EXCESSION – Iain M. Banks (1996)

People change. It must have been 2008 when I started reading fiction again, and Iain Banks’ Culture series became among the first things I devoured. Excession was my favorite of the series back then, and I decided it was time to reread it – hopefully to be entertained and awed again, and, at the very least, to take a long, hard look in the mirror of time.

For those unfamiliar with Banks & the Culture novels: they are widely considered to be among the best in the genre. Hugely influential space opera, on a grand scale. And a big plus: contrary to most of today’s series, the nine Culture books – published from 1987 to 2012 – can all be read as standalones.

As hivemind Wikipedia has it, the Culture is “a utopian, post-scarcity space society of humanoid aliens, and advanced superintelligent artificial intelligences living in artificial habitats spread across the Milky Way galaxy.”

The Culture is technologically so advanced that it can practically do anything with matter, has access to FTL and nearly unlimited genetic technology. That results in near-immortality and, just to pick one example, the ability to change sex in about a year just by thinking about it. Banks hit upon a gold vein when he conceived of the Culture, as it allows for about anything to happen, but not in an inconsistent or random way.

Excession is about an unprecedented alien artifact appearing out of nowhere. It particularly zooms in on the reaction of a couple of so-called Minds – “benevolent AIs with enormous intellectual and physical capabilities” that often inhabit & control enormous ships of ten or more kilometers, some of them home to billions of individuals. These Minds all have distinct, at times eccentric, personalities.

The ‘excession’ of the title is a sphere that suddenly appears in space, seemingly older than the Universe, resisting attempts to be probed easily, its control of physical laws vastly superior to the Culture’s. It’s Banks riff on a Big Dumb Object.

Last time I read a speculative work of Banks was in June 2019, over 4 years ago. I didn’t think Transition was a success, and I vehemently disliked The Algebraist, which I started in 2018. Before that I read Inversions, and I didn’t really like that either. So I was starting to wonder: was I too easily impressed in 2008 and 2009? Or did, by sheer luck, I read all the Iain M. Banks books that where least to my liking last?

INVERSIONS – Iain M. Banks (1998)

When cancer tragically stole Iain Banks from our world in June 2013, I still had 4 of his books on my TBR-pile. Surface Detail, Inversions, The Algebraist and Transition. I decided to savour those, since there would never be the joy of waiting for a new Iain M. Banks to be published again. Surface Detail  was the last Culture novel on my TBR, so I read that first. After more than a decade of near abstinence of fiction, it was the Culture series that turned me into an avid fiction reader again. A friend told me he liked The Algebraist – a non-Culture doorstopper with sentient gass giants – a lot, and found Transition to be one of the wildest books he ever read. That set the order for the remaining books: read Inversions first, then The Algebraist and end with Transition, spread out over a year or two, three.

Over a week ago, I decided to start Inversions. It feels more like fantasy than science fiction. It is considered a Culture-novel by some, since it’s probably set in the same universe, and Banks himself has hinted at the fact that two of its principal characters are Culture agents – for those of you that haven’t read a Culture novel: read the opening section of this page, and get yourself Player of Games asap. Banks has employed the technique of writing fantasy stuff in the context a bigger galactic SF context elsewhere – parts of the excellent Matter are set in a kind of medieval kingdom too.

Sadly, Inversions is one of the few Iain M. Banks books that have disappointed me. Reading Feersum Endjinn was a chore that didn’t really pay off, and Inversions, well, that simply felt uninteresting. It seems fantasy, but it’s not done well: there’s no interesting world-building whatsoever. No magic, no different societies, no mythos, no cool creatures, no nothing. It’s a standard medieval human setting on a planet with more than one moon.

The first 50 pages were great, I even was a bit awestruck by how easy Banks’ prose is on these eyes – I had forgotten what a smooth writer Banks can be. But by page 100 the book had me bogged down, as it turned out to be a 1st person recount that mainly consists of pages and pages of lifeless, uninspired dialogue. The two fictional narrators aren’t style champions: I counted the  ‘X said’ or ‘said X’ construction 6 or 7 times on numerous pages, with a couple of ‘smiled X’ thrown in for variation. As a result, I lost interest in the characters, and more and more felt like I was reading really, really generic medieval fiction – aside from the book’s narrative construction. There’s no interesting mystery either, and hardly any action. If this hadn’t been a book by one of my favorite authors, I wouldn’t have finished it.

Some of Bank’s usual themes – morality, some discussion about a version of the Prime Directive, etc. – are so obviously present in the words of some characters that they come across as Banks’ hand puppets, instead of real people. That’s a downside of knowing an author well.

Inversions is about perspective too. The book is an epistolary novel – of the found footage type – and has 2 tales and 2 narrators. Both stories reflect on each other a bit. As a literary construction this surely has some merit. But as I said, not a lot happens. Some flat character ambassador tries to assassinate somebody else, and so forth. I didn’t connect with either party, since they felt constructed rather than real.

Flashes of Banks’ brilliance do shine through at times. There are some interesting scenes, and his talent for aphorisms still shows.

You can draw the blinds in a brothel, but people still know what you’re doing.

His main strength though – a wild, vivid, grand and daring imagination – simply isn’t played out here. Inversions isn’t grand scale utopian dreaming. Some reviewers have called this book subtle. I stick with dull. You be the judge, just don’t let this be your first Banks.

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Consult the author index for my other reviews, or my favorite lists.

Click here for an index of my non-fiction or art book reviews only, and here for an index of my longer fiction reviews of a more scholarly & philosophical nature.

SURFACE DETAIL – Iain M. Banks (2011)

It’s simple: if you like Banks’ Culture novels, you’ll like this one. It’s not the best Culture novel – I used to think that’s Excession – but it’s still excellent.

If you don’t know the Culture novels, don’t start here: start with The Player of Games, and work your way up in the order they’ve been released.

Banks is a giant, and his highly imaginative Culture series is one of the best things that ever happened to space opera, and his premature death one of the worst.

originally written on the 27th of October, 2014