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Consider Phlebas (Culture #1)

3.82 of 5 stars 3.82 · rating details · 18,996 ratings · 1,113 reviews

The war raged across the galaxy. Billions had died, billions more were doomed. Moons, planets, the very stars themselves, faced destruction, cold-blooded, brutal, and worse, random. The Idirans fought for their Faith; the Culture for its moral right to exist. Principles were at stake. There could be no surrender.

Within the cosmic conflict, an individual crusade, Deep withi...more

Paperback, 471 pages

Published 2005 by Orbit (first published 1987)

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Jan 12, 2012 Keely rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: science-fiction, uk-and-ireland, reviewed, space-opera

Welcome to another edition of 'Notable Genre Author Fails to Impress Some Guy on the Internet', I'll be your host: some guy.

Like so many highly-lauded authors featured here, Banks has been haunting my shelf for quite some time now. Countless are the times I have passed this book before bed, letting my eyes linger longingly on the spine, relishing the notion that I will actually read this book, some day. There have even been those occasions where I thumbed it down, peering at the cover, carefull...more

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Jul 14, 2011 mark monday rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: z-iain-banks, futuristik

Consider Iain M. Banks. an unsentimental, often ruthless writer. his characters are provided robust emotional lives and richly detailed backgrounds... all the better to punish the reader when those characters meet their often bleak fates. his narratives are ornate affairs, elaborately designed, full of small & meaningful moments as well as huge, wide-scale world-building...all the better to deliver a sucker punch directly to the reader's gut when those narratives turn out to be ironic, prede...more Consider Iain M. Banks. an unsentimental, often ruthless writer. his characters are provided robust emotional lives and richly detailed backgrounds... all the better to punish the reader when those characters meet their often bleak fates. his narratives are ornate affairs, elaborately designed, full of small & meaningful moments as well as huge, wide-scale world-building...all the better to deliver a sucker punch directly to the reader's gut when those narratives turn out to be ironic, predetermined mousetraps. yet despite the cruelly intelligent design of his novels, a strong case can be made that Banks is a fiery humanist - if the idea of "humanism" is expanded to include all forms of consciousness, including the psychologically aberrant, including artificial minds. is there a genre specialist who is a more passionate yet clear-eyed (even cold-eyed) partisan for the right of all conscious beings to pursue their own individual desires, dreams, and destinies - while not fucking up the lives of other beings? even his utopic, galaxy-spanning civilization The Culture has its own major achilles' heel in their theoretically positive desire to improve the self-determination of other cultures.

Consider Consider Phlebas. now this is a SPACE OPERA. it has it all. multiple alien cultures in a race against time and each other. sentient machines. piratical mercenaries. world-hopping. the destruction of 'orbitals' and entire cities. a graveyard world overseen by a transcended being. an incredibly advanced, liberal, permissive society in conflict with barbaric, right-wing, militaristic religious fanatics. a shape-shifting spy for a protagonist (a very canny choice in regards to providing an outsider perspective on The Culture). it is filled to the brim with so many things, including a handful of long digressions in the first half of the novel, chapters that are pretty much only side-adventures (some of which seem like trial runs for ideas expanded upon in Player of Games and the non-Culture Algebraist). despite the length of the novel, despite wide-ranging adventures and misadventures, the blood & vengeance, the extreme presentations of eating & defecating, despite the in-depth detail present in all that running-about in the tunnels of Graveyard World, despite the whole sturm und drang of it all... this is an intimate novel. intimate in its character work and almost peculiarly intimate in the way that banks allows his ethical concerns, his - one could say - almost rigid moralism to dominate the proceedings. this is not a tale of crazy adventures that eventually finds its way to a punchy end; this is a novel of rigorously political ideas (and, perhaps, ideals). those ideas are carefully encapsulated within each sequence, by the grand conflict at hand, and by the eventual fates of each one of its major characters.

the choice of the title is wonderful. how fitting! i was also reminded of another well-known passage:

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Banks is not a depressing writer. he can have a light touch. his novels are full of life, full of wit and love and laughter and bravery and mindboggling invention. and yet they are often a rather depressing experience. i can see why some folks avoid him. i can understand why some dislike Consider Phlebas and its often uncomfortable combination of digressive high adventure and stark, moralistic political analogies. hey, the world can be an awfully shitty place and so why immerse yourself in more of the same? although he is easy to read, banks certainly doesn't make things easy on readers and their various sentimental attachments. he chooses discomfort and tragedy at nearly every turn.

well who ever said that utopian ideals are an easy thing? striving for utopia should be hard! it should be long and difficult and heartbreaking and full of intensely uncomfortable ambiguity. it should make you want to cry, little baby.

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Mar 23, 2009 Manny rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: science-fiction

Many discerning readers, even ones who like SF, will reflexively sneer if you say the dreaded words "space opera". One need only think of E.E. Doc Smith, for a long time the unquestioned king of this particular sub-genre. I read Galactic Patrol when I was at primary school; like innumerable other geeky nine year olds, I adored it, and particularly loved the "Helmuth speaking for Boskone" tagline. I also remember how, aged 12 or 13, I picked it up to see if the magic was still there. Oh dear! It...more Many discerning readers, even ones who like SF, will reflexively sneer if you say the dreaded words "space opera". One need only think of E.E. Doc Smith, for a long time the unquestioned king of this particular sub-genre. I read Galactic Patrol when I was at primary school; like innumerable other geeky nine year olds, I adored it, and particularly loved the "Helmuth speaking for Boskone" tagline. I also remember how, aged 12 or 13, I picked it up to see if the magic was still there. Oh dear! It was maybe the first time I felt embarrassed at ever having liked a book, and wondered how I could have had such poor taste. You will gather that he really isn't terribly good.

