LOOK TO WINDWARD discussion (The Culture group read)

   

The Twin Novae battle had been one of the last of the Idiran war, and one of the most horrific: desperate to avert their inevitable defeat, the Idirans had induced not one but two suns to explode, snuffing out worlds and biospheres teeming with sentient life. They were attacks of incredible proportion -- gigadeathcrimes. But the war ended, and life went on.

Now, eight hundred years later, light from the first explosion is about to reach the Masaq' Orbital, home to the Culture's most adventurous and decadent souls. There it will fall upon Masaq's 50 billion inhabitants, gathered to commemorate the deaths of the innocent and to reflect, if only for a moment, on what some call the Culture's own complicity in the terrible event.

Also journeying to Masaq' is Major Quilan, an emissary from the war-ravaged world of Chel. In the aftermath of the conflict that split his world apart, most believe he has come to Masaq' to bring home Chel's most brilliant star and self-exiled dissident, the honored Composer Ziller.

Ziller claims he will do anything to avoid a meeting with Major Quilan, who he suspects has come to murder him. But the Major's true assignment will have far greater consequences than the death of a mere political dissident, as part of a conspiracy more ambitious than even he can know -- a mission his superiors have buried so deeply in his mind that even he cannot remember it.

This thread is for the discussion of Look to Windward, the seventh book set in the Culture universe.

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The Culture group read: Wiki page | Organisational thread

I'm finding Look to Windward harder to get into than I expected. And not just because I seem to have misplaced my copy and had to find another one ;)

I ended up setting this aside for a few days and coming back to it, at which point I raced through to the finish. Whilst I found it easier to engage with, I never really connected with it - I found it slow and meandering, lacking the urgency of say the first three Culture novels, and this frustrated me.

However, I've got to appreciate what Banks was tackling here: bringing together many of the themes that he introduced in the previous five books (six if you include State of the Art) and seemingly coming full circle (bearing in mind that for a long time this looked to be the final Culture novel). And I did enjoy the comedy threaded through the novel (Culture cocktail parties!), and appreciated how this alternated with Quilan's shattering grief.

I argued that the first 3 books stepped us through the layers of Contact and Culture, without ever really giving us a view of the Culture itself. The second 3 focus on ethics: Excession examines whether the AIs as incorruptible and indeed trustworthy as they have seemed thus far; Inversions questions Contact's methods; and Look to Windward questions whether Contact has the right to intervene at all - and finally gives us a full-face view of life on a Culture Orbital. If the first 3 were a joyride, the second 3 could be read as criticism - the dark side of even well-intentioned interfering.

But the conclusion, for me at least, is that whilst any philosophy can go wrong from time to time (sorry Chel), the Culture's approach is still better than the alternatives. Whether they are right to try and steer others along similar lines is another question: the tidbit that any 'perfect' (culturally unbiased) AI always instantly Sublimes is fascinating in this regard. The Culture resists this evolution, quietly terrified of what it may hold for them.

I enjoyed Kabe and Quilan here (Ziller was intended to be obnoxious, I think), and was frustrated by the entire Uagen Zlepe side-story. But I really enjoyed Masaq Hub most; both as a closer look at the sheer power and apparently endless patience of these immense Minds, and also for posing the question of why an AI might seek oblivion. I've subsequently read Abigail Nussbaum's excellent essay from last year (she and I often have very different perspectives, but her writing is always interesting and insightful), and I was intrigued by her suggestion that Hub's suicide is ultimately an indictment of the cost of keeping the Culture's human citizens happy and untroubled by conscience, as the Minds both execute the Culture's commitment to Contact interference and are the only ones who can appreciate the true cost - and must live with it forever. As with the Minds of Excession, I found Hub humanised the AIs even whilst demonstrating in almost every scene how far above humanity it was (unlike Excession, there are practically no humans in Look to Windward to frustrate me).

My full review is over on my review thread.

I've been reading Culture out of order: not my usual approach, but I came to it out of sequence and have not attempted to rectify things. Which has been rewarding, but I appreciate your observation that Banks is "stepping through" the Culture offering first a celebration of what the Culture is, and then a sober examination of the ethical implications. I've more or less been interested in the same questions as I read along, but not stepwise.

I've long thought that Banks addresses a central dilemma of international politics: what interventions or "moves" are democratic states ethically condoned to take? How idealist can they be, facing actions or threats on the part of non-democratic states? (The dilemma is posed as a democratic one, though of course that shows its own bias.) Banks reshapes the question in terms of civilizations, but the central dilemma remains, I think. It's an interesting one, all the more so for Banks not creating a black / white dichotomy. Culture efforts are not always admirable, to my way of thinking, and that's only realistic.