The Ambiguous Utopia of Iain M. Banks Alan Jacobs
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REVIEWS & RECONSIDERATIONS The Ambiguous Utopia of Iain M. Banks Alan Jacobs CNN: Would you like to live in the For purposes of comparison, it might Culture? be noted that the main page on Iain M. Banks: Good grief yes, heck, Jane Austen is a little shorter and yeah, oh it’s my secular heaven....Yes, with fewer links to other Austen- I would, absolutely. Again it comes related pages. Yet there are certainly down to wish fulfillment. I haven’t far fewer readers of Iain M. Banks done a study and taken lots of replies than of Jane Austen. How are we to across a cross-section of humanity to account for this discrepancy? find out what would be their personal We had best begin by doing a utopia. It’s mine, I thought of it, and better job of identifying Iain M. I’m going home with it—absolutely, Banks. This is one of the two names it’s great. under which the fifty-five-year-old Scotsman writes, the other being Iain he Wikipedia pages devoted Banks. A subtle difference to be sure, to the Culture, a fictional but one which the author maintains Tcivilization created by the consistently: approximately half of Scottish writer Iain M. Banks, are his twenty-plus novels are science fabulously extensive. The main arti- fiction, and these are published with cle is about nine thousand words the middle initial; the other half long, and contains links to more are, roughly speaking, realistic nov- than thirty other pages that provide els in contemporary settings, dotted more detail on the various aspects of with various proportions of horror, Banks’s imaginary world. (I would humor, and satire, and these are not be at all surprised if Banks him- published uninitialized. He has also self, in the writing of Culture nov- written, lyrically, about whiskey in els, consulted Wikipedia to ensure Raw Spirit: In Search of the Perfect consistency with his previous work.) Dram (2003). Summer 2009 ~ 45 Copyright 2009. All rights reserved. See www.TheNewAtlantis.com for more information. Alan Jacobs Among his science fiction nov- found a way to opt out of the physical els, seven (plus a handful of short universe altogether: these are called stories) deal with the Culture. The the Sublimed.) The Culture is just Culture itself is not strictly speak- one among these many civilizations. ing a world but rather a civilization The detail with which Banks has within an imagined universe. Banks imagined these societies—seeing envisions a number of civilizations in them as different paths by which our galaxy having the technological evolution might produce highly intel- sophistication to cross vast tracts of ligent life—and the care with which space for purposes of colonization, he has thought through their pos- exploitation, war—the usual imperi- sible relations with the Culture help al activities—though some are insu- to build the reader’s sense of a sub- lar and xenophobic and resist contact stantial fictional world. But most with other peoples. (Some have even of Banks’s world-building energies THE CULTURE Iain M. Banks has written six novels explicitly about the Culture, as well as one novel that may involve the Culture. In addition, a book of his short stories includes a handful about the Culture, plus an essay called “A Few Notes on the Culture.” The editions listed below are the paperbacks most readily available in the United States; in the United Kingdom, the entire series is available from Orbit. Novels About the Culture: Consider Phlebas (1987) Excession (1996) Orbit ~ 514 pp. ~ $12.99 Spectra ~ 512 pp. ~ $7.99 The Player of Games (1988) Look to Windward (2000) Orbit ~ 391 pp. ~ $12.99 Out of print in the U.S. Use of Weapons (1990) Matter (2008) Orbit ~ 512 pp. ~ $12.99 Orbit ~ 624 pp. ~ $14.99 Possibly About the Culture: Short Stories: Inversions (1998) The State of the Art (2001) Pocket ~ 415 pp. ~ $22.95 Night Shade ~ 188 pp. ~ $14.95 46 ~ The New Atlantis Copyright 2009. All rights reserved. See www.TheNewAtlantis.com for more information. The Ambiguous Utopia of Iain M. Banks have gone into designing the Culture the Culture, its great AIs: their outra- itself: its wildly varying geographies, geous names, their dangerous senses of its language, its social order, its bio- humor. Is this what gods would actu- technologically enhanced citizens. ally be like? The intricacy of these designs is what Banks: If we’re lucky. furnishes all those Wikipedia pages. inds are artificial intelligences World-building writers do what of almost infinite scope and they do in part from sheer love of M power, and they govern the worlds in invention. But it is in the nature of which inhabitants of the Culture live. world-builders to be philosophers A few of these worlds