None the less, if you love a book when you're nine, it probably has something to recommend it; what's great about space opera is the sense of wonder it inspires, as you are taken outside our little planet and shown how huge and strange the larger Universe is. As people like Kingsley Amis and Brian Aldiss have argued, the roots of this kind of literature go back to imaginative, ostensibly mainstream authors like Dante and Milton, but the project somehow got hijacked in the early 20th century. In the 1980s, Iain Banks conceived the ambitious idea of redeeming the space opera, and started writing the Culture series. Consider Phlebas is the first one. The title --- a quotation from The Waste Land, no less! --- lets you know at once that something important has been fixed. (The author presumably wanted to increase the number of people who'd get as far as even opening the book). Instead of Smith's dreadful prose, Banks writes elegant, literary English. By the time you've got a dozen pages into it, you're convinced that this will, at the very least, be pleasant to read at the sentence level. After a while, you find out that he's also addressed most of the other standard problems.

Banks has given interviews about the Culture novels, and one aspect he likes to focus on is the politics. He said he found it distasteful that galactic empires always had to be right-wing military hierarchies; I didn't realize it when I was nine, but the basic plot in Smith is one bunch of Nazis fighting another. The Culture is a more interesting beast: a decentralized, anarchic society, which consists of a loose federation of humans and intelligent machines, spread out over many worlds. The humans use their advanced technology to support a relaxed, hedonistic life-style, with a lot of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. A nice detail is that they are genetically engineered so that their bodies can synthesize their own drugs. Not so far-fetched: our own society has plenty of endorphin junkies, to mention just one hormone we regularly enjoy.

The machines are very well done. Most space operas never really consider the fact that machines will eventually be smarter than people, but Banks confronts this head-on. You see the Culture both from the inside and from the outside; its critics tend to say that it's really run by the AIs, with the people having little influence. The smartest Culture machines, the "Minds", are indeed enormously more intelligent than any person could be, and have almost godlike powers. I see the relationship between machines and people in the Culture as being rather like the relationship between a person and their genes. You're far smarter than your genes. However, the genes built you to take care of them, and you often do what they tell you. Just as a person can get into a relationship that they know makes no logical sense, because their genes like the idea, Banks's godlike machines also let their human partners make important decisions for them on emotional grounds. Although his main purpose is to tell a story, Banks is saying some quite interesting things here about the future of technology.

Well, that's a lightning tour of the Culture universe, and Consider Phlebas makes good use of it. There's a war on between the Culture and the Idirans, and the book is about one tiny incident in that war. Neither side is presented as intrinsically good or bad; the main character, Horza, is a spy working for the Idirans, who has been assigned the job of retrieving a Mind that has been accidentally stranded on a remote planet. Horza is opposed by a Culture agent; there is again no attempt to show that he is morally superior, and in fact she comes across in many ways as a better person. We see acts of treachery and heroism on both sides, and one of the things I liked is that some of the bravest and most heroic acts later turn out to have been utterly misconceived. The story at first seems to be meandering around, but as Horza gets closer to the Mind it tightens up more and more; the ending is absolutely terrific, and left me with an adrenaline rush and a head full of startling, nightmare images. I enjoyed this book as much as my nine year old self enjoyed Galactic Patrol.

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May 05, 2011 Joel rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011, audiobooks, culture, sci-fi-fantasy

This is the second Culture book I read but the first one Iain M. Banks wrote. One of us did something wrong, because I liked The Player of Games a lot more, and yet my reasons for not liking Consider Phlebas are almost all about what the book isn't.

It isn't about the Culture, for one thing. Sort of. Not really. The other books in the series are from the perspective of a citizen of the Culture, which is difficult to define succinctly so I will just say, imagine if you lived in a universe where yo...more This is the second Culture book I read but the first one Iain M. Banks wrote. One of us did something wrong, because I liked The Player of Games a lot more, and yet my reasons for not liking Consider Phlebas are almost all about what the book isn't.

It isn't about the Culture, for one thing. Sort of. Not really. The other books in the series are from the perspective of a citizen of the Culture, which is difficult to define succinctly so I will just say, imagine if you lived in a universe where you were practically immortal and super-smart robots took care of pretty much everything, leaving you free to live your own life to the fullest existential extent (do you want to be an artist? a writer? do you like orgies?).

The main character in Consider Phlebas is Horza, a rare shape-shifting dude who haaates the Culture, which he considers hedonistic and base and godless &c. Partly he objects to the Culture's policy of interfering with other civilizations, whether to "uplift" them (not to mix my sci-fi metaphors) or to eliminate them if they pose a threat to the Culture's, well, culture. This is basically the opposite of Star Trek: TNG's vaulted Prime Directive, which I, as a reader, don't really have a problem with. Personally, if benevolent artificial intelligences want to pop by an offer a few helpful corrective suggestions that will put a stop to, oh, take your pick or check out whatever is on the front page today, I, for one, welcome our robot overlords. Just as long as they don't start using humans for batteries or anything.

