Call number
Series
Genres
Publication
Orbit (2011), Edition: Reprint, Paperback, 656 pages
Pages
656
Description
When sex slave Lededje Y'breq is murdered by a politician on the planet Sichult, the artificial intelligence running one of the Culture's immense starships resurrects her so she can seek revenge. Meanwhile, the Culture is uneasily watching the conflict over whether to preserve virtual Hells for the souls of "sinners" or give them the release of death.
Media reviews
Those who love the Culture will know the best lines often go to the artificial intelligences. In Surface Detail the stand-out character is a sadistic Abominator class ship called the "Falling Outside the Normal Moral Constraints". The warship's barely concealed glee when, after centuries of
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waiting, it finally gets to blow some other ships up, is hilarious, and its motives remain intriguingly mysterious. Some other characters, particularly the Special Circumstance agent Yime Nsokyi, remain a little underdrawn. But this is a minor quibble – the novel's real power lies in the absorbing questions it poses about the value of the real, as opposed to the virtual, about who or what is expendable, and whether a society is better held together by threats or by promises. Show Less
The Times
Awards
Locus Award (Finalist — Science Fiction Novel — 2011)
SF Site Reader's Choice (4 — 2010)
Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire (Winner — 2012)
Locus Recommended Reading (2010)
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
2010-10-07
Physical description
656 p.; 8.5 inches
ISBN
0316123412 / 9780316123419
Similar in this library
User reviews
LibraryThing member stellarexplorer
Once again the talented Mr. Banks has produced a textured work laced, pardon the expression after reading the book, with imaginative detail. World-building is a particular strength of his efforts. He juggles a multitude of subplots, all meeting in the pyrotechnic finale. The familiar Banksian
It is not hard to see what has elevated this writer to such an exalted place on the list of contemporary SF writers: manic detail, endless invention, expert handling of future technology, Big Idea SF in new millennium guise. These are among Banks' gifts, and in these he is well endowed.
This book? The central premise strikes me as absurd, that is, that advanced future civilizations would create simulated afterlives based on the perversion and torment of Hell as a means of social control. Unbelievably retro, IMO.
Put aside my objections to character, to plot and to premise, most of which I will spare you. These were not what most made me want to stop reading after a few chapters, and had me begging for mercy by the middle. What I really couldn’t stomach was the attitude. Maybe you would call it Voice. I call it tiresome and aggravating. I’ll give it some words. Banks is so very arch. Eyebrow raised to the sky. Oh so clever he is, and well he knows it. Pompous. Tedious. Nihilistic. That he has such talent makes it all the more tragic. I’ve paid my dues. I think I’m done now. With Banks.
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exploration of human darkness is very much at the fore in this novel as well.It is not hard to see what has elevated this writer to such an exalted place on the list of contemporary SF writers: manic detail, endless invention, expert handling of future technology, Big Idea SF in new millennium guise. These are among Banks' gifts, and in these he is well endowed.
This book? The central premise strikes me as absurd, that is, that advanced future civilizations would create simulated afterlives based on the perversion and torment of Hell as a means of social control. Unbelievably retro, IMO.
Put aside my objections to character, to plot and to premise, most of which I will spare you. These were not what most made me want to stop reading after a few chapters, and had me begging for mercy by the middle. What I really couldn’t stomach was the attitude. Maybe you would call it Voice. I call it tiresome and aggravating. I’ll give it some words. Banks is so very arch. Eyebrow raised to the sky. Oh so clever he is, and well he knows it. Pompous. Tedious. Nihilistic. That he has such talent makes it all the more tragic. I’ve paid my dues. I think I’m done now. With Banks.
Show Less
LibraryThing member RobertDay
Oh dear. I've just bought this book today, and I just looked at the last page to check the page count, and the last word gives a great big plot surprise away! Still, I'll look forward to seeing how we get there from here...
LibraryThing member JollyContrarian
***Limited Offensive Unit *Short And To The Point* missing in action***
With The Algebraist I thought something was amiss; now I know it is. Either I have lost the faith, or Iain M. Banks has lost the spark.
Or both. Certainly, the dust jacket blurbs are beginning to get a familiar ring to them: The
I started to write this review two weeks ago when, after 250 pages of trying, I had decided to give up altogether on Surface Detail. I was so exasperated with Banks' laziness and complacency and, frankly, so bored, that I intended to resign my commission, without even another book to go to: something I don't do lightly.
Having failed to find another book, I then resolved to plug on, in part because Banks' habit of summarising narrative developments in convenient conversations every thirty pages meant I could let my eyes glaze over at much of his leaden prose, the alphabet soup of initialisms (SC, GFCF, NR, LOU, GSV, and so on), and the multiplicity of ludicrously named characters. There are dozens and dozens of characters in Surface Detail; most minor, but they do recur between long intervals of absence. Banks' plotting is as elaborate as usual is, so you can't afford to be blasé: you do need to concentrate at least at some level. This is very trying.
As it turned out, I'd done the hard yards, so the decision to plug on was good: The second half was much better than the first: the meandering plot strands came together and in the end I got home quite comfortably: not without the odd grinding of gears where Banks' when constructions and made-up words ("hyperspacial" -- hyperspatial, surely?; "multiply" as an adverb - for example, "running and bouncing on six multiply jointed legs" - for heaven's sake, the word is "many") leapt out and bit me on the nose.
Now it may be me: it has been over fourteen years since I first read Banks' Science Fiction (in that time I've read most of it). That's a long time in a young man's life: actually, I'm not a young man any more. Certainly, some of the contrivances of Banks' Culture (a miraculously working pan-galactic variety of Anarco-Syndicalism which has overcome inconvenient conundrums like the laws of thermodynamics and conservation of energy) make a less satisfying literary vessel for a middle aged guy with a mortgage and dependents than an idealistic youth. It's such a daft set-up that I have much less patience with the suspensions of disbelief Banks asks of me.
But I don't think it is just me: Banks should take some responsibility too. At any rate he's going to suffer the consequences: I have now been mightily disappointed by two of his books in a row. There won't be a third.
