Feersum Endjinn

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Man, this book was hard to get through... about a third of it is written from the point of view of young Bascule, who uses an idiosyncratic orthography that is part cellphone text and l33tspeak, and part Charlie Gordon in his pre-savant phase. In its way, this is quite a sustained achievement, but having to sound out the narrative for those parts word by word does rather interrupt the flow.

Feersum Endjinn by Iain M. Banks | Goodreads Feersum Endjinn by Iain M. Banks | Goodreads

The origins and workings of the Fastness have been lost in antiquity, ever since the Diaspora in which the builders left the world for unknown destinations, leaving a much more primitive populace to live within its mega-architectural confines. The Fastness and the Diaspora are strongly reminiscent of Arthur C. Clarke’s The City and the Stars and Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast, two of my all-time favorite books, while the Cryptosphere feels much like the Metaverse in Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, and Asura’s story slightly reminded me of Princess Nell’s coming-of-age adventures with the Primer in Neal Stephenson’s Diamond Age. Finally, the primitive guild-like Clan Engineers and baroque society left behind after the Diaspora reminded me of the monastic societies in Neal Stephenson’s Anathem, with their limited understanding of a much more advanced past, but who strive to carefully preserve that knowledge nonetheless. I think the most important aspect of Banks’ storytelling was his tight grip on the differences between theme and setting. Something that is not as common among science fiction writers as you might think. Cyberpunk stories are primarily known for two things: 1. Themes of isolation, paranoia, and self-identity in an oppressive world grown out of control. 2. A dirty, high-tech setting full of seedy characters. The themes of Feersum Endjinn are cyberpunk through and through, but the setting—even in the entirely virtual Crypt—is much closer to that of epic fantasy. After all, it wouldn’t be a Banks novel if genre tropes and conventions weren’t completely turned on their side. Splitting cyberpunk themes from their usual counterpart setting, shows a terrific understanding of the genre and the unique power of the differing storytelling tools available to writers. Well, I want to read the phonetic spelling, since RIDDLEY WALKER is one of my favorite books, so I will probably go for the paper version. Thanks for reviewing this and bringing it to my attention. Reply Anyway, this doesn't sound quite as strange as it actually is. The point of view for each chapter changes from character to character, and one young lad, Bascule, who turns out to be central to the plot is writing his experiences down in a journal. Turns out this fellow is somehow inherently unable to learn to spell. He 1/2 2 put down evryfing zactly as it sownds. If u fink reeding dis paragraf is iritating, tri reeding hole chaptirs uv it. Its hard on yor brane. & den, jist wen u fink ur geting thi hang uv it, he meets an uther charactir wif a lisp!!Banks' finest and most challenging achievement in Feersum Endjin comes whenever he shifts his narrative to Bascule, the dyslexic Teller who writes his story phonetically because he can't write it any other way. His accent, which feels a little North London and a little Glasgow, makes the phonetic spelling just a touch more challenging for the reader (particularly if the reader is from North America), but if one takes one's time, and even reads it aloud, the pay off is worth the work it takes to read. Sometimes a book has so many incredible elements that it defies easy summary. Compound that with the fact that it shares themes with some of your favorite genre classics, and that it is written by the incredibly-talented Iain M. Banks, and you have the recipe for a very unique reading experience. As I read the story, I was forcibly reminded of some classic books in the genre, particularly Arthur C. Clarke’s The City and the Stars, Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker, Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast, and Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, Diamond Age, and Anathem. The characters are some of the finest Banks as ever written, and if you have never read any book by him, let me tell you that there is some competition! Banks had a remarkable gift: he made us care about each and any of them by making them incredibly relatable and so very human, even those you slightly despise, even those whose actions seem at first completely incoherent. All of them seem as complex as any real person. Chief Scientist Gadfium is about to receive the mysterious message she has been waiting for from the Plain of Sliding Stones…