But Horza instead throws in his lot with the Idirans, a xenophobic and deeply religious, deeply warlike society that is at major war with the Culture. I don't want to get too into the nitty-gritty of the plot, because it does offer up some nice set-pieces, but basically, he's off on a mission to capture a new breed of "Mind," which is what the Culture-ruling machines refer to themselves as. This Mind is stranded on a hostile world that, conveniently, only Horza has access to, but getting there will require some Ocean's 11-style adventures first.

So here is my problem: I read this after The Player of Games, which offers you the inside view of the Culture, both the good parts and the bad. It is also a very fun book, despite some dark themes: the smart-ass Culture Drones, even just the mind-boggling concept of sentient, continent-sized worldships that you can have a chat with. Just a lot of cool stuff. Consider Phlebas gave me very little of what I wanted: only one Drone. No talking spaceships (wait, no, there was one, but it was a small one). By necessity, it is a darker, angrier book, and by the end, very nearly an abusive one. I get what Banks was going for thematically, I'm totally on his wavelength, but the ending of this thing just punishes the reader.

On the other hand, it is still totally crazy, which is, I am starting to suspect, Banks' modus operandi, and so you have a few largely inconsequential narrative pit-stops that are nevertheless awesome, like when Horza gets trapped on an island with a horde of technology-fearing cannibals (you don't even know, it's so gross and intense). Or a high-stakes card game involving telepathy and actual human sacrifice. Both concepts are pretty rad, as is the writing throughout.

So which one of us messed up? If I had read this first, and hadn't spent most of the book looking for the Culture and not finding it, would I have enjoyed it more? Or was it a bad idea for Banks to start the series with an unbalanced, action-heavy, black-as-tar nihilist downer of a novel?

Considering he's super rich and probably the most popular sci-fi author in the U.K. today, I'll kindly request that you not answer that. (less)

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Apr 13, 2010 Richard rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Anyone that thought Spaceballs was a clever SciFi movie.

Recommended to Richard by: Robin Barooah

Shelves: scifi, singularity, scifi-space-opera, bookclub

Two stars is about right.

Voltaire said something like "the best is the enemy of the good" (okay, he actually said le mieux est l'ennemi du bien). But what is really annoying is that the coulda-been-good is more disappointing than the meh.

Banks clearly has a great deal of imagination. If he was able to discipline himself, he'd have some four-star stuff going on here, easily — maybe better.

But he fritters away his energy on irrelevant grotesquerries, like a schoolboy scrawling naughty pictures ins...more

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Feb 03, 2011 Jonathan Cullen rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: as a starting point in the Culture series

The opening scene to Iain M. Banks' opening novel in the Culture universe is one of my favourites in sci-fi. How would an ultra-sophisticated artificial intelligence escape certain death at the hands of an enemy? What moves would it make? What sacrifices?

The very next scene, in which we meet our protagonist Horza, is a huge win. Remember when we met Aragorn in Lord of the Rings? There was practically a drum roll. Yeah, well there's none of that here. Horza is being slowly put to death by drownin...more The opening scene to Iain M. Banks' opening novel in the Culture universe is one of my favourites in sci-fi. How would an ultra-sophisticated artificial intelligence escape certain death at the hands of an enemy? What moves would it make? What sacrifices?

The very next scene, in which we meet our protagonist Horza, is a huge win. Remember when we met Aragorn in Lord of the Rings? There was practically a drum roll. Yeah, well there's none of that here. Horza is being slowly put to death by drowning in the enemy's sewer system. Blagh. I've read a couple of Goodreviews that write this scene off as extraneous or at best irrelevant. To the contrary, I would argue that it gives you a nice idea about how easy the rest of Horza's travels are going to be and sets the dark(ish) yet playful mood.

Horza is himself rather interesting. He has unique physical capabilities, is introspective, and extremely resourceful. He laments many things. Consider Phlebas basically covers his Indiana Jones-type adventures.

Banks has made unusual choices in his viewpoint characters in all three of his novels that I've read: an enemy of the Culture (Consider Phlebas), a bored gamer who temporarily leaves the Culture (Player of Games) and a non-Culture agent who does their dirty work (Use of Weapons). We're always on the edge of the Culture itself, and only get hints of it as background, foreground and texture. I find that technique effective for a couple of reasons. First, as others have remarked, it wouldn't be much fun to read about the interior utopia of the Culture itself: "Woke up on silk sheets, didn't work, ate for free, worked a bit cause I liked it, played a game, glanded some wicked-bad drugs, went to bed." Also, seeing glimpses of something is always more interesting than being exposed to its raw nature. The influence of the Culture is constant, if distant. Sounds like most governments.

Banks' ability to describe scale is also impressive. In my review of Ringworld, I argue that Larry Niven failed to take advantage of his own wonderful construct of the Ring. I found his exploration of this incredibly impressive artifact to be a snooze ride. Banks picks up where Niven leaves off. In particular, Horza's flight through the General Systems Vehicle, which are typically between 25 and 200 km in each dimension, was some of the best action I've read in a while.