The Algebraist, I thought, caught me (or Banks) at a bad time. I couldn't see the point of an imaginative setting on a gas giant with characters which appeared to be sentient, virtually immortal, hot air balloons. That one I canned altogether. Surface Detail, on its - ahem - surface, is more of your traditional Iain M Banks sci fi - it's a Culture novel; it features "pan-human" characters; there does seem to be a central quest. But, boy, is the getting there dull.
I surmise that Banks is increasingly preoccupied with the imaginative feat of building out his alternative universe - we have pages and pages of Encyclopedia Galactica-style descriptions of social hierarchies, political histories - the architecture of the Culture universe - while the drama takes an aeon to get off the ground. Rather like the appendices to a Tolkien novel, this sort of thing juices a certain sort of reader. It leaves me cold.
Banks' style has always been to lead you in blindfolded (a favourite technique of his, frequently (irritatingly!) in evidence here, is to give you a scene or two before identifying a protagonist), but in previous tomes (in particular Use of Weapons, an excellent book on every level) there was real artistry in how the blindfold is removed, and before long you're entirely swept away with the space opera.
The same formula here is on display here, for sure, and as imaginative (or more so) a set up as ever (a slave tattooed down to her DNA; civilisations which have set up their own virtual hells; personalities that can be uploaded on a culture ship; a lot of consequent riffing on the nature of identity), but Banks' style is so leaden that the positive impression you might otherwise get is buried.
Culture Novels have become rare birds over the last decade as Banks' output has dropped off (19 novels in 16 years between 1984 and 2000; 6 in the 11 years since then), and the average length has ramped up - after averaging 350 odd pages throughout until 2000, they've blown out to almost double that: Surface Detail weighs in at 627, and the extra heft does not represent value for money. It requires far more discipline and effort to cut back flabby prose than to write it in the first place.
Here's an example of how flabby his prose can be: "Veppers was crushed down into his seat so hard he felt and heard himself make a sort of involuntary grunting, groaning noise as the air was forced out of his compressing lungs".
This sort of turgid, clumsy writing shouldn't be seen in any professionally published novel, let alone in one by a global bestseller who has 26 novels to his name. Even if Banks is too lazy to knock his writing into shape, Orbit should at least have the common courtesy to employ a subeditor who can. This is not an isolated incident: there are 600 pages like this.
At the end of the day, a clever alternative universe and an imaginative use of armaments, forms of propulsion and eccentric names do not a novel make. Even as the action kicked off I was willing the book end. There is a payoff: the last word, indeed, and it will thrill the party faithful, but anyone who hasn't recently read Banks' other Culture novels (Use of Weapons in particular) will be left with only a profound sense of bafflement.
There is probably a good book in here, but its interleaved with three hundred pages of "smatter", which Banks' own abominator class offensive unit, Short And To The Point, has singularly failed to clear out. Perhaps it has gone eccentric.
With The Algebraist I thought something was amiss; now I know it is. Either I have lost the faith, or Iain M. Banks has lost the spark.
Or both. Certainly, the dust jacket blurbs are beginning to get a familiar ring to them: The
Show More
Guardian's appraisal "the standard by which the rest of SF is judged" dates back, now, well over a decade. I started to write this review two weeks ago when, after 250 pages of trying, I had decided to give up altogether on Surface Detail. I was so exasperated with Banks' laziness and complacency and, frankly, so bored, that I intended to resign my commission, without even another book to go to: something I don't do lightly.
Having failed to find another book, I then resolved to plug on, in part because Banks' habit of summarising narrative developments in convenient conversations every thirty pages meant I could let my eyes glaze over at much of his leaden prose, the alphabet soup of initialisms (SC, GFCF, NR, LOU, GSV, and so on), and the multiplicity of ludicrously named characters. There are dozens and dozens of characters in Surface Detail; most minor, but they do recur between long intervals of absence. Banks' plotting is as elaborate as usual is, so you can't afford to be blasé: you do need to concentrate at least at some level. This is very trying.
As it turned out, I'd done the hard yards, so the decision to plug on was good: The second half was much better than the first: the meandering plot strands came together and in the end I got home quite comfortably: not without the odd grinding of gears where Banks' when constructions and made-up words ("hyperspacial" -- hyperspatial, surely?; "multiply" as an adverb - for example, "running and bouncing on six multiply jointed legs" - for heaven's sake, the word is "many") leapt out and bit me on the nose.
Now it may be me: it has been over fourteen years since I first read Banks' Science Fiction (in that time I've read most of it). That's a long time in a young man's life: actually, I'm not a young man any more. Certainly, some of the contrivances of Banks' Culture (a miraculously working pan-galactic variety of Anarco-Syndicalism which has overcome inconvenient conundrums like the laws of thermodynamics and conservation of energy) make a less satisfying literary vessel for a middle aged guy with a mortgage and dependents than an idealistic youth. It's such a daft set-up that I have much less patience with the suspensions of disbelief Banks asks of me.
But I don't think it is just me: Banks should take some responsibility too. At any rate he's going to suffer the consequences: I have now been mightily disappointed by two of his books in a row. There won't be a third.
The Algebraist, I thought, caught me (or Banks) at a bad time. I couldn't see the point of an imaginative setting on a gas giant with characters which appeared to be sentient, virtually immortal, hot air balloons. That one I canned altogether. Surface Detail, on its - ahem - surface, is more of your traditional Iain M Banks sci fi - it's a Culture novel; it features "pan-human" characters; there does seem to be a central quest. But, boy, is the getting there dull.
I surmise that Banks is increasingly preoccupied with the imaginative feat of building out his alternative universe - we have pages and pages of Encyclopedia Galactica-style descriptions of social hierarchies, political histories - the architecture of the Culture universe - while the drama takes an aeon to get off the ground. Rather like the appendices to a Tolkien novel, this sort of thing juices a certain sort of reader. It leaves me cold.
Banks' style has always been to lead you in blindfolded (a favourite technique of his, frequently (irritatingly!) in evidence here, is to give you a scene or two before identifying a protagonist), but in previous tomes (in particular Use of Weapons, an excellent book on every level) there was real artistry in how the blindfold is removed, and before long you're entirely swept away with the space opera.
