Thursday, March 21, 2002
Title: Excession
Author: Iain M. Banks
Publisher: Orbit
Excession is the second novel by Iain M. Banks I've read, following most of his books as Iain Banks which I've read over the last 10 years or so. Unlike Against A Dark Background, Excession is part of Banks' Culture set, which I gather to be a background he has worked in with more of his work.
The Culture is a future civilisation which has derived from the human species. There are other such cultures, but the Culture is the strongest with the rest being spin-offs. There are other species as well, so that space culture is made up of the interaction of these races. Other races have gone before, transcending to another level as elder species. And there are also things that remain unknown with the universe for these races to encounter. Much of the choices of Culture are dictated by Minds, what we today would call Artificial Intelligences, taken to an ultimate level where they are the leaders of the system which the organic beings of Culture find themselves in.
On the surface Excession is the story of an excession which is an extreme form of contact which is beyond anything that the Culture have encountered to date. On this level the Culture are attempting to understand what this mysterious and enigmatically black sphere that has appeared in space is, and in the process advance their position in the universe with what they learn. But as the book proceeds it is clear that there is a lot more going on. Contact is the division of Culture which deals with these sort of things and it is setting up a group to explore this situation. Then there is Special Circumstances, the shady cloak and dagger branch which is putting operatives to work here and there. Which is fine, but then there seems to be different sub groups working against each other. Covert operations and conspiracies starting to dominate what is going on, so that the action of Excession moves away from the artefact and instead sees the reader trying to work out what is really going on. Which agents are working for the good, who is being deceived and what are the real circumstances of the war that has erupted.
Throughout Excession Banks provides repeated characters and threads, so that we have something to work with. So that we follow the progress of Byr, the attempts to stop him by Uriel and what his old relation with Dajiel signifies. Which covers the human level, but a novel level is that a lot of the action happens between ships and drones and the like - each decent sized mechanism being imbued with a mind which can run endless simulations and conspire with its fellow minds on numerous levels. With this there is a lot of drama, Minds bemused by the sneaking suspicions they develop and then incensed by the revelations of duplicity. Much of the humour Banks works into this work also comes from the names that the Minds have taken for themselves, with warships called "shoot later" or the eccentric "grey area", the enigmatic "problem child". With that there is a certain irreverence and tongue in cheek nature demonstrated by the human characters and they way that they are allowed to behave within this "perfect" society.
An enjoyable read that has a strong combination of human and not human characters. Mixing a certain level of humour with conspiracy, action and drama.
RVWR: PTR
March 2002
