Mail me. Go home.
I find it very difficult to contemplate writing anything about Iain (M.) Banks without using offensive language. He just has that effect on me.
I confess that I am writing under the influence of another reading of his damnable book, Use of Weapons. This is the second of his damnable books. The first I shall swear at later. For now, I'll stick with Weapons. If you have ever thought of writing, you need to read this book. It's a "kill or cure" treatment. It will either kill any urge you had to attempt writing, as you'll never ever be able to do something this fiendish and perfect, or it will cure you of thinking no one can do anything interesting in the format of a book. It is one of those painful, repellent, twisted stories about painful, repellent, twisted people, the kind that only Banks can write and make wonderful.
Weapons is the ideal introduction to his bizarre "Culture" novels, dealing with a, what?-- society, empire? no, culture, I guess-- that is so advanced they rarely appear much in the books. As far as I've ever seen, they have no crime, no hunger, no want, no pain, no disease, no hardship. It's out the other side of Utopia. I've never seen anyone from the Culture who was happy, and wasn't terminally flawed. This goes for the machines as well; all the ships have Minds, and there are drones that have every bit as much character as the humans, and often even more. The drones and people have names that are rarely pronounceable, but the ships... ah, the ships. The Just Testing, the Very Little Gravitas Indeed, the What Are The Civilian Applications-- these are just a few of my absolute favourites. Although the idea of a spaceship that calls itself the Xenophobe is a thing of beauty all by itself, especially when you realise the Xenophobe (or "Xeny," as it likes to be called) is part of the Contact branch of the Culture, specifically the Special Circumstances division that meddles in the affairs of anyone it feels like, with what the book jacket describes as "a policy of moral espionage." If they don't like the way your planet works, they'll tinker with things until they're happy. Life is never boring in Special Circumstances. There's always another war to manipulate.
As for Weapons itself, though, you will be hard-pressed to find a better book to teach Structure of the Novel. Don't expect to understand it all on the first time through. It's simply not possible. The best you can do is study the table of contents first, which looks deceptively simple, and then plan to re-read the book at least once. (This might be a good time to point to my rant on the subject of people who don't believe in reading books more than once.) I read it first several years ago, and swore never to read another Iain Banks book, and promptly started hunting them down and collecting them and reading them all. (This is in spite of having read his notorious First Novel.) I waited a decent length of time, then finally got up the nerve to re-read Weapons. I remembered half of what I was supposed to watch for, and half of what was coming, and it still works.
I generally don't like spoilers and refuse to deal in them, but I'm making a partial exception for this one. If you adamantly refuse to catch the slightest whiff of one yourself, scroll down to the "End Spoiler" heading. All I'm going to ruin here is the structure, but I still feel that it counts as a spoiler in this case.
The beauty of this book is in its impossibility. It should not be possible to tell a story from the inside out, like this one. The good old Alice advice of "start at the beginning and go on until you come to the end, then stop" falls apart here. He tells you right in the table of contents that half the chapters proceed in chronological order, while the others reverse things. To explain: he tells the story in 27 chapters, more or less. The first chapter is the 14th in chronological order, the second is 13, the third is 15, the fourth is 12, and so forth, and back. In other words, the plot progresses, while the flashbacks get progressively older until you reach the turning point in his life. Which is a beast unto itself-- again I have to say that what Banks manages in this book really should be impossible. He sets up rules for himself, and he never ever breaks them (although the back cover of the paperback does). You won't believe me after you've read it the first time; this is another reason you'll need to read it at least twice.
Also in the favour of Use of Weapons: the characters. Of course the plot is inhumanly good; we just expect that from Banks. But the thing that struck me during this rereading is that while he has all these terrible and complicated things going on in the plot and structure, he still has time to write sublime, ridiculous things for people to say and think and do. You get your three basic food groups of sex, drugs, and violence, and Banks has a knack for using foul language that elevates it to an art. The Culture may be a flavour of Utopia, but it isn't one of the vanilla ones. Even perfection has enough quirks to make life worth living.
I promised I'd also swear about his First Novel. I have to be careful about this one, though. I honestly cannot recommend it, even though it is another example of fiendish genius. Banks is a monster. The Wasp Factory proves it. This is a sick, disturbing book. Yes, alright, granted, it is brilliant. But you do not want to read it. Not really. Not unless you want the kind of disgusting mental images that give your nightmares nightmares of their own. I'm talking the kind of thing you really want to forget and never will. Things that will make your brain wish it had the capacity to throw up for itself, getting rid of the half-digested BLECH that Banks will pour into your brain through this hideous little collection of pages. I cannot put this strongly enough: I am not trying to challenge anyone's manliness or toughness or anything. I'm simply trying to give you fair warning. The Wasp Factory does show that Banks was a demonic genius from the beginning, but there are more pleasant ways to find this out. Tell you what: first read Use of Weapons. That is a nice, happy, pleasant, quiet little book compared to The Wasp Factory. After you've read Weapons and see what is nice and happy, you may have a better idea of what I'm hoping to save you from.
I haven't read everything this monster has written. Yet. I intend to. I can tell you that there are no utter losers, so far. The Bridge is a bit goofy, and he has another odd one that isn't counted as speculative fiction, I think. But the nice thing about Banks is that after the first one, you'll always be braced for having your head messed up when you read his stuff. And he never misses the chance. I suspect he's a very happy little lunatic. Someday I would like to visit his asylum and see what he's like when very drunk. I think I'd like to have a video camera along, too.