The same formula here is on display here, for sure, and as imaginative (or more so) a set up as ever (a slave tattooed down to her DNA; civilisations which have set up their own virtual hells; personalities that can be uploaded on a culture ship; a lot of consequent riffing on the nature of identity), but Banks' style is so leaden that the positive impression you might otherwise get is buried.
Culture Novels have become rare birds over the last decade as Banks' output has dropped off (19 novels in 16 years between 1984 and 2000; 6 in the 11 years since then), and the average length has ramped up - after averaging 350 odd pages throughout until 2000, they've blown out to almost double that: Surface Detail weighs in at 627, and the extra heft does not represent value for money. It requires far more discipline and effort to cut back flabby prose than to write it in the first place.
Here's an example of how flabby his prose can be: "Veppers was crushed down into his seat so hard he felt and heard himself make a sort of involuntary grunting, groaning noise as the air was forced out of his compressing lungs".
This sort of turgid, clumsy writing shouldn't be seen in any professionally published novel, let alone in one by a global bestseller who has 26 novels to his name. Even if Banks is too lazy to knock his writing into shape, Orbit should at least have the common courtesy to employ a subeditor who can. This is not an isolated incident: there are 600 pages like this.
At the end of the day, a clever alternative universe and an imaginative use of armaments, forms of propulsion and eccentric names do not a novel make. Even as the action kicked off I was willing the book end. There is a payoff: the last word, indeed, and it will thrill the party faithful, but anyone who hasn't recently read Banks' other Culture novels (Use of Weapons in particular) will be left with only a profound sense of bafflement.
There is probably a good book in here, but its interleaved with three hundred pages of "smatter", which Banks' own abominator class offensive unit, Short And To The Point, has singularly failed to clear out. Perhaps it has gone eccentric.
Show Less
LibraryThing member ianjamison
Well, here we are, back in the culture. Needless to say it starts off with the familiar, rather disorientating introductory chapters where a whole bunch of what are apparently really disparate stories gradually coalesce into something that really rocks.
I'm impressed that Banks hasn't actually
There is more speculation about the nature of virtual existence, and the whole "soulkeeper" business that was explored in previous books - much of the action takes place in virtually created afterlife of particular races - in hell in fact, which is imagined with a particular savagery.
Overall it's a good novel in the universe - better than "Matter",I reckon, though possibly not as gripping as "Excession".
On the very last page there is a throwaway line that may make you want to re-read the whole thing, as one of the new characters appears, after all, to have been an old friend...
I'm impressed that Banks hasn't actually
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allowed this series to become too predictable or tired - as always it's fun to go back to the Culture, there are some things that are familiar and fun; the slightly detached culture human approach to life, the utterly barking culture ships (with some fabulous names); indeed, if, like me, you are a fan of the more badly behaved and outre culture ships, then you are in for a treat here, as this novel features the worst behaved ship you're ever going to meet (the good ship "Falling outside the normal moral constraints". Though at the same time, as with "Matter", we spend rather more time outside the Culture per se, with some of it's less pleasant neighbours. There is more speculation about the nature of virtual existence, and the whole "soulkeeper" business that was explored in previous books - much of the action takes place in virtually created afterlife of particular races - in hell in fact, which is imagined with a particular savagery.
Overall it's a good novel in the universe - better than "Matter",I reckon, though possibly not as gripping as "Excession".
On the very last page there is a throwaway line that may make you want to re-read the whole thing, as one of the new characters appears, after all, to have been an old friend...
Show Less
LibraryThing member pierthinker
I find the Culture novels from Iain M. Banks to be strangely moving and uplifting. Neither dystopian or utopian they represent a positive vision of the future of life to dominate over non-life wherever the choice is available.
Even in Surface Detail, where slavery, evil businessmen and the most
Even in Surface Detail, where slavery, evil businessmen and the most
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graphic depictions of hell are the core of the action, it is the ultimate success of common sense and ‘goodness’ that leaves the reader with that small swell of pleasure that the story has come out all right. Show Less
LibraryThing member breic
Moments of fun, with an exciting conclusion. (You already know how it ends, of course, but what's not to like about a Culture BOOM BANG POW?) I never really bought into the characters, or cared about the Hell versus anti-Hell plot line. One could also probably skip the first 200+ pages without
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missing much; isn't it more fun to figure out the setting yourself rather than get it in a lecture? Show Less
LibraryThing member orkydd
After I finished reading 'Surface Detail', Iain Banks penultimate Culture novel. It occurred to me this is the 4th last time I will have the pleasure of a new Iain Banks, following the writer's untimely death in May. 'Surface Detail' is a sprawling epic Space Opera, complete with wisecracking
An indentured slave is murdered by her brutal owner. A copy of her mind escapes to the Culture. She is re-lifed and seeks revenge or redemption. A virtual war is being fought to decide whether to allow or to disallow cultures in the galaxy from running Hells, simulated afterlives in which the mind-states of the dead are tortured. The Culture, as always, vows to be neutral. But it just can't help meddling....
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drones and rogue GSVs.An indentured slave is murdered by her brutal owner. A copy of her mind escapes to the Culture. She is re-lifed and seeks revenge or redemption. A virtual war is being fought to decide whether to allow or to disallow cultures in the galaxy from running Hells, simulated afterlives in which the mind-states of the dead are tortured. The Culture, as always, vows to be neutral. But it just can't help meddling....
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LibraryThing member randalhoctor
I enjoyed this book immensely. Iain M Banks seems to be refining his craft and writing for his core fan base. I hope he never begins writing mainstream best-sellers because he would necessarily lose his loyal readers. That said, I could read this again before too long which is something I almost
The story dealt with such ugly issues as slavery, sexual abuse, human rights, and the imposition of "morality" by those in authority. The villain was just so deliciously awful that I wanted to knock him down and jump on his pompously virulent head. The heroine was a well-enough fleshed-out character the reader could feel for. The GOU (Abominator-class)Falling Outside The Normal Moral Constraints ship/avatar were great fun. I saw a lot of myself in the ship's avatar, which although strictly speaking may not be such a healthy thing was never the less a real hoot.