I take this opportunity to highlight Banks' deliciously subtle humour. Due to their complexity, the starships in the Culture universe are inhabited and controlled by a Mind(s). The inert and stale names given to the starships by humans, such as General Systems Vehicle and Rapid Offensive Unit, are contrasted wildly and wonderfully with the names that the Minds give themselves and therefore the ships. Some examples include No More Mr. Nice Guy; Profit Margin; Prosthetic Conscience; Nervous Energy; and Sweet and Full of Grace.

I've made the opposite of the following comment in my review of Greg Bear's Eon, but I feel with this worth repeating. Although Phlebas was published in 1987, in no way does it feel outdated or Gorbachev-like. The politics feel fresh, sharp and modern. Consider Phlebas was my introduction to the Culture and what an introduction it was. Whether Banks' series is my favourite sci-fi is still up in the air as I go through the books. However, I can say that the Culture is one of the most well thought out, interesting and multi-faceted political systems/civilizations in modern speculative fiction.(less)

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Dec 06, 2007 Michael rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: sf-fantasy-horror, bullshit, abandoned

People love their Iain Banks, and I respect that, though I've yet to read something of his that impresses me much. Of course, I've read only two books, and both seemed like slow, ponderous exercises.

This novel, for example, was recommend as "thinking man's sf adventure." Hey, that's appealing. But this didn't strike me as that sort of book. Instead, it was slow-going, and lacked the giddy joy of invention and play that to my mind the best science fiction always has. I gritted my teeth and pushed...more

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Jun 27, 2011 Brad rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: sci-fi, to-read-again, banks-culture-novel, north-atlantic, space-opera, worth-reading-twice

I'm not really sure what to say about Consider Phlebas. It was, quite fittingly, the first Culture book I read, though it was my fourth Banks book (preceded by The Wasp Factory, Dead Air, & The Bridge respectively). And now it is the third Banks book I've reread (The Wasp Factory twice, and Use of Weapons once).

I like it very much, so I feel a little sad that many friends I respect don't love it as much as I and a good deal of them just think it is mostly okay.

I love that Horza is an unlikab...more

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Jun 05, 2008 Mark rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: sf

I usually like Iain Banks' sf novels, but this is simply a bad book.

It is partly an action novel, with the plot roughly "go to planet X and retrieve an advanced piece of technology." There are a few very exciting action sequences. The major problem is that after setting up the plot by page 4, we have a diversion of about 300 pages before returning to the plot. ??? The vast majority of the in-between chapters feel like a bunch of half-realized short story ideas jammed together, including one chap...more

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Jun 28, 2011 Ian rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fits-like-a-glove, love-strong-women, all-time-favorites, space-opera, audiobook, the-culture

I read all of Iain Banks' Culture books in order in which they were written, beginning with Consider Phlebas and ending with the latest, Surface Detail, from 2008 through 2010. Consider Phlebas being the first Culture book Banks wrote, it was the first I read back in the Spring of 2008. I liked it. One might even say I liked it a lot. But I didn't love it. Not yet.

I just re-read Consider Phlebas and I can tell you it’s a whole different book when you have the entire collection under your belt. T...more

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Apr 08, 2008 Greg rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: sf-fantasy-and-other-dorky-shit

This review is totally phoned in.

This is the second of his books that I've read in the past week or so. The other one I didn't write about but it was called The Game Player, and it was better than this one. It was kind of like Herman Hesse's Glass Bead Game, but kind of cooler with mutilations and stuff like that. Like HH's book though neither author ever really got down to describing what such a complex game would really be like, which I would be interested to know about, but oh well.
This book...more

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May 11, 2011 Jamie rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction

A frustrating book, perhaps just not my cup of tea. The writing did not click with me - I can't put my finger on it, but I kept being pulled out of the story because the writing felt bland and awkward. Considering the popularity of this series, I'm obviously in the minority in feeling this way.

I think that if I had enjoyed Banks's writing style, I wouldn't have objected to the slow pacing or the meandering storyline, but as it stands I thought most of the book was dull. The story seemed to be c...more

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Jun 01, 2010 Felicia rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: sci-fi, faves

I can't really say much, other than Iain Banks has become my #1 favorite Sci-Fi author. I love the way he fleshes out flawed, believable characters in a Space Opera setting. I'm always surprised by his writing, and that keeps me coming back for more. If you're not into the genre, but want to give it a try, pick up this book. You will not regret it!

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Jul 17, 2008 Tim Pendry rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: space opera fans

Shelves: science-fiction

I came to this with great expectations because it is written by a 'literary figure', albeit that it is an early work (1987) and only the first in a series of 11 science fiction 'culture novels'.

Those expectations were too high but it has to be said that Iain M. Banks (aka Iain Banks) writes infinitely better on a technical level than the vast majority of science fiction writers. There are moments where his talent for precise description make the novel almost filmic.

There are also times where a...more

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Sep 22, 2007 Bonnie rated it 5 of 5 stars

Actually any Iain Banks book is worth its weight in gold as far as I am concerned. He is a master storyteller and an outstanding scientist. Interesting ideas wrapped up in believable characters with believable feelings and goals placed in believable settings.

