The Algebraist

Fassin's journeys and discoveries are exhilarating, witty, sometimes mind-boggling. Exotic weaponry abounds. The Dwellers are engagingly eccentric, like AI Minds in the Culture books--but the Mercatoria has banned artificial intelligence as Abomination, and this too is a plot strand. Additionally there are human revenge, intrigue and betrayal subplots; surprises and upsets; and the mother of all shaggy-dog revelations. Once again Banks is having enormous fun with space opera, and his exuberant enjoyment is infectious. Highly readable stuff.--David Langford

Reader Reviews:

Loved it. I read the whole thing, then read it again. (0/0 people found this helpful)

My favorite Banks so far; I'd go so far as to say one of my favorite sci-fi of all time (and I've read an awful lot of sci-fi in my day). I literally did read the entire thing, then turn back to page one and read it through again. A cynic might explain that this was because it was so long that I'd forgotten what happened at the start by the time time I'd reached the end; but I did enjoy this book immensely. The usual Banksian combination of wit (it had me laughing out loud on a few occasions), humanism, dark humor, philosophy, politics and hard sci-fi, but on an even more epic scale than usual. Thanks, Banks.

A Little bit lost. (0/0 people found this helpful)

A Normally excellent Banks, drops the ball here a bit. Excellent idea, let down a bit in its execution. Still, well written with rich and wonderful detail.

2 and a half stars: Average sci-fi, and poor compared to other Iain M. Banks novels (1/1 people found this helpful)

Being a big fan of some of Iain M. Banks' earlier works I was keen to get this offering. Banks is arguably one of the better sci-fi writers around today and I would recommend his previous efforts, but probably not this one, sorry. The book is readable and has some good moments (including a couple of welcome humorous lines!), but ultimately fails to fulfil its promise. I can't understand all the 4/5 star reviews and feel the urge to explain why, but parts of this review are a tad vague because I don't want to spoil it for anyone yet to read the story. For despite being weak for a Banks offering, this book no worse than an average sci-fi. Banks has a very readable style and the story did at least keep me reading to the end:

To set the scene, the galactic civilisation called the Mercatoria depends on its network of wormhole portals to keep all its otherwise too-distant star-systems within reach. The local wormhole for the star Ulubis has been destroyed, but in his past delves into that system's gas-giant planet Nasqueron, Fassin Taak has unwittingly uncovered a big clue as to the real existence of long fabled, mythical hidden wormholes throughout the entire galaxy controlled by the "Dwellers" (a species who live for millions of years and float inside gas giants). As the book begins, a rebel leader called "the Archimandrite Luseferous" decides to invade the Ulubis system, wanting to get this secret before the Mercatorian forces can return to emplace a new portal, and the local Mercatorians of Ulubis send Fassin on a hunt to solve the riddle and save them before the big baddy Luseferous arrives and uses the secret wormholes to take over the universe, and so the main events of the book are a sort of race against time!

Not bad. However, the novel is somewhat inconsistent from the start. We are introduced to a story teller who plays no part in the story nor could possibly know a tenth of what occurred. And there is what could be an interesting sub-plot in past events surrounding the death of a friend connecting some of the main characters (including our "central hero" Fassin Taak), which unfortunately ends up being completely unimportant, ends in silly melodrama, and seems to serve only to introduce characters who aren't explored enough to have needed connecting anyway.

In the Algebraist, Banks introduces us to a different and welcomingly less perfect pan-galactic set-up than in his previous excellent if somewhat too-perfect "Culture" civilisation. Unfortunately the Mercatoria and the outlawed "Beyonders", and the reasoning for their friction, is not very well developed, nor is the Mercatoria's main religion ("the Truth" - that the universe isn't real but rather some big computer simulation) isn't terribly original nor an acceptable enough mortar to bind this multi-species galactic union. Nor are the various species all that mind-blowing - one reviewer called them "Babylon-5", and another has pointed out that the Dwellers all seem the same and all much like a certain previous type of Banks' characterisations. That said, the Dwellers are interesting and have all the best lines. But Banks doesn't do quite enough to make their society seem believable. For example, if they are so much more powerful than any other civilisation, why do they expend so much energy being secretive? And, if they don't care about the "quick" species (those, like humans, who only have short life-spans) why do they put so much effort into hoodwinking quick species as if it's almost the sole purpose of the Dwellers' existence? And as another reviewer pointed out, where did these gas-giant Dwellers get all their material from to create their civilisation in the first place? Banks squeaks out something about meteors but that seems extremely weak - how did these things last long enough in the atmosphere to be made use of by the floating Dwellers before shooting down into the deadly depths?

Also, the book makes great play of Fassin having to massively slow down his body-clock in order to even communicate with the slow-living Dwellers for whom a day seems like a second (indeed, being a slow-seer is a big part of the story and important reason for the "quick" to be in the same system as the Dwellers), but at a few points later in the book - an attack on Fassin, and a separate point when Dweller Y'sul meets the Ythyn, and at an embassy meeting between species, plus at a few other points - the Dwellers involved need no timescale shift at all to talk to quick species.