My only significant criticism, and one applicable to other Culture books, is that the story wrapped up so hurriedly I'm having to go back and see how the various plot lines were resolved. Many authors spend to much of the story resolving the elements, but this one doesn't do so thoroughly enough.
I enjoyed this Culture novel on audio. The audio versions of these books tend to be well done and seem to be read by those who "get" the Culture, including the wit and tongue in cheek humor.
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never do.The story dealt with such ugly issues as slavery, sexual abuse, human rights, and the imposition of "morality" by those in authority. The villain was just so deliciously awful that I wanted to knock him down and jump on his pompously virulent head. The heroine was a well-enough fleshed-out character the reader could feel for. The GOU (Abominator-class)Falling Outside The Normal Moral Constraints ship/avatar were great fun. I saw a lot of myself in the ship's avatar, which although strictly speaking may not be such a healthy thing was never the less a real hoot.
My only significant criticism, and one applicable to other Culture books, is that the story wrapped up so hurriedly I'm having to go back and see how the various plot lines were resolved. Many authors spend to much of the story resolving the elements, but this one doesn't do so thoroughly enough.
I enjoyed this Culture novel on audio. The audio versions of these books tend to be well done and seem to be read by those who "get" the Culture, including the wit and tongue in cheek humor.
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LibraryThing member BMorrisAllen
There seems to be an epidemic of weak editing these days. Surface Detail is sadly not immune, either on the typographical (words and punctuation missing or misplaced) or stylistic (poor word choice, lack of clarity) front. It's not a major impediment, but it's disappointing.
Iain M. Banks' Culture
Briefly, Surface Detail is about both an indentured servant/slave who breaks free, and a disagreement about the future of virtual "Hells". As always, Banks' writing is generally excellent, engaging, and witty. (Though there are some rough patches during which the editor seems to have fallen asleep.) Almost everything is plausible, though one key character is decidedly ex-machina and both inconsistent and non-credible in his actions. I'm always amazed at Bank's ability to keep a complex, multi-element plot moving smoothly through a massive book.
At the same time, while I enjoy Banks' writing, I often have difficulty remembering much about the Culture books afterwards. That may in part be because they're complex. However, I think it has more to do with the characters. They're likeable and realistic, but they seldom seem to have very deep emotions, and I always feel at a fairly great level of remove from them. Every now and then, I'm afraid with them, but more often I relate to them somewhat clinically. In this book, that's true of the central character, to whom many bad things have happened. I accept her desire for revenge, but I never really feel it, and since it's a plot driver, that's problematic. At the other end is a couple to whom bad things continue to happen. There, I felt a little more empathy, but always at some distance.
In short, in Surface Detail, as with other Culture books (and unlike the only Iain Banks [no M.] book I've read, A Song of Stone), I finished the book and thought "That was really well written." I did not think "I'm really relieved that Character X came out of it okay." My appreciation was much more technical than emotional.
This book won't change your mind about Banks. If you've liked other Culture books, you'll like this one. If you're new to Banks, you can start here, but you might be better of with Consider Phlebas or Use of Weapons.
Iain M. Banks' Culture
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books tend to exceptionally well-written, but also be dry, distant, and complex. Surface Detail is no exception. Characters with long, difficult names abound, and there are several plots and sub-plots, most of which come loosely together at the end. In fact, the epilogue relies on readers' memory of another Culture book from some years back. (I didn't get it and had to look it up).Briefly, Surface Detail is about both an indentured servant/slave who breaks free, and a disagreement about the future of virtual "Hells". As always, Banks' writing is generally excellent, engaging, and witty. (Though there are some rough patches during which the editor seems to have fallen asleep.) Almost everything is plausible, though one key character is decidedly ex-machina and both inconsistent and non-credible in his actions. I'm always amazed at Bank's ability to keep a complex, multi-element plot moving smoothly through a massive book.
At the same time, while I enjoy Banks' writing, I often have difficulty remembering much about the Culture books afterwards. That may in part be because they're complex. However, I think it has more to do with the characters. They're likeable and realistic, but they seldom seem to have very deep emotions, and I always feel at a fairly great level of remove from them. Every now and then, I'm afraid with them, but more often I relate to them somewhat clinically. In this book, that's true of the central character, to whom many bad things have happened. I accept her desire for revenge, but I never really feel it, and since it's a plot driver, that's problematic. At the other end is a couple to whom bad things continue to happen. There, I felt a little more empathy, but always at some distance.
In short, in Surface Detail, as with other Culture books (and unlike the only Iain Banks [no M.] book I've read, A Song of Stone), I finished the book and thought "That was really well written." I did not think "I'm really relieved that Character X came out of it okay." My appreciation was much more technical than emotional.
This book won't change your mind about Banks. If you've liked other Culture books, you'll like this one. If you're new to Banks, you can start here, but you might be better of with Consider Phlebas or Use of Weapons.
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LibraryThing member jackdeighton
I had a horrible notion from the title that we might be treated to the adventures of a landing party in the Star Trek sense - a surface detail – but thankfully Banks eschews that angle, instead the metaphor is literalised.
As a mark of her indenture, the Sichultian, Lededje Y’Breq, is an
The last three of these narratives are mostly set within virtual environments - though Prin does escape his Hell and bears witness against it in the Real. I hesitate to call this business of the Hells nonsense but it makes these strands inherently problematic. At first they appear gratuitous, there merely to provide a dose of mayhem and gore. Yes, entities within virtualities may suffer - even in the case of Hells continuing beyond “death” there as the torment never ceases since they are reincarnated instantly - but if they are not real characters why should we invest our sympathy in them; why should we care? (Agreed, none of the characters in a novel are really real, but having them as explicitly virtual does stretch the bounds of suspension of disbelief and of empathy too far, to my mind. If there are no lessons for the real world - and how can there be? The environments described are not real within the narrative - why, exactly, are we reading? Consider the unsatisfactory nature of a story which is revealed to be all a dream. Isn’t a simulation only an upgraded class of dream?)
A further niggle is that there might actually be two books here. There are certainly two main plots which are linked through Joiler Veppers. Continuity suffers as a result. Neither story arc builds up enough momentum before dissipating. Either might have made a more compact 300 pager instead of this one’s 600 pages – which, though, does have lovely end papers in a fractal design.