are planets, but as well. That is, the best of what far more often Culture citizens live Tolkien called “secondary worlds” on Orbitals—vast rings, each “like a are extended commentaries on and god’s bracelet,” that orbit stars and critiques of this world: they are mir- rotate in order to produce appropri- rors cunningly placed so we can see ate gravity—and on great interstel- the back of our universe—aspects lar ships. (Tens of millions of people of our being that are normally hid- may live on a ship; tens of billions den from us. Every major secondary on an Orbital.) The Mind of the ship world is to some degree polemical, or Orbital controls its every func- ideological. tion and monitors every inhabitant The philosophy of Banks’s Culture to ensure contentment. The Minds is that of Liberalism—Liberalism are fully sentient and have their own writ not just large but as large as personalities; they manifest them- possible. The Culture is, as one selves to Culture citizens through commentator has written, a “liberal android avatars and through “termi- Utopia”; but like all Utopias, it con- nals”: everyone has a terminal at all tains its dark places and puzzles, and times, which he or she can use to ask perhaps even the seeds of its own questions, place orders, give infor- critique. However, it is impossible mation, relay messages, and so on. to understand either the Culture’s Citizens can tell the Minds to leave philosophy or its limitations without them alone, to cease monitoring their first understanding the technology conversations, and it appears that the that makes the Culture possible: the Minds do so, at least temporarily; technology of the Minds. there are no HAL 9000s in Banks’s fictional world—no Mind ever harms Science Fiction Weekly: Excession a person, though in one strange is particularly popular [among your case in Look to Windward (2000), a novels] because of its copious detail Mind decides to destroy itself. But it concerning the Ships and Minds of only does so after ensuring that the Summer 2009 ~ 47 Copyright 2009. All rights reserved. See www.TheNewAtlantis.com for more information. Alan Jacobs Orbital it governs is taken care of by Suppose you murder someone, its chosen successor. Gurgeh continues: you will then be It is through the work of the Minds— “slap-droned,” which means that a in their overwhelming resourceful- drone—a small sentient robot, con- ness and, perhaps, wisdom—that the nected to the Mind—“follows you Culture possesses its most interesting around and makes sure you never feature: it is what Banks has called do it again.” And since the drone’s a “post-scarcity” society, in which constant presence reminds people everyone has everything he or she of what you’ve done, you “don’t get wants. A Culture citizen can live in invited to too many parties,” which any environment, under any climate, means “social death.” In the Culture in any kind of dwelling, and can wear “social death” is the death that really any kind of clothes and own any counts, since people otherwise tend imaginable objects. Sexual prowess to live as long as they want to. and pleasure are ensured by genetic Banks acknowledges that—among modification and precisely infused people, drones, and even Minds— drugs: glands secrete at the citizens’ there will occasionally be resistance commands to produce whatever mood to the Culture’s way of doing things, or energy is needed. The Culture but he emphasizes that these cases has no laws, and nothing that we will be extremely rare. The Culture would call a government. All power offers every possible distraction to remains in the hands of the omnipo- the troubled mind, and of course tent and omni benevolent Minds. As everyone’s glands secrete the proper Banks himself has written, “Briefly, mood at will. It’s difficult under such nothing and nobody in the Culture is circumstances for rage and resent- exploited.” ment to become habitual. In The Player of Games (1988), Perhaps more important even an outsider to the Culture named than these forces is the power of Hamin wonders, “Didn’t the Culture Marain. Marain is the language of forbid anything?” the Culture, a synthetic language invented by Minds to shape the con- Gurgeh [the novel’s protagonist] sciousness of its users in appropri- attempted to explain there were no ate ways. In The Player of Games a written laws, but almost no crime drone notices significant changes in anyway. There was the occasional crime of passion (as Hamin chose Gurgeh’s personality when, instead to call it), but little else. It was dif- of speaking Marain, he spends almost ficult to get away with anything all his time speaking the language anyway, when everybody had a of a less sophisticated and morally terminal, but there were very few upright people, the Azad.