Good science fiction is VERY hard to find. It takes an author that is not only good at telling a story but, especially in books like Banks writes (that are based on future science as well as current astrophysics), someone who understands ho...more

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Apr 01, 2009 Kelly Maybedog Hawkins rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: what-sf

I'm not sure what to say here. I'm left thinking, "hunh." I started out not caring about any of the characters and by the end that had only changed slightly. The main character has a complex concept of morality that could be defined as highly moral but more so "sociopath." It started out as kind of a ridiculous space opera and ended up being quite depressing. I don't know if I'll read any more of his books or not. I loved Whit but the other two I've read were so so. I must think on this book som...more

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Jun 06, 2012 David rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction

I started reading the Culture series based on a friend's recommendation, and I am glad I followed his advice to start with Player of Games instead of diving in with Consider Phelbas. I did like the first book in the Culture series, but Player of Games is a better introduction to Banks' well-developed post-scarcity society.

Phelbas' strongest point is that it's a first-hand account of the Culture-Idiran War, which is discussed several times in other Culture books but in an off-hand way. Banks does...more I started reading the Culture series based on a friend's recommendation, and I am glad I followed his advice to start with Player of Games instead of diving in with Consider Phelbas. I did like the first book in the Culture series, but Player of Games is a better introduction to Banks' well-developed post-scarcity society.

Phelbas' strongest point is that it's a first-hand account of the Culture-Idiran War, which is discussed several times in other Culture books but in an off-hand way. Banks does an excellent job in portraying how interstellar post-scarcity societies can engage in a conflict based on principles that is more frightening than many more primitive conflicts. The destruction visited on planetary scales with such demonstrated ease is awe-inspiring as the scale of the war Banks describes.

I was particularly enthralled by how much of the war Banks was able to describe while remaining dedicated to the relatively narrow viewpoints of his characters. The mission described in Phelbas is important, but it is only a tiny grain in the war's proverbial beach. However, I did think this became a bit problematic in the book's conclusion. The last third of Phelbas is almost painful to read as it drags on in comparison to the well-paced--almost thriller-esque--action of the first two parts of the Changer Horza's adventure. My frustration with how elongated the end was ultimately undermined my appreciation for the rather touching tragedy Banks constructed for several of the protagonists.

Phelbas is also a bit of science fiction that wears the time it was written in on its sleeves. Banks' conclusion is an overt product of the Cold War's final zenith during the early 1980s--taking place in the massive fallout shelter of a civilization that destroyed itself. It's a ham-handed bit of scenery and contrast that does not appeal to my personal aesthetic. The allusions to the decades-long struggle is sometimes a bit too prevalent in the annals of science fiction, and I did not like how it became a means for Banks to undercut the otherwise complicated Idirans into some sneering, psuedo-Soviet villains to conclude the book.

The Culture series is definitely one to be read in its entirety, but I will concur with my friend that Consider Phelbas is a book best saved for later. It allows you to appreciate how far Banks has come with his creation, but in the end its other values are suspect. (less)

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Aug 13, 2011 Jon rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Jon by: SF&F Club June 2011 SF Selection

Shelves: fiction, science-fiction, ebooks, read-in-my-40s

2.5 stars

My first attempt to read Consider Phlebas began a couple of years ago. I made it to the fifth chapter and abandoned the book. This past June, the SciFi and Fantasy Book Club selected Consider Phlebas as the science fiction group read. The discussion leader provided two avenues for discourse: by topic or by chapter. I opted for the chapter course, hoping that by only absorbing one chapter per day I might actually finish the novel. Some chapters made better lunch reading than others (for...more 2.5 stars

My first attempt to read Consider Phlebas began a couple of years ago. I made it to the fifth chapter and abandoned the book. This past June, the SciFi and Fantasy Book Club selected Consider Phlebas as the science fiction group read. The discussion leader provided two avenues for discourse: by topic or by chapter. I opted for the chapter course, hoping that by only absorbing one chapter per day I might actually finish the novel. Some chapters made better lunch reading than others (for example, if you're squeamish, you might avoid the sixth chapter, or at least avoid masticating and digesting dinner while reading it).

With my support and therapy groups ready and willing to urge me on, I reluctantly consumed a chapter a day and finished my first (and perhaps last) Culture novel. Many of my thoughts and comments can be found in the discussion threads here.

Banks' writing style lent itself to rich cinematic visualizations, especially of some of the action sequences (escaping from space ships, orbital rings, runaway trains). Those images, created by Banks' prose and my own imagination, are forever seared into my memories, some of them as vivid and visceral as a strobe light flash in a Halloween haunted horror house.

My most intriguing find resulted from the epigraph which quoted two lines from T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land and directly relate to the title and the tone of the novel. My research lead me to further contextual reading in The Waste Land to include the entire section surrounding the epigraph quote:

IV. DEATH BY WATER

Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
And the profit and loss.
A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.

