Headlines:
“Look
to Windward” is a story of intrigue set in Iain M. Banks’s futuristic
“Culture”. At one level it deals with a plot to destroy the vast Masaq’
Orbital. On a deeper level, it deals with personal responsibility, the
role of the individual in great events and, typically of Banks, what happens
when something goes wrong in paradise.
We
have to take at face value Banks’s presentation of the Culture as a true
utopia. It has lots of wonderful science-fiction embellishments –
virtual reality, optional immortality, super-intelligent AI ‘minds’ – and
it feels that its citizens have the opportunity to do, literally, whatever they
want. Yet, there is a ripple of unhappiness through the Culture.
Banks’s books always seem to deal with the margins of his society, its wars,
and its mistakes. The subject of Look to Windward is death.
First
there is the plot to kill the 50 billion inhabitants of Masaq’ orbital, then
there is the death wish of the antagonist Quilan, the incredible longevity of
creatures in galaxy-roaming Airspheres and, on the grandest canvas of all, the
sublimation of entire species. In a tragic, ironic twist all the action
takes place against the backdrop of light falling from two stars destroyed by
the Culture in a war 800 years previously.
Look
to Windward has the same sense of grandeur, of wonder even, as Bank’s earlier
Culture books but is distinguished by the small scale, almost biographical
attention on the main characters and the deft handling of the main theme of the
book. It works as a sci-fi thriller and it also works as an insight onto
bigger issues.
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"Look to Windward" from Amazon.co.uk
Other sci-fi books by Iain M. Banks
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