Comment by crdb | Hacker News Reader

Comment by crdb | Hacker News Reader

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Yes, I've read almost all his books, there's still a couple sitting on my Kindle.

I disagree with seeing these books as bleak, or indeed anything by Banks (it could be because our definitions of bleak differ, since I agree with you on the other values). The SF part is simply a setting for his strength, which is to detail and praise human character. For example, he continuously breaks the "rules of good writing" such as having dei ex machina (or more properly, dei in machina with some exceptions like The Algebraist) conclude most books but he is an example where it is done in a way that augments the story.

In most Banks stories, characters (including the Minds, for example in Excession) are put in difficult situations made believable by well structured suspension of disbelief ("great craftsmanship"). They get out of these situations using their intelligence and demonstrating courage and a well defined hierarchy of values (including appropriate self-sacrifice for something they value higher than their life). This is philosophically the opposite of Story of My Life and Ubik. Even if the ending is a downer, even if major characters suffer enormously (I'm still marked by Surface Detail years after reading it... truly harrowing), reading Banks had me walk away with my mind augmented somehow.

That being said, on the First contact/alien civilisation front I always got the feeling that Banks' aliens species are always very human, representing different facets of human nature, including the Minds. I think it is on purpose, like Asimov in most of his work he was not setting out to represent truly alien species as Charlie Stross, Peter Watts or Cixin Liu have done but writing novels about human characters and values that happened to be framed by SF.

Glad you like them, although I'm surprised — "bleak" doesn't even begin to describe some of the stuff in Banks' novels.

I don't know if you've read the ones I mentioned, but [SPOILERS AHEAD] in Consider Phlebas, every main character dies, the protagonist's species goes extinct in the process, and the epilogue essentially summarizes the whole story as accomplishing absolutely nothing; in Use of Weapons, the protagonist is revealed to have a past as a psychotic, genocidal warlord, and most of the wars he is subsequently involved with as a mercenary go badly for most involved; in Against a Dark Background, everyone except the protagonist dies, and it's fairly traumatic besides (though the unpublished epilogue, which is on the Banks web site, lifts it up a little). Another bleak one is Look to Windward, although the tone is more elegaic; the fate of that sorry anthropologist who studied giant floating aliens is one of the saddest scenes I've ever read (very much reminiscent of PKD's "Rautavaara's Case").

I agree that philosophically, he's on the positivist side of things, despite the amount of sheer death and destruction that goes on in his books. It's a trait, a sort of sarcastic, righteous rebelliousness in the face iniquity, that he shares with Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams. (Speaking of, I found Feersum Endjinn to be a highly Pratchettian novel. It's also quite different from anything else Banks wrote. It's excellent and probably underrated.)

As an example of a polar opposite, I would point to Stanislaw Lem, who seemingly had zero faith in humanity. Solaris, His Master's Voice and so on take an extremely dim view of humankind's ability to do anything except navelgaze and quibble.

I think I should be more specific with my definition of bleak.

It's possible to write a novel where the setting, and the story lead to dark places, and finish badly for the heroes, but without the heroes giving up on life or thinking. There are many instances in history of people standing their ground in hopeless circumstances.

In fiction, I think the best depiction of what I mean might be Letters from Iwo Jima (the movie, not the actual letters which are relatively sparse). Kuribayashi's character goes through hell consciously but his extraordinary resistance - down to refusing to banzai charge as is customary in those situations and instead patiently drawing out the fight to maximise enemy casualties, drawing out the pain for himself and his troops in the process - is a phenomenal description of character. It is specifically in Eastwood's depiction that this comes through although the real Kuribayashi was every bit the depicted one. So I do not consider the movie or the book "bleak" but incredibly awe-inspiring despite its content and ending for the protagonist.

Meanwhile, the main character in Ubik and most of PKD's novels is continuously failing to have any agency, thwarted by unknown and unbeatable forces until he just accepts his fate and stops moving. I always thought that this book in particular and PKD's work in general were close to depictions of depression, which is where the bleakness is. I'm in a rush right now so can't immediately come up with a good example but many modern works of fiction depict wonderful conditions and stories with very bleak characters incapable of appreciating their luck.

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