I don’t know about you, but I think that photograph on the cover is something else. To me it’s the type of picture that evokes the exotic. It inspires the otherworldly. It’s a story in itself. You may as well not need any words inside that cover.  Even if the original image is somewhat sullied by being merged with a nondescript star field; something of David Bowman’s “…my God…it’s full of stars” perhaps?

It, therefore, is going to take a story of such imagination to be worthy of that cover. And I must say, Iain M Banks has given it a good go. Even if by its nature it holds the epithet “space opera”.

Space operas (or “large-scale SF”, as the Guardian’s blurb on the back of my particular edition states) are not to everyone’s liking. They have casts of tens, hundreds, thousands, millions and up and the locations are scattered across worlds and galaxies and even universes. They tend to deal with the epic; the characters are extraordinary beings at play in extraordinary times. Achieving coherence and a relatability in such situations and with such characters can be difficult. Yes, these are general-isms, but the perception of space operas as huge tomes of exposition which tend to ignore character development in favour of Big Ideas, speculation, and pure escapism does have some basis in truth.

It’s fair to say that the space opera basics are all here within The Algebraist. Far future: check. Aliens: check. Lasers: check. Other types of big weapons: check. Even bigger weapons: check. Space battles: check. Interstellar travel: check. Wormholes: check. Giant spaceships: check. Small spaceships: check. Inhabited planets, countless: check. Pan-galactic cultures: check. Epic happenings: check.

All very serious.

And yet.

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For those of you not familiar with Iain M Banks’ Culture novels, I suggest that you do not read this book. Not right away. Instead, I would suggest that you acquaint yourself with the Culture by reading, at the very least, Use of Weapons or Consider Phlebas. And then you read this book.

If you didn’t know any better, it would be very easy to disregard Inversions as having anything to do with the Culture. Or anything to do with science fiction at all. In fact, it reads almost exactly like an historical drama, a faux-medieval setting populated with kings and dukes and ladies in waiting and guards and waifs and wastrels. Given that this sort of setting is so beloved by fantasy stories, it is not hard to imagine it as a tale of magic, even if what magic there might be is so subtle that it’s doubtful you could even call it magic.

Yes, it is possible to enjoy this book without knowing an ounce about the Culture. It is possible to enjoy whilst ignoring the intimations that the story is science fiction: two suns and many moons; a character’s seeming preternatural ability to listen in on conversations she shouldn’t be able to. It is possible to enjoy by twisting it into full-blown fantasy. It is possible to enjoy the rounded characters and thought-provoking situations at face value.

But to get the full dimensionality of the story, to read it as I think Banks intended, you do need to know about the Culture.

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This was not what I was expecting. Having grown up reading Eon, The Forge of God and other humbly named novels, I was all ready to engross myself in some more of Greg Bear’s visionary hard sci-fi flights of fancy.

What I got instead was half science fiction, half fantasy, and all of it bordering on literature. Literature! From a science fiction writer. And one who normally specialises in the harder aspects of science fiction at that. Closer in spirit to Bear’s fantasy duology Songs of Earth and Power than any of his previous science fiction tomes, City at the End of Time is nonetheless like nothing the author has written before.

Bear probably had specifics in mind when he wrote this book, and there will usually be one explanation that makes more sense than others, but this book has left a lot to the imagination. There are many things in City at the End of Time — characters, plot points, situations — that are open to interpretation. And therefore open to different meanings. And therefore subject to further study. See? Literature.

Speaking of imagination, Bear shows he still has buckets of it. Like many of his previous novels, the sheer scope of this book is something to behold. As Bear’s career has progressed, his stories have tended to get grander, and to get more apocalyptic. From the Little Death of his Eon series, to the destruction of the Earth in The Forge of God series, Bear ups the ante yet again, dealing with nothing less than the destruction of the entire universe in this book. And, not content to play with the universe in a purely Newtonian sense — the destruction of space at a fixed time — Bear gives a nod towards Einstein’s connection of time and space and intends to destroy both of them. In other words, not only does the universe die, but it becomes as if it never lived. How can some event that’s already happened become…um…not happened?

