Iain M. Banks

The third Culture novel from the awesome imagination of Iain M. Banks, a modern master of science fiction. The man known as Cheradenine Zakalwe was one of Special Circumstances' foremost agents, changing the destiny of planets to suit the Culture through intrigue, dirty tricks or military action. The woman known as Diziet Sma had plucked him from obscurity and pushed him towards his present eminence, but despite all their dealings she did not know him as well as she thought. The drone known as Skaffen-Amtiskaw knew both of these people. It had once saved the woman's life by massacring her attackers in a particularly bloody manner. It believed the man to be a burnt-out case. But not even its machine intelligence could see the horrors in his past. Praise for the Culture series: 'Epic in scope, ambitious in its ideas and absorbing in its execution' Independent on Sunday 'Banks has created one of the most enduring and endearing visions of the future' Guardian 'Jam-packed with extraordinary invention' Scotsman 'Compulsive reading' Sunday Telegraph The Culture series: Consider Phlebas The Player of Games Use of Weapons The State of the Art Excession Inversions Look to Windward Matter Surface Detail The Hydrogen Sonata Other books by Iain M. Banks: Against a Dark Background Feersum Endjinn The Algebraist

Use Of Weapons

Use of weapons

Gavin

The protagonist is cartoonish, full of piratical energy, but saved from a boring super-soldier effect by pathos of the Bad Lieutenant variety. Banks was always quite open about how didactic the sci-fi novels were; they are saved by his sheer inventiveness and the grand psychological realism amidst the technological fantasy. 

: What do humans have to offer, after the singularity? What skills are scarce? Banks' answer is: "a lack of scruples; excessive force; the ability to not care." We should be so lucky.

This scene had a large effect on me as a child:
'Of course I don't have to do this,' one middle-aged man said, carefully cleaning the table with a damp cloth. He put the cloth in a little pouch, sat down beside him. "But look; this table's clean.'
     He agreed that the table was clean.

     "Usually,' the man said. "I work on alien -- no offence -- alien religions; Directional Emphasis In Religious Observance; that's my specialty ... like when temples or graves or prayers always have to face in a certain direction; that sort of thing? Well, I catalogue, evaluate, compare; I come up with theories and argue with colleagues, here and elsewhere. But ... the job's never finished; always new examples, and even the old ones get re-evaluated, and new people come along with new ideas about what you thought was settled ... but,' he slapped the table, "when you clean a table you clean a table. You feel you've done something. It's an achievement."

     "But in the end, it's still cleaning a table."
     "And therefore does not really signify on the cosmic scale of events?' the man suggested.
     
He smiled in response to the man's grin, "Well, yes.'
     
'But then what does signify? My other work? Is that really important, either?' 
I could try composing wonderful musical works, or day-long entertainment epics, but what would that do? Give people pleasure? My wiping this table gives me pleasure. And people come to a clean table, which gives them pleasure. And anyway" - the man laughed - "people die; stars die; universes die. What is any achievement, however great it was, once time itself is dead? Of course, if all I did was wipe tables, then of course it would seem a mean and despicable waste of my huge intellectual potential. But because I choose to do it, it gives me pleasure. And," the man said with a smile, "it's a good way of meeting people." 


As did this, before I studied formal philosophy and received a resounding confirmation of it:

       “Aw, come on; argue, dammit.”     
“I don’t believe in argument,” he said, looking out into the darkness.     
“You don’t?” Erens said, genuinely surprised. “Shit, and I thought I was the cynical one.”     
“It’s not cynicism,” he said flatly. “I just think people overvalue argument because they like to hear themselves talk.”     
“Oh well, thank you.”     
“It’s comforting, I suppose.” He watched the stars wheel, like absurdly slow shells seen at night: rising, peaking, falling...(And reminded himself that the stars too would explode, perhaps, one day.) “Most people are not prepared to have their minds changed,” he said. “And I think they know in their hearts that other people are just the same, and one of the reasons people become angry when they argue is that they realize just that, as they trot out their excuses.”     
“Excuses, eh?"     
"Yes, excuses," he said, with what Erens thought might just have been a trace of bitterness. "I strongly suspect the things people believe in are usually just what they instinctively feel is right; the excuses, the justifications, the things you're supposed to argue about, come later. They're the least important part of the belief. That's why you can destroy them, win an argument, prove the other person wrong, and still they believe what they did in the first place." He looked at Erens. "You've attacked the wrong thing.” 


But this was also before I got into technical pursuits which lend us hope that the above grim realism can be defeated by self-awareness, quantification, and epistemic care. Sometimes.

Jeff

The bomb lives only as it is falling.

Very nearly a Did Not Finish for me about halfway through. Maybe it was my own circumstances at the time but it really felt like it dragged in the middle and I was getting frustrated with the alternating chapter narratives. 

Whatever the reason, the latter half started to gel and gripped me right through to that crushing ending. I definitely want to give this a reread at some point, to piece the flashback details together.

Kyle S

By far my favorite book in the Culture series so far!

Naomi J.

This is not the story you think is. Banks seriously messes with his readers' minds with this one. I'm re-reading it from the beginning now!

Nat Welch

Oh man. So this book is slow, scatterbrained, and almost nonsensical for the first 2/3 of the book, but it ties everything together so well, it's fantastic.

Iain Banks

This futuristic novel tells the story of a burned-out secret agent who is called back to work and thinks about getting back at employers who took advantage of him in the past

Use of Weapons

Joe Woods

Use of Weapons is my least favorite Culture novel.  It has serious problems, and ultimately, it is neither as fun or as profoundly life-shattering as some of Banks's other works have been to me.

Carlo Zottmann

Really good book. The ending was …interesting — guess I'll need to re-read it at some point! :)

Use Of Weapons

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