The Gzilt are in their final weeks before Subliming when a political crisis emerges. Evidence, rapidly suppressed, suggests that their whole culture is founded on a manipulative lie. If this becomes generally known, the whole Sublimation project may be in peril. The facts of the matter go back to the founding of the Culture, ten thousand years ago. An almost mythical Culture member was there, part of the negotiating team who seems to know the secret truth of the matter. But Ngaroe QiRia doesn’t want to be found.
Gzilt factions contend: one wants to suppress the facts and
proceed with Sublimation; the other wants to discover the truth regardless.
Inevitably the Culture itself is drawn in: weapons systems are soon in action. The
heroine of this tale is Vyr Cossont, a Gzilt female musician who once met QiRia
and was given a copy of his mind-state. Aided by the Culture ship “Mistake Not
...” the hunt is on.
Over the course of his Culture novels, Banks has systematically
explored many aspects of his utopia. This novel is focused on the nature of
Subliming, and how beings with Godlike powers (Culture Minds) can nevertheless
have their actions constrained. Minor themes include the meaninglessness of
life, the pointlessness of most political disputes and the self-parody of art.
Sublimation is like Heaven and how do you describe that?
Banks has turned to String Theory (like some priests!) to locate the Sublime in
the extra, compacted dimensions. To look back to the 4D of The Real from the
Sublime is to imagine most of your senses and intellect to be switched off: sophisticated
analogies are the best we can do and Banks spends time on this.
The Minds are very smart and one consequence of this is that
they simulate possible outcomes of situations. In the simulation of political
crises the potential actions of people are important. But once you start
simulating people at a precision for accuracy, you’ve created people .. and
that raises a cloud of ethical issues. So here we see a profound incompleteness
theorem: the Minds can’t permit themselves simulations of sufficient power so
will be surprised and get things wrong: the novelist still has a job to do.
The Hydrogen Sonata of the title is “T. C. Vilabier’s
String-Specific Sonata For An Instrument Yet To Be Invented, MW 1211.” The
later-invented instrument is the elevenstring (after the dimensional count of
String Theory) and the Sonata encodes the elements of the periodic table,
starting with Hydrogen. Is it any good?
A notable critic writes: “As a challenge, without peer. As music, without
merit.” At its first performance the audience was divided: some hated it, the
rest really hated it.
Iain M. Banks’ latest Culture novel retains the house-style
of beautiful descriptive writing, character-led plot development interleaved
with intelligent speculation on all manner of things. It’s also pretty
exciting. The whole Culture thing evidently still has plenty of mileage in it.