Banks, however, ties all the threads together plus throws in the usual space battles and grand set pieces along the way. However, a certain lightness of touch at times, a casual irreverence, suggests he might actually be sending up this whole Space Opera lark.
Minor quibbles. Lead cannot be amphoteric though its oxide(s) may. The density of an element is not related to its atomic number. Contrary to what Banks states, gold will sink in mercury rather than float, whereas lead will float, not sink - this would be the case no matter what planet you are on.
There is more than enough in Surface Detail though, to satisfy the adherents of Space Opera.
As a mark of her indenture, the Sichultian, Lededje Y’Breq, is an
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Intagliate; tattooed - not just inked but imprinted so thoroughly that the marking carries right on down to the cellular level. On the latest of her escape bids she bites the tip of her master’s nose off and, enraged, he kills her. But without either’s knowledge she has been implanted with a Culture neural lace and her consciousness is translated thousands of light-years to a Culture ship where she is revented into a new body. One part of the novel follows Lededje as she is transported back across the galaxy to confront her erstwhile master, Joiler Veppers, who is also given a narrative strand of his own. Other viewpoint characters are Yime Nsokyi, a member of the Culture organisation known as Quietus, Vatueil, who has a series of military adventures in a virtual war between the supporters and antagonists of the afterlives known as Hells, and Prin and Chay, who enter a Hell to gain evidence to campaign against its use.The last three of these narratives are mostly set within virtual environments - though Prin does escape his Hell and bears witness against it in the Real. I hesitate to call this business of the Hells nonsense but it makes these strands inherently problematic. At first they appear gratuitous, there merely to provide a dose of mayhem and gore. Yes, entities within virtualities may suffer - even in the case of Hells continuing beyond “death” there as the torment never ceases since they are reincarnated instantly - but if they are not real characters why should we invest our sympathy in them; why should we care? (Agreed, none of the characters in a novel are really real, but having them as explicitly virtual does stretch the bounds of suspension of disbelief and of empathy too far, to my mind. If there are no lessons for the real world - and how can there be? The environments described are not real within the narrative - why, exactly, are we reading? Consider the unsatisfactory nature of a story which is revealed to be all a dream. Isn’t a simulation only an upgraded class of dream?)
A further niggle is that there might actually be two books here. There are certainly two main plots which are linked through Joiler Veppers. Continuity suffers as a result. Neither story arc builds up enough momentum before dissipating. Either might have made a more compact 300 pager instead of this one’s 600 pages – which, though, does have lovely end papers in a fractal design.
Banks, however, ties all the threads together plus throws in the usual space battles and grand set pieces along the way. However, a certain lightness of touch at times, a casual irreverence, suggests he might actually be sending up this whole Space Opera lark.
Minor quibbles. Lead cannot be amphoteric though its oxide(s) may. The density of an element is not related to its atomic number. Contrary to what Banks states, gold will sink in mercury rather than float, whereas lead will float, not sink - this would be the case no matter what planet you are on.
There is more than enough in Surface Detail though, to satisfy the adherents of Space Opera.
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LibraryThing member imyril
Was that a happy ending? Of sorts, obviously, because it's still Banks - but I ended up with a tear in my eye for the first time in a while. Surface Detail wasn't at all what I remembered or expected and was all the better for it.
Surface Detail is huge in emotional scope, taking on the concept of
All of which sounds like very heavy going, but leavened here by quality snark, a superbly entertaining Mind that just can't wait to blow something up, and enough sly humour to keep it from smothering you.
Full review
Surface Detail is huge in emotional scope, taking on the concept of
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death (in a galaxy where being backed up and reincarnated, or effectively digitally immortal are both norms in advanced societies); the afterlife (...and whether we need the threat of Hell to keep us on the straight and narrow); and the delicate balance between justice, revenge, privilege and political expediency.All of which sounds like very heavy going, but leavened here by quality snark, a superbly entertaining Mind that just can't wait to blow something up, and enough sly humour to keep it from smothering you.
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LibraryThing member elenchus
Politics and morality are front and center; comparatively less of the plot is devoted to Minds or Contact than to nefarious plots against innocents (one in Hell, the other in slavery); a villain so over the top as to be twirling a waxed mustache. Surface Detail is a potboiler, space opera in the
Were this the first Culture novel I'd read, likely I wouldn't have come back. Since it wasn't, I kept an ear to the ground for Banks's sidelong commentary, and glimpses into Special Circumstances and the implications of technology supporting personal backups or virtual reality.
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VR serving as a culture's Hell; Banks's imagination fell short here, Hell a Boschian salad of bodily torture on infinite loop. Hell is predicated on embodied existence, little exploration of emotional or mental hells other than what follows from witnessing / experiencing / anticipating physical pain. (Excepting: the urge to kill implanted in Prin, an existential betrayal of her ideals and Self, but still close to physical sensation.) The most interesting idea is Banks speculating widespread use of VR by pan-human civilisations in order to manifest each culture's concept of Hell, and that conflict would result about this use of technology.
Three Contact specialist divisions more recent than Special Circumstances:
• Quietudinal Service (Quietus) serve as liaison to the dead, that is, Persons in VR Hell
• Restoria (Pest Control) "charged with taking care of hegemonising swarm outbreaks when -- by accident or design -- a set of self-replicating entities ran out of control somewhere and started trying to turn the totality of the galaxy's matter into nothing but copies of themselves" [177]
• Numina liaison with Sublimed species / individuals
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mold of Flash Gordon, and probably should be enjoyed as such. Were this the first Culture novel I'd read, likely I wouldn't have come back. Since it wasn't, I kept an ear to the ground for Banks's sidelong commentary, and glimpses into Special Circumstances and the implications of technology supporting personal backups or virtual reality.
//
VR serving as a culture's Hell; Banks's imagination fell short here, Hell a Boschian salad of bodily torture on infinite loop. Hell is predicated on embodied existence, little exploration of emotional or mental hells other than what follows from witnessing / experiencing / anticipating physical pain. (Excepting: the urge to kill implanted in Prin, an existential betrayal of her ideals and Self, but still close to physical sensation.) The most interesting idea is Banks speculating widespread use of VR by pan-human civilisations in order to manifest each culture's concept of Hell, and that conflict would result about this use of technology.
