Consider Phlebas: A Culture Novel (The Culture)

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Ban on A.I.: the Idirans are against AI for religious reasons and use limiting devices to ensure their computers don't become sentient. 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 Gerald Jonas in The New York Times praised the sophistication of Banks' writing and said "he asks readers to hold in mind a great many pieces of a vast puzzle while waiting for a pattern to emerge". Jonas suggested the ending might appear to rely too much on a deus ex machina. [2] I'm a Humanitarian: During a very nasty side arc when Horza is trapped on a deserted island on the Vavatch Orbital alongside a cannibalistic apocalypse cult. He has to figure out how to talk his way out of being eaten and reach an escape shuttle the Culture left on the island, before a Culture ship is scheduled to destroy the Orbital. Horza has to lose the meat on several fingers before he can escape the cultists. As one otherwise hardened reviewer put it, "I can't believe this is happening". Horza can be cruel and ruthless, but many readers will find themselves rooting for him because he is an underdog. After all, he has taken on perhaps the most difficult assignment in the universe: outwitting a Culture Mind. As if that were not enough, Banks seems to almost enjoy twisting circumstance against Horza. In spite of his best-laid plans, things never seem to go as planned.

What Happened to the Mouse?: Thanks to the Fat Bastard I'm a Humanitarian Prophet, Horza loses a finger. In fact, he has to pull the bones, now completely stripped of flesh, off his hand himself. No mention of his missing digit is ever made again. Did he regrow it? (He was changing to a semblance of Kraiklyn at the time) Are his crew just that incurious? Who knows? Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2011-02-11 18:06:39 Bookplateleaf 0003 Boxid IA138124 Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark II City London Comment Removing Scanfee from Billable Books scanned before June 2011 which appear to have manually set scanfees Donor Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: The Idiran special forces team led by Xoxarle is so xenophobic, stupid and singleminded that they betray the Free Company, get pretty much everyone killed, and leave Balveda able to rescue the Mind that would otherwise be theirs. To an extent this is also reflected in their overall conduct of the entire war — while they never had a hope of actually winning, they could have got out while they were ahead, or conducted their campaign much more efficiently. The novel revolves around the Idiran–Culture War, and Banks plays on that theme by presenting various microcosms of that conflict. Its protagonist Bora Horza Gobuchul is an enemy of the Culture. Spanner in the Works: Quayanorl. Or more specifically, the fact that Irdians are Made of Iron to such a ridiculous extent that he survives an attempt to Make Sure He's Dead, clinging on to life just long enough to pull a Taking You with Me on Horza's party.

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There are nice pieces of invention: the Megaships, the Game of Damage with real Lives – but they are not derived from the basic premises of the story, any more than the pseudo-mediaevalism of the Gerontocracy’s dungeon/sewer in which we begin, which could easily have leaked out of Pratchett.

Dave Langford reviewed Consider Phlebas for White Dwarf #90, and stated that "Banks pumps in enough high spirits to keep this rattling along to his slam-bang finale in the bowels of an ancient deep-shelter system whose nuclear-powered high-speed trains are used for... well, not commuting." [4] In other media [ edit ] Cancelled TV adaptation [ edit ] Throw the Dog a Bone: After spending the whole book being bullied and subjected to Fantastic Racism by Horza, Unaha-Closp survives the " kill-'em-all" final battle, and retires to build "small steam-driven automata as a hobby". There is, however, one shred of mystery left at the very end… the rescued Mind, the McGuffin of the whole business, decides to call itself by Horza’s name… Now why should that be? Has the Changer somehow managed to transfer his infinitely adaptable personality… ? Better to Die than Be Killed: Lamm claims that his space suit contains a small nuke that he intends to detonate rather than be killed or captured, with the added implication that he'd also do it if someone pissed him off enough. When the Megaship job goes south, Lamm and several other crewmembers are left behind, and in a fit of rage he proves that he wasn't kidding.

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Phil Daoust in The Guardian said the story was an "enjoyable romp" and described Quilan as "one of the misguided yet decent villains who are a feature of these [Culture] tales". [1] He went on to complain of the heavy emphasis given to the consequences of war and that the Chelgrians were too thinly disguised humans. [1] Shur Fine Guns: One character dies when his projectile weapon has a barrelcrash, meaning the blast waves of the explosive shells he's firing explode a shell while it's still traveling down the barrel. The Idirans possibly appeal less to the reader being of terrifying and nonhumanoid appearance. Homomda, who at the time were a shade ahead of even the Culture, had assisted the Idirans in the past at least partly because of their shared tripedal ancestry, and even supported them for a time during the Culture-Idiran War. Once you really get to know the Idirans things don't improve over the first impressions. Literary Allusion Title: From T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land. Phlebas the Phoenician died at sea, and now lies forgotten. The verse asks that the reader remember Phlebas in his youth, and how he spent his life on worldly concerns that all came to nothing with his death.

Death World: An unseen example is the Idiran homeworld, which has caused them to evolve into badass warriors. Safe aboard the Idirian ship The Hand of God 137 (the 137 th ship to bear that name, Idiran ship-naming conventions being in strong contrast to the Culture’s predilection for jokes and irony), Horza gets cleaned up and learns his mission. Before he went to work for the Idirans, he was a caretaker on Schar’s World, and as such, he may be able to go there and retrieve the Culture Mind hiding there. Not anyone can just pop in on this planet; it’s surrounded by a “Dra’Azon Quiet Barrier” (precisely what this means is not revealed at this point), which will damage or destroy anything else that tries to land there. Horza agrees, and in classic One Last Job fashion, his condition is that once it’s done, he—and an old friend who, to the best of his knowledge, still lives on Schar’s World—will be given the resources to escape the war altogether.Ziller lives in self-imposed exile on Masaq', having renounced his privileged position in Chel's caste system. He has been commissioned to compose music to mark a climactic event in the Idiran-Culture War. Upon hearing of Quilan's visit, and suspicious of his reason for travel, Ziller scrupulously avoids him.

Author Iain M. Banks revealed in April 2013 that he had late-stage cancer. He died the following June. Now we meet our protagonist, Bora Horza Gobuchul. He is a spy, from a species known as Changers—humans who are able to alter their appearance to impersonate nearly anyone they like, which obviously makes them extremely valuable spies. They have other interesting characteristics as well: venomous teeth and nails, for instance. His latest book was a science fiction (SF) novel in the Culture series, called The Hydrogen Sonata, published in 2012.urn:lcp:considerphlebas00bank:epub:8ff4460b-e321-4098-bfe6-a382ac656e93 Extramarc University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (PZ) Foldoutcount 0 Identifier considerphlebas00bank Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t56d6pj59 Isbn 0333441389 Driven to Suicide: In the " Dramatis Personae" epilogue. Despite successfully saving the lost Mind from the Idirans, after the war ended the Culture agent Balveda asks to be placed into suspended animation until the Culture could "statistically prove" that more people would have been killed by the Idirans than actually died in the war. She is awakened only around 430 years later once the terms are met — and kills herself only a few months later. Anti-Hero / Anti-Villain: Horza is the former in respect to the novel, but could be seen as the latter to the extent that the Culture itself is the protagonist of the series. One Last Job: Horza is planning to return to his Old Flame and retire after the mission. This trope works as well as it always does.