Consider Phlebas: A Culture Novel (The Culture)

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One Last Job: Horza is planning to return to his Old Flame and retire after the mission. This trope works as well as it always does. This is useful as an introduction to the CULTURE, but not necessary. The plot is often exciting and there are some awesome set pieces which would make a great movie, but there are no characters to root for (they seem to be created as anti-heroes) and the plot, which feels incohesive, takes much too long to accomplish. There are also fewer of the “big ideas” I’ve come to expect from Banks. I would love to see this condensed and produced as a movie.

Perhaps the most interesting authorial decision in Consider Phlebas is that the protagonist, Bora Horza Gobuchul, is a Changer (a shape-shifter) who chooses to side with the Idirans, despite the fact that they are religious extremists who don’t mind exterminating other species, because Horza despises the Minds of the Culture, choosing the “side of life” instead. Although he freely admits that the Culture has never done him wrong, he categorically hates what he considers a decadent and arrogant civilization that considers its lifestyle and values superior to all others. Author Iain M. Banks revealed in April 2013 that he had late-stage cancer. He died the following June. Spanner in the Works: Quayanorl. Or more specifically, the fact that Irdians are Made of Iron to such a ridiculous extent that he survives an attempt to Make Sure He's Dead, clinging on to life just long enough to pull a Taking You with Me on Horza's party. Batman Gambit: Xoxarle breaks one of Balveda's arms, and leaves her hanging on for dear life to a gantry with the aim of forcing the incredibly pissed-off Horza to choose between avenging his pregnant girlfriend and saving her... He chooses the latter. This allows Xoxarle to ambush the Changer, inflicting the injuries which ultimately kill him. Consider Phlebas is the first Iain M. Banks novel set in The Culture. It concerns the war between the Culture and the Idiran civilisation, an event whose repercussions affect all of the future novels in the series. Interestingly, the novel is mostly told from the perspective of Bora Horza Gobuchul, a "Changer", who sides with the Idirans and sees pretty much all of the Culture's signature aspects in a highly negative light.

Scary Dogmatic Aliens: Played straight with the Idirans, at least until the appendices reveals this as an inversion. The Culture is willing to fight to the last against a civilization that is no physical threat to them based on ideology alone, while the Idirans went to war thanks to a runaway military-industrial complex, and want to cut the war short with a political settlement. So who are the real dogmatics? Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Fal N'geestra is an adventurous young Thrill Seeker who enjoys climbing mountains without safety equipment — and also happens to be a Referer, one of an infinitesimally small number of the Culture's citizens who hold some form of precognitive ability allowing them to occasionally outsmart the Minds. This can almost literally be compared to outwitting God, making her an extreme case of Smarter Than They Look. Xoxarle, who — after Horza and company capture him following a Ray Gun fight — spews insults at the Changer in a futile attempt to get himself killed and reunite with his fallen comrades, rather than face the shame of being taken prisoner. Death World: An unseen example is the Idiran homeworld, which has caused them to evolve into badass warriors. Better to Die than Be Killed: Lamm claims that his space suit contains a small nuke that he intends to detonate rather than be killed or captured, with the added implication that he'd also do it if someone pissed him off enough. When the Megaship job goes south, Lamm and several other crewmembers are left behind, and in a fit of rage he proves that he wasn't kidding.

What Happened to the Mouse?: Thanks to the Fat Bastard I'm a Humanitarian Prophet, Horza loses a finger. In fact, he has to pull the bones, now completely stripped of flesh, off his hand himself. No mention of his missing digit is ever made again. Did he regrow it? (He was changing to a semblance of Kraiklyn at the time) Are his crew just that incurious? Who knows? Dave Langford reviewed Consider Phlebas for White Dwarf #90, and stated that "Banks pumps in enough high spirits to keep this rattling along to his slam-bang finale in the bowels of an ancient deep-shelter system whose nuclear-powered high-speed trains are used for... well, not commuting." [4] In other media [ edit ] Cancelled TV adaptation [ edit ]Safe aboard the Idirian ship The Hand of God 137 (the 137 th ship to bear that name, Idiran ship-naming conventions being in strong contrast to the Culture’s predilection for jokes and irony), Horza gets cleaned up and learns his mission. Before he went to work for the Idirans, he was a caretaker on Schar’s World, and as such, he may be able to go there and retrieve the Culture Mind hiding there. Not anyone can just pop in on this planet; it’s surrounded by a “Dra’Azon Quiet Barrier” (precisely what this means is not revealed at this point), which will damage or destroy anything else that tries to land there. Horza agrees, and in classic One Last Job fashion, his condition is that once it’s done, he—and an old friend who, to the best of his knowledge, still lives on Schar’s World—will be given the resources to escape the war altogether. Hero Antagonist: Balveda, a secret agent for the Culture, which even Horza is forced to admit he hates more for what they represent than their actions. Driven to Suicide: In the " Dramatis Personae" epilogue. Despite successfully saving the lost Mind from the Idirans, after the war ended the Culture agent Balveda asks to be placed into suspended animation until the Culture could "statistically prove" that more people would have been killed by the Idirans than actually died in the war. She is awakened only around 430 years later once the terms are met — and kills herself only a few months later. 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 For Iain M. Banks is a pseudonym of Iain Banks which he used to publish his Science Fiction. urn:oclc:813566000 Scandate 20110308223848 Scanner scribe7.sanfrancisco.archive.org Scanningcenter sanfrancisco Source