaq' Orbital and its billions of residents are seeing the supernovae from suns destroyed by the Idirans near the end of the Idiran War 800 years earlier. The Mind - the self-aware AI that runs Masaq' was a fighter in that war. Billions died, some at the hand of that Mind. More recently, Special Circumstances, The Culture's meddling, would-be uplifters of the disadvantaged, had another of their surreptitious interventions go horribly wrong, and 5 billion Chelgrians died. Look to windward, indeed. Masaq' Orbital's Mind has commissioned Ziller, an expatriate Chelgrian, to compose a symphony for the occasion of the second supernova. In the meantime, the Chelgrians have sent Major Quilan, a veteran of the civil wars triggered by The Culture, to Masaq', ostensibly to persuade Ziller to return to his home world. The real reason is more horrific: the destruction of the Mind that runs Masaq'. Major Quilan and the Chelgrians who support his have the help of mysterious benefactors, demonstrating, perhaps, that The Culture is still its own worst enemy.
In Major Quilan, Banks has created his most memorable character of The Culture novels. Tormented, ambivalent, manipulated and empathetic, he stands in stark contrast to the indulgent and snobbish, if immensely talented, Ziller. By seeing two very different Chelgrians, we better understand them and the reactions of those around them.
As in any Banks novel, there are surprises galore, and it is next to impossible to identify the goods guys or the bad guys. Don't expect the slam-bang excitement of _Consider Phelbas_ or the pacing of _Excession_. This is a novel of revenge. But as Eliot was at pains to point out in "The Wasteland,"
PHLEBAS the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep seas swell
And the profit and loss.
A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
Death cares not at all for the minor victories of life. One death is no more or less than a dozen or 5 billion. Major Quilan's willingness - zeal - to die, sadly mirrored in the front pages of today's news, is ultimately futile, as Banks warns us from the very title of this novel.
This is a very good book, literate without pretension. Highly recommended.
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