Three Contact specialist divisions more recent than Special Circumstances:
• Quietudinal Service (Quietus) serve as liaison to the dead, that is, Persons in VR Hell
• Restoria (Pest Control) "charged with taking care of hegemonising swarm outbreaks when -- by accident or design -- a set of self-replicating entities ran out of control somewhere and started trying to turn the totality of the galaxy's matter into nothing but copies of themselves" [177]
• Numina liaison with Sublimed species / individuals
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LibraryThing member TarsolyGer
I have found this book really disappointing. I was a huge fan of Use of Weapons and I had liked to read The Player of Games, and it was intriguing to read The Wasp Factory.
This novel lacks the quality that made those former books valuable. In my opinion, Banks' strength lies in forming his
I had read Look to Windward too, and that was the first disappointment. The characters were strong, but the focus was on the - quite predictable - storyline which only served to enforce the proverb "Do not fuck with the Culture".
Unfortunately Surface Detail moves towards that direction. The story is simpler, the characters are shallow. The ending is a disaster: the last 4 pages summarizes the events that happened after the 600+ pages of the books, and the 3-page-epilogue is like the author have realised that there were only moderate twists in the story, so he gives us a revelation about a character that is supposed to be striking but unfortunately I couldn't care less, as that character was nothing special.
Otherwise, I can only recommend this novel to those who just want to read something light for a longer period that is not boring, the pace of action is good enough.
Oh, and don't fuck with the Culture.
This novel lacks the quality that made those former books valuable. In my opinion, Banks' strength lies in forming his
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characters, showing their feelings, inner motivations, fears, etc. The storyline was only to serve as the environment where these characters move.I had read Look to Windward too, and that was the first disappointment. The characters were strong, but the focus was on the - quite predictable - storyline which only served to enforce the proverb "Do not fuck with the Culture".
Unfortunately Surface Detail moves towards that direction. The story is simpler, the characters are shallow. The ending is a disaster: the last 4 pages summarizes the events that happened after the 600+ pages of the books, and the 3-page-epilogue is like the author have realised that there were only moderate twists in the story, so he gives us a revelation about a character that is supposed to be striking but unfortunately I couldn't care less, as that character was nothing special.
Otherwise, I can only recommend this novel to those who just want to read something light for a longer period that is not boring, the pace of action is good enough.
Oh, and don't fuck with the Culture.
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LibraryThing member jakecasella
I'm slowly but surely working my way through all the Culture books, using a time-honored "when I stumble across them in a shop" technique.
This was a bit more work to get through, for me, than many of Banks' other works. Sentence-by-sentence, still lots of fun—the more attentively I read Banks,
To real it back for a second to synopsis, Surface Detail is a Culture story: broad galactic space opera. The Culture itself is a multi-species civilization run primarily by Minds, highly advanced and typically ship-born AI. As it's basically a post-scarcity, hedonistic, space socialist utopia, tension in the Culture comes from its interactions with other civilizations—lower-tech groups that it sometimes attempts benevolent interference with, equivalent-tech groups that are potential threats, and "Elder" or "Sublimed" species that typically don't participate in galactic life, but may have powers far in excess of the Culture if they decide to do so.
Surface Detail has two main plotlines. One focuses on the Sichultians, a non-Culture humanoid race. Veppers, a massively wealthy playboy, murders his slave Lededje when she tries to escape. Unknown to either of them, Lededje was implanted with a "neural lace" during an earlier encounter with an eccentric Culture entity, which device backs up her mind and transmits it to a Culture ship, where she is "revented" into a physical body and sets about trying to get back to Sichult for revenge.
In the second, much more tangled plotline, we learn about "the War in Heaven". Many/most advanced civilizations run virtual afterlives where uploaded consciousnesses can continue after physical death; some non-Culture civs have created virtual Hells for a variety of reasons. After many groups (including the Culture) have been campaigning against these, both sides agree to hold the conflict in a purely virtual form and hold to the conclusion, so that it doesn't spill out into the Real. We meet many players in this plotline, including academics from the Pavul race who infiltrate their Hell and attempt to expose it, a high-ranking military commando from the War in Heaven, and eventually a number of players who are seeking to affect the outcome of the War by means of Real-world action (physically destroying the computers that run the Hells, for instance).
Sichult winds up being intimately connected to the War in Heaven for a few reasons, which brings Lededje and Veppers' plots into line with the larger space opera.
Two hardest parts of this book for me: first, because of how short many of the sections are, there were whole swaths of the plot I found hard to keep straight or care about. Lededje & Veppers worked, but the rest is a bit of a blur. Secondly—and many might consider this a feature rather than a bug of Banks' writing—it's just discomfiting. The first three chapters consist of gruesome murder & rape, tragicomic but still brutally violent military death, and a horrifyingly visceral introduction to the Pavulean Hell. As in much of Banks, the backdrop is that the Culture is Genuinely Good, a more fleshed-out and open-minded version of Star Trek Federation Good, but the actual text of the novel revolves almost pruriently around barbaric sadism.
The Minds-as-characters are where Banks really shines—their intelligence and abilities allow Banks to write them as both believable utopia-shepherds and occasionally-slightly-psychopathic smartasses—and we don't get a ton of them directly here. Lededje feels like the putative protagonist, but while her backstory is developed, I don't feel like Banks infuses her with much character. By contrast, Veppers, who is a moral monster, is actually given the screen-time and agency to develop.
Also, I have to bring up a possibly-purely-personal complaint I always have with Banks, which is that my brain just refuses to remember his character names. With the exception of the Minds, which have funny phrase-names (two main players here are the Sense Amid Madness, Wit Amidst Folly and the Me, I'm Counting) the entirety of Banks' characters have names that feel like they were created by some kind of random syllable generator. No more or less true than many SF/F works, but the sheer volume of his characters makes it particularly hard to keep up with.
