Imperial Purple

Iain M. Banks
Matter
Orbit. 2008

Quite a lot of years ago now I remember a friend raving to me about the virtues of Iain M. Banks. He seemed very keen so I went into the local bookshop and picked one of Banks’ books at random off the shelves - it happened to be Use of Weapons. Unfortunately I found his central premise about the use of weapons rather silly and this put me off the whole book. I have not read any of Banks’ work since.

I mention this because I am of necessity reviewing Matter as a standalone book - not as part of the “Culture” series. As far as I can tell it stands alone perfectly well although I may be missing some of the finer points.

Matter is set in a shell world - a massive artificial planet built in concentric layers. Each level is over 1,000 kilometres deep with several artificial stars illuminating them. Each level contains a different species - some water-breathers, some aerial and so forth. Levels 8 and 9 contain humanoid species at an early industrial revolution level of technology.

Much of the book is concerned with these species and their discovery, in level 9, of an ancient city. And we mean ancient - we are talking more than a billion years here. Eventually a mysterious object is uncovered which turns out to be not what anyone expects and gets out of hand spectacularly. Everything gets very exciting at this point.

The book is a large one - nearly 600 pages in my edition. The exciting bit unfortunately does not happen until after page 500. A great deal of the book is concerned with the petty, and ultimately irrelevant, military and political details of the humanoid culture. Somewhere around page 350 you start to get an inkling of the greater story but it is a long wait. Many people I have talked to had given up on the book well before reaching this point.

This is my major criticism of the book. It has a sweeping majestic scale with a plethora of interesting aliens, planets the size of solar systems and Artificial Intelligences with brains the size of a planet, all of which are classic SF tropes and which I enjoyed. But, the book is the wrong way round. Instead of spending 500 pages on the background story and 100 on the exciting bit I would have preferred the opposite ratio.

This emphasis on the background story meant that the last 100 pages were unsatisfactory. It all ends very suddenly when a single Special Circumstances agent manages to take out a billion-year old machine with planet-busting abilties. A machine which had resisted all the efforts of a contemporary culture with mind-boggling technological skills to take it down all those years ago.

I’m sorry. I just didn’t believe it. This should have been the massive scale stuff. We had the opportunity for a stupendous encounter between the highly advanced races of the Culture and the might of an ancient but powerful machine. Instead it all ends with a bit of a whimper.

You don’t even really find out what happened except for some general hints in a short epilogue tucked away behind the glossary. You can’t help but feel that Banks was forced to write this epilogue by the publishers. His heart didn’t seem to be in it.

I can’t completely pan this novel because it does have redeeming SF features and will no doubt be enjoyed by Culture fans. But I’m afraid I am still left where I was before - unless someone can convince me otherwise I don’t see any particular reason to read any more of Banks’ books.* I’m giving it two and a half stars.

*Several days later: I’ve thought more about this statement and it’s not completely true. Banks can certainly write - his prose and dialog are both good and the ‘Culture’ in general is interesting. Perhaps someone can recommend one to me - preferably one which doesn’t suffer from the problems I noted above.