The Algebraist

[Funt Solo]

I've just finished The Algebraist by Iain M Banks.  With this, his latest sci-fi novel, he's surpassed himself, extending on a theme of intelligent airborne alien fauna first explored in Look To Winward, his last Culture novel.

But this is not a Culture novel, and turns many of the stalwart themes of those stories upside down.  Here, the "hippies with guns" civilisation is not humanoid, but a galaxy-spanning billions of years old species called Dwellers that live in gas giants.  Humans have spread amongst the stars and joined a heirarchical totalitarian empire called the Mercatoria, which hunts down and kills AIs.

The main plot is a quest for something the entire galaxy is willing to go to war over, but other plots weave in to the story, which start relatively slowly before ramping up a notch at key points until, in the second half, it's almost impossible to put down.

When the solution to a key puzzle is finally played out, you realise (as if often the case with Banks) that he's already provided you with all the information to solve it yourself.

Add to all that some seriously cool battles, bizarre alien cultures, sub-plots, riddles, freedom fighters, espionage, plausible deniability on a grand scale, nerdy weapon tech and an evil warlord and you might just end up wishing for more from this galaxy rather than the one portrayed in the Culture novels.

[Art]

I'd recommend it too. Definately the best Banks book of recent years.

[Richmond Clements]

Yeah, his obviously having great fun vreating another new universe to play in, and it's one I'd like to see him reutn to sometime (however unlikely that is).

The Dewllers are brilliant though. Truely alien aliens.

[LARF]

AWesome cover as well...http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/1841491551.02.LZZZZZZZ.jpg">

[Dudley]

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Sorry to say, but I thought it was a bit pants.  Way, way overlong, and totally lacking in the spirit of gleeful invention that Banks puts into most of his Culture novels.  The Dwellers' design is ripped off from Arthur C Clarke's gas-giant creature designs (and, indeed, real life), and there are several points when he seems to forget what they look like and give them organs or appendages that they shouldn't have.  Meanwhile, the ending is so contrived as to be ridiculous, and means that most of what went before was just pointless.  

Very, very disappointed.

[Quirkafleeg]

>and, indeed, real life

Do you know something that we don't?

It's very good but a bit flabby (pity his editor died...)

Spoilers...






>Meanwhile, the ending is so contrived as to be ridiculous, and means that most of what went before was just pointless.

Ahhh but that's half the point... and as with a lot of his books the real ending isnt the point (at the least the 'ending' is in the same book!)

[Tiplodocus]

I was about to post a thread about this myself - just back from reading it on hols.

I enjoyed it and would recommend it with a few caveats.

I've only read one SF book in the last twenty years (maybe ten years ago "Use of Weapons" brilliant structure, brilliant twist) so I'd forgotten (honestly) that everyone has stupid names and titles so it took me a while to get back into the swing of things.

But I thought it was chock full of invention (unless most of it has become SF cliche in the last ten years), alien aliens, a great twist (when Fassin is "expressing himself" on that bird's back) and mental concepts and great space travel physics (possibly pub-physics, I don't know).  I loved the resolution of the main quest as well.

However it was definitely a bit flabby especially some of the middle of the quest before he meets the truetwin. I didn't like some of the more soapy elements of the story, the Taanice and Saalus (sp) sub plots were a bit weak.  And I thought the villain, despite starting out pretty well, ended up being a complete out of his depth incompetent.  And I didn't like the way it left a lot of loose ends for us to tie up in subsequent novels.

I did laugh long and hard at the bit where

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having started firing anti Matter bombs at the dweller we get a line along the lines of...
"And as it dissolved in a cloud of radiation and glowing shrapnel, the last transmission from the great ship was from Aide De Camp Tuhlurer informing the Archimandrite that he was a cunt"

[Funt Solo]

:: "the villain, despite starting out pretty well, ended up being a complete out of his depth incompetent"

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Oh, I liked that.  He was just a blundering arrogant oaf, really.  His whole conquest was ostentatious and based solely on having a massive fleet and a really big flagship.  His tactics were pretty pathetic when he completely underestimated the Dwellers.  I loved how that played out, though, because the Dwellers were hysterical with their "why's he doing that?" response to his hostage-killing.

Having said that, he did get away, with that classic "cunt" line.

[WoD]

Anyone who wants to put a copy in the post to me...feel free...

[Dudley]

> Do you know something that we don't?

Heh, yes, that did come out a bit wrong.  The design seem to be quite closely based, as Clarke's was, on the microscopic creatures you find in pond or sea water (rotifers?), some of which have the double-wheel structure.

[Quirkafleeg]

>on the microscopic creatures you find in pond or sea water (rotifers?),

Well Banks apprently actually did some research for this one (on gas giants and the like) so he may well of based them on that

[Tordelbach]

I did greatly enjoy the Algebraist, in particular the society and character of the Dwellers, but it did seem to sort of fizzle out at the end.  Possibly this was because...

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...the big mystery that Fassin and everyone else were trying to solve (Dweller interstellar travel) was spelled out pretty clearly in the opening spiel, leaving me with the paper-based equivalent of shouting at the TV: "Centre of the Gas Giant!  Centre of the Gas Giant!".

[Funt Solo]

++Double-threat necro-post!++

Well, I found myself enjoying The Algebraist again in the last few days - when Banks died in 2013 I started a re-read of all his novels, in order of publication, but I stalled at Dead Air (my least favorite after the whisky book) and The Algebraist  - because it's the one I've re-read the most.

That stall was in 2014, so I've just picked it back up, and it turns out that waiting 6 years was the correct length of time.

It's got its imperfections, and led into a bit of a Banks drought (his next novel, The Steep Approach to Garbadale, took three years to materialize) but I'm very fond of it - mostly because of the gas-giant Dwellers of Nasqueron.

Having recently found out that FTL travel breaks causality, my nerd-foundations have been shaken, and I have to shunt that part of my brain (the truth!) off into a dark corner in order to allow myself to be lulled by the fiction overruling the science. I wonder if this is what religion feels like?

I'm feeling a bit depressed at the moment what with one thing and another, so being able to pull the comfy blanket of a Banks sci-fi novel over my psyche and escape into his imagination (while my mojo recharges) is a real boon.

[Tiplodocus]

Made me want to reread it now. But it is quite thick.

[Funt Solo]

Banks is one of the few novelists where I'll sometimes just dip into one of the amazing action scenes and not bother with re-reading the entire book. The equivalent of re-watching the attack on the Death Star or the battle for Hoth.

With The Algebraist, I've read the Gas Clipper race sequence many times.

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Side note: discovered the other day that "algebra" is from the Arabic al-jabr, meaning "the reunion of broken parts", and originally referred to bone-setting.