Consider Phlebas (The Culture) |
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 | Picking this book up with the intention of reading the Culture series, Banks' first foray into sci-fi is not as good as his later efforts (eg. The Alchemist). The main text of Consider Phlebas contains suggestions of the space opera promised by the cover, but the overarching drama in which the drawn out tale is set is barely present throughout most of the telling. Instead, the opera is confined to an all too brief series of appendices which gives a rapid, motiveless summary to the braoder context, including its eventual conclusion.
The two main climaxes of the book (the game of Damage and the Command System) were more a Hollywood-style shock soap opera than a philosophical inquiry into the conflicting ideologies, motivations and moralities of the Culture and the Idiran. This lack of philosophical inquiry is especially disappointing given the derivation of the title; Philebus ('Phlebas') debates Socrates on whether hedonism or wisdom is the source of true happiness - an issue ... read more.
Written by Iain M. Banks.
Published 14 April 1988.
Published by Orbit.
rrp £8.99.
467 pages Paperback.
ISBN: 1857231384
ISBN-13: 9781857231380 | |
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