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At one end of the vast C bitten from the castle a single great bastion-tower stood, almost intact, five kilometres high, and casting a kilometre-wide shadow across the rumpled ground in front of the convoy. The walls had tumbled down around the tower, vanishing completely on one side and leaving only a ridge of fractured material barely five hundred metres high on the other. The plant-mass babilia, unique to the fastness and ubiquitous within it, coated all but the smoothest of vertical surfaces with tumescent hanging forests of lime-green, royal blue and pale, rusty orange; only the heights of scarred wall closest to the more actively venting fissures and fumaroles remained untouched by the tenacious vegetation. One of very few of Banksy’s books that I haven’t read multiple times. When I read a suggestion on Goodreads that I should try an audiobook for the phonetic chapters that proved very helpful. Banks met his wife Annie in London, before the release of his first book. They married in Hawaii in 1992. However, he announced in early 2007 that, after 25 years together, they had separated. He lived most recently in North Queensferry, a town on the north side of the Firth of Forth near the Forth Bridge and the Forth Road Bridge. The crypt knows it too; so an emissary has been sent, an emissary who holds the key to all their futures.A superb standalone novel from the awesome imagination of Iain M. Banks, a master of modern science fiction. But am Bascule thi Rascule, thass whot they call me! Am yung & am onli on my furst life I tells her, laffin; Bascule thi Teller nuffink, that's me; no I or II or VII or any ov that nonsins 4 yoors truly; am good az immortil 4 all intense & purpusses & if u cant act a bit daff when u never dyed not even 1nce yet, when can u? His latest book was a science fiction (SF) novel in the Culture series, called The Hydrogen Sonata, published in 2012. Although it is not a Culture books, there are some winks to Banks' preferred technologies. Here he takes the well used subject of humankind on earth at the end of time and gives it a spin. I thought I saw a couple of winks to Gene Wolfe, but may be it is in my eyes. Feersum Endjinn? Really? C., you do realise I read it when it was first published and that I still love it as much as on the first day?"

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Feersum Endjinn was generally well-received, the completeness of the plot and the detailed description of the mega-architecture and the crypt were praised by critics. The book is set on a far future Earth where the uploading of mindstates into a world-spanning computer network (known as "Cryptosphere", "the Data Corpus", or simply "Crypt") is commonplace, allowing the dead to be easily reincarnated, a set number of times, first physically and then virtually within the crypt. The crypt has become increasingly chaotic, causing much concern within society. Much of the story takes place within a giant, decaying megastructure known as the "Fastness" or "Serehfa" built to resemble a medieval castle, in which each "room" spans several kilometers horizontally and vertically, and the king's palace occupies one room's chandelier. The structure used to be a space elevator, left behind by the ancestors of those who remained on Earth, with the circuitry of the crypt built into its structure. The world is in crisis as the Solar System is slowly drifting into an interstellar molecular cloud ("the Encroachment"), which will eventually dim and then destroy the Sun, ending life on Earth. But don't just think this is just a novel of ideas. The characters and the individual stories were all fascinating and funny and full of great reveals and twists. More than enough for three normal novels, even. :) You might not "enjoy" Feersum Endjin in any traditional sense, but you will be glad you read it when you're through.

Of course not all of the story works flawlessly; there are a handful of plot-lines brought up that never resolve, the story drags somewhat through the middle chapters, and the phonetic writing style is sometimes extremely difficult to read. I wouldn't suggest going into this anticipating a Culture novel. This is Banks in full on experimentation mode, and in retrospect, the book is odd, maybe too odd. It isn’t my favorite SF/F, it isn’t my favorite cyberpunk novel—I’m sure that several would argue it isn’t cyberpunk at all (is post-post-cyberpunk a genre yet?)—and it definitely isn’t my favorite Iain Banks novel, however… As I sit here attempting to write like Bascule I can tell you it isn’t as easy at it might sound. It takes some amount of concentration. And it takes some concentration to read Bascule’s account of events. It’s not for the lazy reader. Banks’ ability to write awkwardly and unfamiliarly yet make it sound like a substantive, caring, and relatable person is pretty damn amazing. But like many of Banks’ novels there's more beneath the surface. Underlying Bascule’s phonetic writing is a point of much more substance, a commentary on the struggle we humans endure to communicate with one another and with the world. It’ll take me several steps to get there, so try to hang with me ... I only review stories I have liked even if my opinion may be nuanced. It doesn't apply for the "Novels published before 1978" series of blog posts. This is the time of the encroachment and everything is about to change. Although the dimming sun still shines on the vast, towering walls of Serehfa Fastness, the end is close at hand. The King knows it, his closest advisers know it, and the crypt knows it too; so an emissary has been sent – an emissary who holds the key to all their futures. Instead of the usual cyberpunk mega-corporations and seedy streets filled with high-tech low-lifes, Banks set Feersum Endjinn sometime in the far future after most of humanity has abandoned Earth, their tech becoming a somewhat mythical element to our point of view characters, themselves descendants of those who chose an Earth bound existence. A somewhat modified Feudalistic society now exists in the ruinous mega structures built by their ancestors. Underlying all of this is the Crypt—a virtual reality maintaining a near one-to-one relationship with the real world. In the dark corners of the Crypt lurk strange digital societies: monstrous chimeric beings, artificial intelligences, and the digitally migrated dead of the corporeal world. Some privileged corporeal characters have the ability to access the Crypt at will, and some Crypt lifeforms are able to force themselves into physical reality, terrorizing humanity via what is perceived as apparition and animal possession.