I found few likable or relateable characters, with the exception of the robots and Minds (Banks' AI permutation). Knowing nothing of the Culture prior to reading Consider Phlebas, and in light of the quote above, I can understand and appreciate the author's endeavor. Just not my cup of tea. (less)

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Jan 16, 2009 Michael David Cobb rated it 4 of 5 stars

The worst thing you could do is read Consider Phlebas back pages first. Once upon a time I used to take the first and last sentences or first and last words as a brief synopsis of every book. It kinda works for the Bible. "In Amen". But to do so for Iain M. Banks celebrated sci-fi would almost obviate the great adventures contained therein.

Consider Phlebas is a space opera, something of a cowboy story with a trick ending, an amoral tale of the actions of civilizations on conflict down to the dea...more

The worst thing you could do is read Consider Phlebas back pages first. Once upon a time I used to take the first and last sentences or first and last words as a brief synopsis of every book. It kinda works for the Bible. "In Amen". But to do so for Iain M. Banks celebrated sci-fi would almost obviate the great adventures contained therein.

Consider Phlebas is a space opera, something of a cowboy story with a trick ending, an amoral tale of the actions of civilizations on conflict down to the deadly combat and scheming of individuals from different parts of the galaxy.

In one way I didn't follow my own advice. I was advised to read 'Player of Games' first but didn't find this Culture book of Banks available. So I read his most recent treatment of the galaxy 'The Algebraist' and then to his very first, Consider Phlebas. There is no doubt that Banks is a much more accomplished writer now than 20 years ago and so I can see that he has clearly gotten to where he was trying to go which is to convey the essence of the practically infinite scale of galactic events and put the actions of humans in scale. He does so without making humans any larger or smaller than humans. Which is to say that in the largest scheme of things imaginable, human drama still counts for something, as it inevitably would to us humans. And in that regard Banks is an extraordinarily good sci-fi writer, standing just below Samuel R. Delany as the best ever.

But Banks gives us something one better than Neveryon which is a continuing series of novels about the Culture and it is in the matters of the Culture that Banks shines. What is the Culture? It is utopian, and infinite in the ways we are most constrained here on earth. It is a cultural empire that fights for philosophical reasons, and it is run by machines which were created by humans. They are the Minds each of which is capable of nearly god-like intelligence and they work to integrate every alien species into harmonious existence in which all sentient beings are accorded rights.

Of course not every species is interested in following the Culture's scientific and logical perfectionism, chief among them are the Idirans, a race of 3 meter triped giants who evoke the deep religiosity of a warrior cult. In fact they were a perfectly peaceful people, in total harmony with the ecology of their bountiful planet until provoked by the Culture. At that point they realized everything foreign to them as a threat and transformed into a race of annihilation still steeled by religious discipline. So war was inevitable and it is in the midst of that war that our story begins.

It is the story of a lost and crippled Mind, a planet of the dead, a Changer, an intelligence agent of the Culture and a Firefly-like crew of freebooting pirates. The Changer, allied with the Idirans, and pursued by the agent, seeks to capture the Mind from the neutral planet of the dead. He ingratiates his way into the pirate ship and the adventure takes off from there.

Phlebas is a work of great imagination whose galaxy makes extended human sense and yet is not extensively human. I suspect, that in that regard I am going to have to complete about 1000 more pages of the Culture novels to get at what Banks might be implying. To that end I have just begun Matter, his latest.

Even without that these are excellent tales of enormous scale.
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Jun 07, 2008 Deborah rated it 4 of 5 stars

A stunning introduction to a powerful series. Banks renders even space opera utterly believable due to his realistic, expertly observed dialogue. If he has one great strength as a writer it's that. You are thrown headlong into the high dudgeon and poltical machinations of a fascinating, advanced civilization known only as "The Culture". Rather than waste precious time and precious attention span with tedious back story and set-up we are simply there, in the thick of it. Watching how people cope...more

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Oct 24, 2007 korty rated it 5 of 5 stars

I read this one back when I first started reading the harder SF as opposed to the more surrealist stuff I was reading before then. The funny thing is, I didn't realize until a few years later that he also wrote a very dark and twisted novel called the Wasp Factory I had read and loved a few years earlier. Could it be because that book was written by contemporary novelist Iain Banks instead of SF author Iain M Banks? Anyway, CP is a wild, unapologetically exuberant space opera adventure, right up...more

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Jul 10, 2008 Adam rated it 4 of 5 stars

A grim space adventures, enlivened by Bank’s gothic carnival of an imagination, that reminds a little of Gene Wolfe, Jack Vance, and maybe Moorcock’s Dancers At the End of Time. A decadent end of all things feeling; with bizarre games (ones where real lives are at stake), cannibal cults, odd characters, bleak set pieces weighted with time, and a roguish trickster main character (to say the least, as chilling and ruthless as a Bester or Vance character). Nonstop whit and invention steer you throu...more

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Dec 17, 2009 Ben Babcock rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: own, 2009-read, artificial-intelligence, posthuman, science-fiction, space-opera

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I had a good time reading Consider Phlebas. Iain M. Banks manages to mix technobabble with description and dialogue to come out with fascinating societies and intense action sequences. The plot was simple, and pretty linear, but it got the characters where they needed to go and blow things up. Beneath it all, there were the questions Banks raises about what it means to be human, about how we plan to interact with machines when they are just as intelligent as—more intelligent than—we are. My elat...more

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Aug 08, 2009 Kathi rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks is the first book in his science fiction series about the Culture. In this wild adventure, Horza is an agent for the Idiran who are currently fighting a war with the Culture. He has a number of experiences, some stomach-turning, some heart-pounding, as he tries to carry out his mission to capture a hidden Culture Mind.