The twist towards the end here is sort of slowly, messily revealed. It's terribly clever, and the kind of realpolitik that Banks revels in—when might a deeply good civilization have to temporarily put aside morals for those self-same morals' sake? It is a well-done wtf-moment to realize that everyone you've been following for the whole novel, villains and good guys alike, are basically on the same side. The ship that winds up helping Lededje, and almost single-handedly resolving the Real, physical battle at the novel's conclusion, is an "Abominator-class", masquerading as a "Torturer-class", and calls itself the Falling Outside Normal Moral Restraints. Banks' entire project in a single character name.
Overall: enjoyable, would definitely not suggest as an entry point to the Culture series.
This was a bit more work to get through, for me, than many of Banks' other works. Sentence-by-sentence, still lots of fun—the more attentively I read Banks,
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the more wordplay and cleverness jumps out at me—and the big ideas are good. However, the multiplicity of plots and view-points is a little overwhelming; what initially seems like three storylines proliferates and multiplies, with each point-of-view getting only fairly short textual chunks at a time. The result is a kind of attenuated feeling; there's so much not immediately obvious in each storyline (standard for Banks) that I just got a kind of collage of events, with things not really lining up until the last fifth of the book or so, when Veppers' real motivations become clear.To real it back for a second to synopsis, Surface Detail is a Culture story: broad galactic space opera. The Culture itself is a multi-species civilization run primarily by Minds, highly advanced and typically ship-born AI. As it's basically a post-scarcity, hedonistic, space socialist utopia, tension in the Culture comes from its interactions with other civilizations—lower-tech groups that it sometimes attempts benevolent interference with, equivalent-tech groups that are potential threats, and "Elder" or "Sublimed" species that typically don't participate in galactic life, but may have powers far in excess of the Culture if they decide to do so.
Surface Detail has two main plotlines. One focuses on the Sichultians, a non-Culture humanoid race. Veppers, a massively wealthy playboy, murders his slave Lededje when she tries to escape. Unknown to either of them, Lededje was implanted with a "neural lace" during an earlier encounter with an eccentric Culture entity, which device backs up her mind and transmits it to a Culture ship, where she is "revented" into a physical body and sets about trying to get back to Sichult for revenge.
In the second, much more tangled plotline, we learn about "the War in Heaven". Many/most advanced civilizations run virtual afterlives where uploaded consciousnesses can continue after physical death; some non-Culture civs have created virtual Hells for a variety of reasons. After many groups (including the Culture) have been campaigning against these, both sides agree to hold the conflict in a purely virtual form and hold to the conclusion, so that it doesn't spill out into the Real. We meet many players in this plotline, including academics from the Pavul race who infiltrate their Hell and attempt to expose it, a high-ranking military commando from the War in Heaven, and eventually a number of players who are seeking to affect the outcome of the War by means of Real-world action (physically destroying the computers that run the Hells, for instance).
Sichult winds up being intimately connected to the War in Heaven for a few reasons, which brings Lededje and Veppers' plots into line with the larger space opera.
Two hardest parts of this book for me: first, because of how short many of the sections are, there were whole swaths of the plot I found hard to keep straight or care about. Lededje & Veppers worked, but the rest is a bit of a blur. Secondly—and many might consider this a feature rather than a bug of Banks' writing—it's just discomfiting. The first three chapters consist of gruesome murder & rape, tragicomic but still brutally violent military death, and a horrifyingly visceral introduction to the Pavulean Hell. As in much of Banks, the backdrop is that the Culture is Genuinely Good, a more fleshed-out and open-minded version of Star Trek Federation Good, but the actual text of the novel revolves almost pruriently around barbaric sadism.
The Minds-as-characters are where Banks really shines—their intelligence and abilities allow Banks to write them as both believable utopia-shepherds and occasionally-slightly-psychopathic smartasses—and we don't get a ton of them directly here. Lededje feels like the putative protagonist, but while her backstory is developed, I don't feel like Banks infuses her with much character. By contrast, Veppers, who is a moral monster, is actually given the screen-time and agency to develop.
Also, I have to bring up a possibly-purely-personal complaint I always have with Banks, which is that my brain just refuses to remember his character names. With the exception of the Minds, which have funny phrase-names (two main players here are the Sense Amid Madness, Wit Amidst Folly and the Me, I'm Counting) the entirety of Banks' characters have names that feel like they were created by some kind of random syllable generator. No more or less true than many SF/F works, but the sheer volume of his characters makes it particularly hard to keep up with.
The twist towards the end here is sort of slowly, messily revealed. It's terribly clever, and the kind of realpolitik that Banks revels in—when might a deeply good civilization have to temporarily put aside morals for those self-same morals' sake? It is a well-done wtf-moment to realize that everyone you've been following for the whole novel, villains and good guys alike, are basically on the same side. The ship that winds up helping Lededje, and almost single-handedly resolving the Real, physical battle at the novel's conclusion, is an "Abominator-class", masquerading as a "Torturer-class", and calls itself the Falling Outside Normal Moral Restraints. Banks' entire project in a single character name.
Overall: enjoyable, would definitely not suggest as an entry point to the Culture series.
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LibraryThing member DanTarlin
A bewildering story in which Banks crams a thousand strange ideas into one book. I'm reading the Culture series in order generally, and it seems that as the years went by Banks got more and more complex in his plotting and just threw more and more stuff into every story. The previous book, Matter,
-Lededje is the central character, an "intagliate" woman born/engineered with tattoos down to the cellular level, but who is also essentially a slave, owned by a man to whom her parents were indebted. She is murdered by her owner at the start, but surprisingly is reanimated on a Culture ship because of a neural lace built into her brain that she didn't even know about. She sets out for revenge against her owner.
-Veppers is Lededje's owner, the main villain in the book. He is the wealthiest man in his society, and essentially a cartoon villain, caring about nobody but himself. He is also buried in a complex conspiracy with some aliens involved in a virtual war over the fate of virtual "hells" in many societies.
-Vateuil is a soldier and commander in the virtual war over the Hells.
-Prim and Chay are four-legged aliens who sneak into the Hell run by elements of their society, with the goal of escaping and publicizing the barbarity of that place.
-Yime Nisokyi is a Culture agent in the section of Contact that deals with the Dead in their virtual environments. As the war over the Hells intensifies and involves the aforementioned Veppers, she is sent to ensure that Lededje doesn't cause a galactic incident by murdering him.
