Matter

Wow what an enjoyable and straightforward read. We are on book 8 out of 10 here, the first book in the final third chunk of the Culture and Iain Banks' writing has noticeably matured and improved. This is probably the first book since Use of Weapons to feature a compelling main plotline, and it famously features the best worldbuilding in the entire series. A wide reaching but thematically tight romp through some of the Culture's most interesting settings, I think this is one of the best books in the series and an excellent starting point for anyone curious about the series but unwilling to read through the whole thing.

A Brief Precis to the Culture:

The Culture is a far in the future anarcho-utopian space faring civilization run by altruistic and smarmy sentient AI Minds. In their quest to do good, the Culture makes contact with space-faring but comparatively primitive civilizations and does its best to break down existing hierarchies and build up democracies. While it sounds a lot like American hegemony and imperialist meddling, the Culture promises it isn't, and they can statistically prove it.

Meat & Potatoes:

I would describe Matter as a palace intrigue and family reunion story that just so happens to take place on the Death Star; conveniently the story is arranged in halves. The first half of the book is very GOT/HoD with most of the action taking place on ground level in your standard pre industrial society. All I will say towards the second half of the book is that the scope of the novel widens about as far as imagination allows.

We meet our main characters: Furbin the new crown prince, his manservant Holse, Djal his sister who lives off world, and their youngest brother Oramen. I don't want to give anything away so I will only say that each of these characters gets fleshed out a fair bit. Not all of them go through complete arcs but Furbin goes from as my notes say, “a dreadfully stupid and bumbling cunt,” to something resembling a competent adult. As far as what I found enjoyable in the book the story is very much the brussel sprouts of a larger meal; that's not to say it is bad, it's actually very good compared to some of the other stories in the series, it's just overshadowed by the rest of the metaphorical plate.

As to the quality of the writing, this book picks up after Look to Windward and while being stylistically different still hit a high note with me. Dialogue is crisp and engaging, and as previously alluded to, the world building and imagery is the best its ever been. Where with LoW we got to see a lot of the day-to-day of the Culture homeworlds, this book gives us a sweeping glance at the multitude of other civilizations and structures that populate the galaxy.

Shellworlds:

For a big series with big ideas, the Culture novels never truly painted its worlds with the same brush and scope as it has its space-ier settings. Often the stories of the Culture are set onboard everyone's favorite smartass ships, Culture orbital habitats, or on far-flung and primitive worlds. Matter finally brings that scale and grandeur to ground level, introducing the latest (Eons Old) development in megastructure engineering, the Shellworlds. The second half of this book is basically all about them, and the story is literally put on pause so that we the reader may marvel in their splendor.

Can you say layers? Shellworlds for the uninitiated are planets of nested concentric spheres, each sphere forming a level of the planet and an entire world layer of its own. This is the matryoshka doll of planetary mega structures, built by a long extinct civilization for an unknown purpose, with only half of them surviving to the present. Each layer is now home to entirely unique and specialized biomes for the races and civilizations that live on their respective layer. Shellworlds are hierarchically organized, with more primitive species and civilizations living on the inner layers and their more advanced “mentor” civilizations occupying the outermost layers and controlling the interior infrastructure.

Themes (Minor Spoilers Ahead):

It's not on accident that the arrangement of civilizational hierarchy on the Shellworld mirrors the greater galactic state of affairs. This book is uncharacteristically direct as it presents its theme and primary philosophical questions in the form of a neatly packaged microcosm: what is the point of all this? This book is harrowingly nihilistic, it presents us with a galaxy's worth of civilizational achievement only to ask us why it all exists or even if it truly exists at all, are we anything more than a simulation? This is not the first time that Banks' has presented us this question, a kind of reverse of Turtles All the Way Down, instead of looking down and questioning what the foundation of the universe rests on it asks instead who is it that is looking down from the very top.

As more of the plot is revealed it becomes increasingly clear that despite the high technological level and achievement the galactic hegemons possess, they are truly no better than the more primitive civilizations under their care when it comes to things like war and purpose. Instead of waging war themselves they stage elaborate casus beli for subordinate species to wage war, all for the purpose of their own excitement and entertainment. Drones record the action in the countless primitive worlds, and in turn even smaller means of observation watch on; layers of exploitation and observation all the way to the top, but who watches the watchers?

We never really find out because Banks' doesn't end his stories the way we'd like him to, to put all the scary questions in a tidy box and wrap it in the ribbon of human understanding. I think he understands better than most writers that A. shit happens and B. we rarely ever understand why. Some would call the ending a big weakness of the book for that same reason, but personally I've read enough of these stories to understand that asking the question alone is often the best we're going to get.