Surface Detail by Iain M. BanksHell and Paradise certainly do not exist. However, humans have been trying with various degrees of success to create both of those on Earth. Prisons, more specifically, are playing the role of hell-on-earth, a place where "bad" guys go to be punished. The main theme of Banks' latest Culture Novel is virtual Hells. Some species do not see life as a series of consecutive parties like the Culture does, although their tech levels allow them to stop caring about resources. The Culture is of course dissapointed with that, but their self-induced non-interfering foreign policy does not let them take matters into hand and "convince" those decadants by force. Other species do not share these non-intervention ideals and soon a war between pro-Hell and anti-Hell camps is due. This war will not take place in the Real. Both sides of the conflict agree to fight a Virtual War in order to spare lives and resources.
Parallel to that, a girl tries to escape from her master and becomes the prey to his hunting fetish once more. The girl, victim of an ancient socioeconomic relic of her species had been her master's compensation for a family debt that could not be repaid properly. This time, the whole incident goes out of proportions and ends with her murder by her own master's hand. The fact that a Culture Ship has backed her up and provided a neural lace to her without anyone, including herself, knowing it, becomes the catalyst for a series of developments with far-reaching consequences. As a matter of fact, it goes so far that it turns out to be the start of the completion of the Hell War. At the end of it all, the prey becomes the hunter.
Good 'ol science fiction (Asimov et al) has often been accused of being low-quality literature in terms of language and character development and all that. I was always of the opinion that these things, important as they might be, cannot and should not eclipse the brilliancy of Asimov's fantastic worlds, but even I acknowledge the fact that most of the great totems of the genre were not the best writers of their times, their language wasn't on par with their creative imagination. Iain Banks does not fit this category. And I quote "...like many societies finding their hitherto unquestioned customs and ethical assumptions impacting squarely with the breath-takingly sophisticated summed morality of a meta-civilisation inestimably older, vaster and by implication wiser than themselves, the Sichultia became highly protective of their developmental foibles, and refused to mandate away what some of them at least claimed to regard as one of their defining social characteristics and a vital and vibrant part of their culture..."
Iain Banks is a phenomenon!
Reviewed at the social site for books and libraries http://www.librarything.com by trandism
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