-Bettlescroy is a non-culture diplomat/military commander involved with Veppers in a conspiracy involving the Tsungarial Disk, an enormouse warship-building factory abandoned by an ancient civilization which becomes part of a plan to bring the virtual war over the Hells into the "Real".
-Unfallen Bulbitian- is a ship left over from the Bulbitian civilization which houses a number of missions attempting to communicate with it. Like many of Banks' ancillary ideas, this one was wholly unnecessary to the plot, and it's hard to understand why it was included.
And in this case, the AI ships have big roles to play. The warship "Falling Outside the Normal Moral Constraints" is actually a great character- a ship built for destruction, usually bored waiting for something to happen, that decides to help Lededje in her quest for revenge, mainly to amuse itself. When a skirmish in space occurs, the ship is so excited to be unleashed it's actually kind of fun.
The ship "Me, I'm Counting" is the eccentric ship that gives Lededje her neural lace, allowing her to be reborn after her murder.
As with Matter, I wish Banks dialed down the ideas a little to make the story more comprehensible. Still, this was a good time.
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bothered me this way, but maybe I'm growing more accustomed to this style, as enjoyed this story better. Anyway, the characters here:-Lededje is the central character, an "intagliate" woman born/engineered with tattoos down to the cellular level, but who is also essentially a slave, owned by a man to whom her parents were indebted. She is murdered by her owner at the start, but surprisingly is reanimated on a Culture ship because of a neural lace built into her brain that she didn't even know about. She sets out for revenge against her owner.
-Veppers is Lededje's owner, the main villain in the book. He is the wealthiest man in his society, and essentially a cartoon villain, caring about nobody but himself. He is also buried in a complex conspiracy with some aliens involved in a virtual war over the fate of virtual "hells" in many societies.
-Vateuil is a soldier and commander in the virtual war over the Hells.
-Prim and Chay are four-legged aliens who sneak into the Hell run by elements of their society, with the goal of escaping and publicizing the barbarity of that place.
-Yime Nisokyi is a Culture agent in the section of Contact that deals with the Dead in their virtual environments. As the war over the Hells intensifies and involves the aforementioned Veppers, she is sent to ensure that Lededje doesn't cause a galactic incident by murdering him.
-Bettlescroy is a non-culture diplomat/military commander involved with Veppers in a conspiracy involving the Tsungarial Disk, an enormouse warship-building factory abandoned by an ancient civilization which becomes part of a plan to bring the virtual war over the Hells into the "Real".
-Unfallen Bulbitian- is a ship left over from the Bulbitian civilization which houses a number of missions attempting to communicate with it. Like many of Banks' ancillary ideas, this one was wholly unnecessary to the plot, and it's hard to understand why it was included.
And in this case, the AI ships have big roles to play. The warship "Falling Outside the Normal Moral Constraints" is actually a great character- a ship built for destruction, usually bored waiting for something to happen, that decides to help Lededje in her quest for revenge, mainly to amuse itself. When a skirmish in space occurs, the ship is so excited to be unleashed it's actually kind of fun.
The ship "Me, I'm Counting" is the eccentric ship that gives Lededje her neural lace, allowing her to be reborn after her murder.
As with Matter, I wish Banks dialed down the ideas a little to make the story more comprehensible. Still, this was a good time.
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LibraryThing member Ma_Washigeri
Fairly good. Had to skip over the long boring descriptions of people being tortured and spaceship battles - but otherwise quite entertaining.
LibraryThing member aadyer
A return to Culture science fiction by it's creator. It's use of the virtual world, the concepts of high technology in biotech & afterlife experience, was involving & intriguing, & the moral issues involved in such circumstances, well thought out. The plotting for most of the first half was tight,
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but I felt that the third quarter was flabby & began to lose interest for me. There was a sort of resolution & a return to earlier levels of interest in the last quarter, but it all never really quite worked. This was a shame, because intial characterisation, thoughts on morality and sheer mind bending ideas, were excellent. Good, but not his best work, which I still feel is his first two, or maybe three Culture novels Show Less
LibraryThing member NogDog
Not as enjoyable a read as Banks' Excession. It had its good moments, but it also had many sections that seemed to drag, tempting me to skim at points. In part this was due to many of the characters being rather bland at best and not really piquing my curiosity, and also because certain sections
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following some of those characters were largely repetitious and served little purpose for this reader, as the author had already made his points in those areas.Good writing as usual, and a fairly inventive plot, if not entirely believable for me. Show Less
LibraryThing member paulmorriss
This is one of Ian M Banks' "Culture" novels, so expect a large backdrop in space and exploration of some interesting ideas about the future. It also has several interesting characters. Some of them die early on, but in this part of space and time this doesn't mean that it's the end of the story as
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far as they are concerned. There are several plot lines involving each of those characters, but they do all converge by the end. Although the plot is expansive things really do depend on the actions of a small number of people. Very enjoyable. Show Less
LibraryThing member mbg0312
I like me some UK socialist sci-fi writers.
LibraryThing member psiloiordinary
The quality continues.
Superb science fiction by a master of the craft.
Someone once said that the job of science fiction writers was not to predict the future, but to prevent it from happening. Banks breaks this rule, his "Culture" seems pretty amazing to me.
Superb science fiction by a master of the craft.
Someone once said that the job of science fiction writers was not to predict the future, but to prevent it from happening. Banks breaks this rule, his "Culture" seems pretty amazing to me.
LibraryThing member ub1707
I found this one a tricky read but in the end was fully satisfied. Imagining a society that has taken it upon itself to make Hell "real" was fairly horrifying and at times challenging to read. But, the book isn't entirely taken up with these descriptions an instead a large part of the novel is a
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revenge story. Show Less
LibraryThing member xnfec
Banks very much back to his best in this Culture novel. The "Psychopath" class ship is particluarly funny and true to its type.
LibraryThing member HadriantheBlind
First book of the Culture series that I have read. Interesting enough and a good read - describes the idea of a massive intelligence with some degree of detail and interest. I will have to look for the others.
LibraryThing member travelster
Science fiction at its best. Interesting characters and great fictional science.