BOOK REVIEW: Use Of Weapons

Iain Menzies Banks was a scifi writer before dying from cancer a year ago. As a serious post-modern space opera novelist, he showed the real ugliness of post-economic communism for a space-faring version of humans in the far future. A multi-galactic space faring version of us, with nearly unlimited knowledge, super intelligent AIs, and free energy. They build space ships the size of continents, with full societies on board and millions of people who don't feel the need to leave since the ships travel. They have everything. They get bored. They can afford to be patient, to be utterly condescending. Banks was himself a member of Scottish nobility, complete with a family castle.

His books would make really good movies, but we don't have the technology to do them yet. Despite the efforts of one studio in rural Marin country being responsible for the majority of special effects in the last 35 years, they don't have the skills for this. They're too in bed with Hollywood to animate unclicheed styles. The intelligent floating suitcase sized Culture "drones" which act as body guards, valets, and information terminals for the human operatives have no faces to emote, using color and motions instead. The drones also carry a few very small antigravity steered microdrones, the size of a knife, called a knife missile, which does what it sounds like. They require a great deal of vocal and visual finesse to provide emotional context to their communications, which are frequently sarcastic. ILM isn't up for that. They're great at faces, like Pixar, but not boxes. Most animators can only emote boxes with menace, and only using dubstep or BWAAAWM.

Context is the advantage that books hold over movies. Gifted directors can trick the view into that 1000 words of comprehension with the right images, but gifted directors are rare, even with the world population of nearly 7 billion. I suppose someone will get around to turning one or more of his Culture novels into a proper movie in 5 or 10 years. Considering we got the second realistic space opera in 40 years just last summer (Gravity), our modern civilization isn't quite ready for The Culture. The Communists are vicious, power hungry, murderers who only care about controlling everybody else. They would be terrified of the level of condescension the Culture would hold over them. It would make them boycott every movie house showing it. They would pretend superiority rather than admitting how little they've advanced from bloodletting and dominance.

Banks' prose is exceedingly well written. My favorite of his novels are Player of Games, Use of Weapons, Excession. Not everything he writes is good, but a fair bit is.

Someone posted this on YouTube. I have been listening to it through my library loan. It was written 20 years ago, so I guess I'm not surprised it is largely unprotected at this point. The voice acting is excellent, and the writing is his very best. Like Gibson's Neuromancer, level of quality. Have a listen if you want. It's really very good.