It is not only the concept that takes an extra level of comprehension. Bear’s method of writing is not going to win a whole legion of mainstream fans: the non-linear story-telling, the lack of explanation, the confusing, fantastical elements. I was not surprised to see that this book rates two and a half stars (out of five) on Amazon, with a fair number of one star reviews. I can see why, even if I don’t necessarily agree.

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There is an article over on i09 called “Why is Hard Science Fiction So Unrealistic?” which offers up the treatise “hard science fiction is not always realistic”. Really? How could something about speculative technology possibly be unrealistic?

The article’s main thrust is that a “hard science fiction” story should only be considered realistic if it also contains Literary Realism. It doesn’t matter how hard, or plausible, the science is, if there is no “grit” to the situation, or there are no “real” characters with flaws, then the story cannot be called “realistic”. OK, fine. That is true enough. But who says we want hard science fiction to be “realistic” anyway?

The first line in the article:

In science fiction, people often confuse narrative realism with “hard,” or scientifically-accurate, storytelling.

They do?

I don’t.

Personally, I have never thought that hard science fiction also had to conform to the literary realism movement. Surprisingly enough, hard science fiction to me has always been about “hard science”: the realism of the characters or their situations have never really come into it. As long as the story has an engaging plot and is halfway well written, then I don’t care that the hero is an unrealistic post-human genius who can defeat any problem with a wave of his sonic screwdriver.

To prove my point, I turn to that arbiter of all that is true and real, Wikipedia. Its first sentence in its Hard science fiction article:

Hard science fiction is a category of science fiction characterized by an emphasis on scientific or technical detail, or on scientific accuracy, or on both.

Exactly. Realistic characters or situations have not been, and nor should be, prerequisites for hard science fiction. It’s up to the author to write what they want. If they want to write in realistic characters or situations, fine, they can write them in. If they want to write escapism with implausibly competent protagonists and dastardly villains, then also fine. You know, occasionally implausibly competent protagonists and dastardly villains turn up in real life. Asking everyone who writes hard science fiction to make it “realistic” would be taking all the fun out of the genre.

The last line in the article (where literary realism suddenly became SF realism, but I think they’re the same thing):

…we start demanding SF realism to go along with scientific accuracy.

We do?

I don’t.

If a book combines hard science fiction and literary realism: great. If a book is hard science fiction with unrealistic characters: great as well. If it’s any good, I’ll just enjoy it. Just leave hard science as hard science without accoutrements. I’ll leave quibbling over sub-genre boundaries to people who write giant screeds on internet forums and websites.

Oh wait. I’m one of them. Maybe I shouldn’t generalise or compartmentalise.

I bought this book on a whim. I had never heard of Gary Gibson. Yes, I know that buying a book on a whim could be a costly mistake. And yes, the local library does happen to have this particular book. But I got sucked in by impulse and by the blurb on the back:

For a quarter of a million years an alien race has been hiding a vast and terrible secret.

Dang. I’m hooked. I’m a sucker for elderly alien races and vast, terrible secrets. It goes on:

In the 25th century, only the Shoal possess the secret of faster-than-light travel (FTL), giving them absolute control over all trade and exploration throughout the galaxy. Mankind has operated within their influence for two centuries, establishing a dozen human colony worlds scattered along Shoal trade routes.

Intriguing. Even if the mention of trade routes brings to mind disturbing images of the cringe-worthy Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace. Oh God, that movie’s insipid crawling foreword: “Turmoil has engulfed the Galactic Republic. The taxation…yawn…of trade routes to…snore…huh, what?…Naboo”. Make it stop already! If you’re a fan of this film please watch this. If you’re still a fan after watching that, then you are an idiot.

Anyway, blurb, you may continue:

Dakota Merrick, while serving as a military pilot, has witnessed atrocities for which this alien race is responsible. Now piloting a civilian cargo ship, she is currently ferrying an exploration team to a star system containing a derelict starship. From its wreckage, her passengers hope to salvage a functioning FTL drive of mysteriously non-Shoal origin. But the Shoal are not yet ready to relinquish their monopoly over a technology they acquired through ancient genocide.

Oooh, ancient genocide! I shelled out the cash. At least it doesn’t revolve around fucking taxation.

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