I liked Horza, although his connection to the Idirans never seemed terribly strong to me. His status as a Changer, while useful in some of his esc...more Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks is the first book in his science fiction series about the Culture. In this wild adventure, Horza is an agent for the Idiran who are currently fighting a war with the Culture. He has a number of experiences, some stomach-turning, some heart-pounding, as he tries to carry out his mission to capture a hidden Culture Mind.

I liked Horza, although his connection to the Idirans never seemed terribly strong to me. His status as a Changer, while useful in some of his escapades, also didn't seem to set him apart from the other characters as much as I thought it might.

My favorite characters were actually the two females who became close to Horza in one way or another--Yalson, his ally in the Free Company, and Balveda the Culture operative who keeps turning up in Horza's life. And I really liked two of the machines--Unaha-Closp, the rather prissy drone who has a lot more fight inside than anyone realized, and Jase, the ancient drone who serves Fal, a Culture Referer (a rare and highly intuitive thinker). We are given glimpses of personality that are very revealing for each of them.

Some readers have criticized the number of characters who are introduced and then killed off. I think that is an accurate reflection of Horza's life and the way most people come and go in it. He doesn't have a chance to really connect with them, and it would interfere with his mission, so we don't really get to connect with them either.

Some readers have also expressed concern about the violence. I think a lot of the violent action is similar to a big budget action adventure film with great special effects--exciting and spectacular. The disturbing violence, to me, is contained in the more personal scenes, like the sewage torture, Horza'a combat to join the Free Company, and the Eaters. Each of these is important to the plot, I think, and had more impact on me that the "shoot 'em up" scenes.

I plan to acquire the other Culture books and look forward to reading them in the future. (less)

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Oct 17, 2009 Gaijinmama rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

This book was really good in most respects. I loved the characters, particularly the drone who reminded me of Marvin from
Hitchhiker's Guide. Banks' descriptions are brilliant, too.
That said, the gore and violence are over-the-top. Definitely not for most young readers, in fact many adults might have a problem
getting through certain scenes. I did, and I have a very strong tolerance for fictional violence (can't watch the news on TV, though...now
THAT stuff is too scary!!)
The reason I give this one...more

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Mar 15, 2011 Simeon rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi

I read this after reddit's scifi book survey results.

And by favorites. I didn't expect The Culture Series to score so high, or be so loved. After the first few hundred pages though, I can see the appeal.

The writing style's great, and the whole story is cinematic. The reason I didn't give it more stars is that the main characters are, well, not exactly likable or clever. The story sets up the universe for the rest of the saga. I wish it had been written from another perspective.

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Jan 09, 2010 Stephen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 1980-1989, science-fiction, galactic-civilizations, cyber-punk-prep-and-post, metal-men

4.0 stars. This book is chalk full of some big ideas and I really enjoyed the set up of the Culture civilization as well as how it is viewed by those outside it. In addiiton to big ideas, the book has some really intersting characters (the Eaters come to mind) and I thought the Game of Damage was original and well thought out. I will certainly read other books in teh series.

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Jan 19, 2011 Elvet rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2010-reads, owned-and-read, on-loan

So now I have a sense of what a 'space opera' is. I enjoyed the ride, and that's really what it was like. I think I actually held my breath at the end sequence. Banks keeps the pace going with shorter and shorter POV segments. I'm definitely going to read more of his Culture books.

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Dec 02, 2010 Tina rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: sci-fi fans

Having finished the novel I now understand the reference to T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" in both the title and the epigraph, though while I was reading it I was under the impression it was just a massive space opera. A lot happened in this book and I never knew just what was going to happen next, which is what kept me reading, as there were quite a few dry stretches. When the action starts though, it is is fantastic! The last quarter of the book is excellent.
Character-wise, the people were qui...more

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May 11, 2010 Frank rated it 4 of 5 stars

Consider Phlebas is Banks' firstnovel set in the conflict between Culture and the Idirans. This novel is primarily about Bora Horza Gobuchul (among friends we call him Horza), one man mercenary and his personal fight for survival and fulfilling a contract.
What really fascinated me when I started to reading this book was the absence of the background story. (Actually it really annoyed me at the beginning) Usually I like to get more information about the character and a background story, but it ca...more Consider Phlebas is Banks' first novel set in the conflict between Culture and the Idirans. This novel is primarily about Bora Horza Gobuchul (among friends we call him Horza), one man mercenary and his personal fight for survival and fulfilling a contract.
What really fascinated me when I started to reading this book was the absence of the background story. (Actually it really annoyed me at the beginning) Usually I like to get more information about the character and a background story, but it can be a bit tedious reading the same build up, as other “normal” Sci-Fi books. The genre is hard tech Sci-Fi, which of course involves high tech weapons, robots, gadgets and spacecrafts that have a personality or act as they have one.
The conflict in the galaxy has escalated and the fractions only goal is total domination. But domination does not come without cost, as both Culture and Idirans will experience.
Culture believes in the right that “machine minds” or AI has the right to exist alongside and equal to all other races in the galaxy. They are fighting for their survival and will use any means! The Idirans are a fanatic religious race and believes in one God that has one major religious principle. Everything has an order and a meaning. Through their one God they believe they and only them have immortal souls. All other races are inferior and are “heritage” and therefore must be subdued.
The main character in this novel is a "Changer”. Changers are a species genetically engineered as a weapon in the distant past by an unknown species. They are capable of impersonating any human being of similar size by restructuring their body to resemble the individual, with super abilities to poison people by spitting in their eyes and sweating acid. This is of course good things to have when you are in a tight spot, which Bora Horza Gobuchul often is. But Horza is not driven only by money but his friendship with some of the Idirans. (hard to believe after all he goes through)