At least this imperfect universe enables Banks to give us an awesome, if somewhat comic-book Mr. Nasty ("the Archimandrite Luseferous" - a sort of Ming the Merciless figure). But after starting a war that is the back-drop to the main events of the story, Ming becomes more of a mini-me, and drifts to the fringe of the main story. Perhaps he'll be back in a sequel? I hope not, because I hope there'll be no sequel this time. As to the ending - well, I won't give it away, but unless you are pretty dim you'll probably guess most or all of it long before Banks provides the unstartling revelation at a somewhat limp end. Gee, where could all those wormholes be?

Judging a book by its cover (0/1 people found this helpful)

I borrowed this from a friend who's a big fan of the author (he loaned me the brilliantly disturbing "Wasp Factory" some time ago, which is the only other book of his that I've read). It's been a long time since I was attracted to a book purely on the strength of its cover, but that's what happened here. The beautiful photo on the front (taken by the Cassini orbiter on the morning of January 1, 2001) is of Io, one of the moons of Jupiter. Jupiter is classified as a gas giant, and it's on (or in) a planet of that type that most of the action of this story takes place.

The story opens with the (human) hero living on one of the planet's moons; initially, I was pleased to see that the promise of the photo was going to be fulfilled in the contents (sometimes, of course, an attractive cover has nothing to do with what's inside), but was wondering how the hero was going to get to the planet, and what he was going to do there, since it's pretty well-known that a gas giant presents just about as inhospitable an environment (atmosphere, gravity, temperature) to a human as it's possible to imagine. I needn't have worried about him, however, as he spends most of the time in a gascraft (sic) which protects him from the environment. Throughout, the author pays enough attention to insurmountable laws of physics like this (in another example, a journey at near-light speed still takes months to cross immense distances, and is associated with a lengthy deceleration period) to make the truly exceptional believable when it comes along. His description of alien life-forms is plausible as well, with just enough information to form a picture in your head of the person/thing that the hero is interacting with.

I enjoyed this book a lot. The action greatly speeds up towards the end, and I was left wondering if there were plans for a sequel, since there are a few loose ends that were left dangling at the close.

Don't mess with the floats... (0/0 people found this helpful)

Iain Banks has a multi-layered, fluid style of writing which is echoed by his description of Nasqueron, the gas giant, which is the heart of this novel. Truth be told, it is a slender tale which in other hands could have been edited to a third of its near 600 pages, and some reviewers would have that 'could' as 'should' - though none with a really compelling reason. The grand scale and almost leisurely pace of this story, interspersed with quite spare, economic and rapid action sequences fit perfectly with the vastness of the universe it is played out in, and the crucial distinction between 'the quick' and 'the slow' - the 'short'lived races relationship with the near 'immortal' slows which rests on the nature of time and our perception of it.
The world in which the hero lives is amoral, corrupt and ruled by a fundementalist military-religious regime - USA, anyone? Heavy handed trigger-happy responses are summarily dealt with by the author with a 'moral of the story' hanging heavily in the background. That those responsible for military excess have indulged in a 'genocidal' suppression of creatures deemed to be of 'artificial intelligence' - AIs - is additional, and welcome if not altogether original, moralising. The hero represents humanity and its slow but inevitable rejection of the path it has found itself following. Redemption lies, literally, through the gas giant's 'Dwellers' - surely one of the most inventive alien races imagined by a writer and superbly realised - the reader experiences awe, puzzlement and a sense of fear on encountering 'the floats' but is left with a huge affection for them together with the feeling that their lack of emotional concern for our 'quick' species which pass cloud-like through their lives is our best chance for continuing.
The novel has a classical structure, its epilogue mirrors the opening, allowing the reader to reflect on all that has been transformed, and firmly setting several scenes for future sequels, though most of it's subplots are, for the most part,worked through. The main sub-plot, launched very early with a flashback, almost feels as though it belongs to a different book and is more a distraction than an addition to the main story, emphasising a passivity on the part of the main character which is, perhaps, intentional in that way that he represents humanity only 'waking up' and taking decisive action himself when it's almost too late, almost refusing to see what is becoming obvious before him. This weakness may be intentional but there are other areas which are less than convincing, such as the issue of longevity. In a future age where technology and low gravity have seen humans living for centuries, and in the case of the Seers who 'slow' themselves in order to study Dweller culture, even measured in millenia,Banks shows most of them filling their time with hedonism, trivia, corporate greed or religious zealotry and whilst this could be holding up a mirror to our direction, it does result in a curious shallowness to characters of two or three times our life expectancy and still looking like twenty-somethings. As a social anthropologist it's nice to find one as a hero, however reluctant (and however much a new terminology is required!), and easier to understand his avoidance of 'ethnocentricity' which naturally (and thankfully) prevents him becoming an action hero.
In many ways The Algebraist comes across as an introduction to a new universe of ideas and possibilities. Its weaknesses are quickly forgiven and skipped through as its strengths are inspiring and delightful. I was even able to forgive the introduction of a human character who had opted to spend his last few centuries as a walrus - although quite why is never explained. Presumably because he could.
Mountain climbers, it is said, do it because 'it is there'. Great writers do it because 'it isn't there' and ever since Wasp Factory, Iain Banks continues to trailblaze.

Iain Banks

Editorial Review: