Consider Phlebas

Paperback, 471 pages

English language

Published Nov. 13, 2005 by Orbit.

ISBN:
978-1-85723-138-0
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Goodreads:
8935689

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4 stars (37 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 within a fabled labyrinth on a barren world, a Planet of the Dead proscribed to mortals, lay a fugitive Mind. Both the Culture and the Idirans sought it. It was the fate of Horza, the Changer, and his motley crew of unpredictable mercenaries, human and machine, actually to find it, and with it their own destruction.

5 editions

questionable debut

3 stars

Content warning broad strokes spoilers

Elements of a Great SciFi but Not Executed

3 stars

No real world building even though the world we get a glimpse of is fascinating. We are left wanting and not in a good way. A lot of it was, well, meaningless. We want this book to be more. We actually need it to be more. That it doesn't even com close is what is so depressing. That said, we are eager to read the next recommended book in the series to hopefully see if he does give us more, in a good way.

A ton of imaginative concepts but it doesn't quite work

3 stars

Content warning Mild spoilers

Arrogance

4 stars

This is a book about arrogance. The arrogance of going up against a culture (indeed, THE Culture) that can do anything, of going up against the certainty of faith, of going it alone, of reliance on technology or the rejection of it. I spent a while thinking about what this book is "about" after its unusual conclusion. I think it's ultimately about how very important it is to work together, to be together. A culture that destroys individualism so thoroughly that each person is ultimately disconnected from every other is as bad as a religious community that rejects common ground with other communities, which is itself as bad as a man who is driven only to accomplish his own ends. Every bad thing that happens to an individual is either the result of working alone--even with the best intentions--or of an uncaring, random universe inflicting itself on people left unprotected. …

Arrogance

4 stars

This is a book about arrogance. The arrogance of going up against a culture (indeed, THE Culture) that can do anything, of going up against the certainty of faith, of going it alone, of reliance on technology or the rejection of it. I spent a while thinking about what this book is "about" after its unusual conclusion. I think it's ultimately about how very important it is to work together, to be together. A culture that destroys individualism so thoroughly that each person is ultimately disconnected from every other is as bad as a religious community that rejects common ground with other communities, which is itself as bad as a man who is driven only to accomplish his own ends. Every bad thing that happens to an individual is either the result of working alone--even with the best intentions--or of an uncaring, random universe inflicting itself on people left unprotected. …

Review of 'Consider Phlebas' on 'GoodReads'

2 stars

I don't know why I was under the impression that this was a super important part of the sci fi cannon. It had some interesting imagery in it, but it was pretty silly action movie sequences for the large part. I am curious how the culture grows in the other books though, there were enough of these written that some in them must have stuck.

Review of 'Une Forme De Guerre' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Curieusement, si j'avais ce livre chez moi depuis au moins une dizaine d'années, je ne l'avais en fait jamais lu. Bizarre ...
La guerre idirane traverse toute l'oeuvre sur la Culture de Iain M Banks.
Et ce roman en illustre un aspect ... méconnu. Un mental de la culture se retrouve, à la suite d'un combat particulièrement périlleux, isolé au fond d'une planète servant de mémorial apocalyptiqe à une créature transcendée.
Et les membres de la culture, comme d'ailleurs leurs ennemis idirans, veulent le récupérer pour en extraire les informations utiles. La culture envoie un membre de Circonstances Spéciales, et les idirans envoient un métamorphe. C'est autour de ce métamorphe, ennemi personnel de la Culture dans son ensemble, que ce récit se concentre. On le voit donc voyager jusqu'à ce mémorial, tenter de récupérer le mental pour les idirans, ...
En chemin, il faut bien dire qu'il assiste à pas …

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Subjects

  • Science Fiction