You are tossed in with the main character in an already started conflict between two ideologies or races. And of course our hero has a mission objective which is important to both of the fractions.
The story is a typical event driven story where the character and the story move with swiftness, numerous of action scenes and some humor. Storyline is to some extent a secret agent novel with a twist. The story outline is complex with the fractions history and all the different conflict that has been going on for millenniums.

The main character, Horza is both hero and an antihero. His main concern is his own wellbeing, at least in the start. But he will grow on you and he grows out of the normal two dimensional persons we all love/hate so much in “older” Sci-Fi books. But making his character so strong is in my opinion a weakness in this book. Because of this the main story weakens and other characters in the books are not as well portrayed. And in the end I really didn’t care as much for the story or the minor characters.

This is the first book in the Culture series and it has a somewhat complex start, but Banks does deliver an action-packed and exhilarating novel. And after reading this novel want to read from Banks and his Culture universe. And some last remarks are the end of this review is that Banks is writer that you will have to get used to. He will confuse you with a lot of facts that doesn’t always make any sense in the beginning of the book, but he clarifies the story in the end. (or not , really hard to tell sometimes)

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About Iain M. Banks

Iain M. Banks is a pseudonym of Iain Banks which he used to publish his Science Fiction.

Banks's father was an officer in the Admiralty and his mother was once a professional ice skater. Iain Banks was educated at the University of Stirling where he studied English Literature, Philosophy and Psychology. He moved to London and lived in the south of England until 1988 when he returned to Scotland, li...more Iain M. Banks is a pseudonym of Iain Banks which he used to publish his Science Fiction.

Banks's father was an officer in the Admiralty and his mother was once a professional ice skater. Iain Banks was educated at the University of Stirling where he studied English Literature, Philosophy and Psychology. He moved to London and lived in the south of England until 1988 when he returned to Scotland, living in Edinburgh and then Fife.

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.

As with his friend Ken MacLeod (another Scottish writer of technical and social science fiction) a strong awareness of left-wing history shows in his writings. The argument that an economy of abundance renders anarchy and adhocracy viable (or even inevitable) attracts many as an interesting potential experiment, were it ever to become testable. He was a signatory to the Declaration of Calton Hill, which calls for Scottish independence.

In late 2004, Banks was a prominent member of a group of British politicians and media figures who campaigned to have Prime Minister Tony Blair impeached following the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In protest he cut up his passport and posted it to 10 Downing Street. In an interview in Socialist Review he claimed he did this after he "abandoned the idea of crashing my Land Rover through the gates of Fife dockyard, after spotting the guys armed with machine guns." He related his concerns about the invasion of Iraq in his book Raw Spirit, and the principal protagonist (Alban McGill) in the novel The Steep Approach to Garbadale confronts another character with arguments in a similar vein.

Interviewed on Mark Lawson's BBC Four series, first broadcast in the UK on 14 November 2006, Banks explained why his novels are published under two different names. His parents wished to name him Iain Menzies Banks but his father made a mistake when registering the birth and he was officially registered as Iain Banks. Despite this he continued to use his unofficial middle name and it was as Iain M. Banks that he submitted The Wasp Factory for publication. However, his editor asked if he would mind dropping the 'M' as it appeared "too fussy". The editor was also concerned about possible confusion with Rosie M. Banks, a minor character in some of P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves novels who is a romantic novelist. After his first three mainstream novels his publishers agreed to publish his first SF novel, Consider Phlebas. To distinguish between the mainstream and SF novels, Banks suggested the return of the 'M', although at one stage he considered John B. Macallan as his SF pseudonym, the name deriving from his favourite whiskies: Johnnie Walker Black Label and The Macallan single malt.

His latest book was a science fiction (SF) novel in the Culture series, called The Hydrogen Sonata, published in 2012.

Author Iain M. Banks revealed in April 2013 that he had late-stage cancer. He died the following June.

The Scottish writer posted a message on his official website saying his next novel The Quarry, due to be published later this year, would be his last.(less)

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Quotes from Consider Phlebas

“Experience as well as common sense indicated that the most reliable method of avoiding self-extinction was not to equip oneself with the means to accomplish it in the first place.” — 6 people liked it

“Don't you have a religion?" Dorolow asked Horza.

"Yes," he replied, not taking his eyes away from the screen on the wall above the end of the main mess-room table. "My survival."

"So... your religion dies with you. How sad," Dorolow said, looking back from Horza to the screen. The Changer let the remark pass.” — 5 people liked it

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