Matter
(category: science fiction)a book set in the Culture Universe by
Iain M. Banks
published by Orbit in 2008, read in August 2009Agamedes' rating: 7 out of 10
Agamedes' opinion:
An amazingly complex universe -- yet it all seems to make sense. There are sympathetic characters, including the ones from the “primitive” society -- who know that there is a more complex society surrounding them and who make their way out into the wider universe then back again. After a lot of enjoyable struggle, the end is rather sudden and brutal. Luckily enough, the “Culture” society includes memory saves, so death is not final, just a restart with some loss of experience. Unfortunately, this reincarnation does not help the more primitive heroes.
1 comment:
November 2015. I have just re-read Matter. You know what was most interesting ? I could remember (vaguely) the start... I knew (roughly) where it was going to end... Everything in between was as-new.
How had I managed to forget the detail of this high tech and exciting science fiction novel ? Possibly because it is so high tech...
For the middle third of this reading, I struggled. Easy to read, yes. Amazing science, yes. Exciting plot, definitely not. It seems to me, that Banks was being paid by the word. Or, perhaps, paid a bonus for each new scientific marvel.
The scientific marvels do very little for the plot. In fact, after a while, they are very boring. May as well just say, He waves his magic wand and creates a Cone of Silence... Rather than spend many pages explaining the four dimensional nature of the selected safe-from-spying zone.
There are pages of "science", which may as well be magic. Remember the very first Star Wars movie ? I love the way the science was just *there*, part of the background, there to be be used or ignored -- without explanation. Banks brings the science front and centre. There too much. It is a distraction from the plot.
And then there's the philosophy... same story: a character will spend several pages explaining a philosophical idea. (By philosophical I mean, political, lifestyle, application of science, whatever.) Remember Heinlein ? His characters spend pages at a time explaining how the world should be run... Banks, at least, tries to move the plot along, during the philosophy lesson. Tries and, usually, fails.
Finally, in its final 150 or so pages, the book becomes an exciting novel. Boredom fades away. Nearly everyone dies, the few survivors are saved.
I'm happy with my original rating: 7 out of 10, well worth reading. Quite enjoyable, if you can stay awake through the largely irrelevant sections of eye-glazing science and philosophy...
Post a Comment