But what he cannot do is hold my attention. For all his fancy wordsmithery, this book was a chore to read, a 900-page chore. A chore where pay-offs, such as they were (I’m thinking pay-offs is maybe too strong a phrase), didn’t start coming in until well over halfway through.

Even getting halfway through was a chore: uninteresting, flat characters, uninteresting, flat situations. Well, mostly flat: the World War II situation and its cryptographical bent was genuinely interesting. But there was nowhere near enough of that; or was it far too much of the flat other? Sometimes it got hard to tell. Whatever, it all became really old really fast.

So why the yawn…yaaaawwwwwn…yaaaaaawwwwnnnnnn…zzzzzzzz fest?

Maybe it was Stephenson’s many, many diversions into the non-salient things I intimated at above. Non-salient things that are just not interesting: Cap’n Crunch cereal, wisdom teeth, 1990s technology. I tried to read it all, I really did, but my brain cells are dying and I have better things to do with my time. (Not really.) Anyway, Wikipedia is a much better resource for trivia. It’s unfortunate Wikipedia didn’t exist when Stephenson penned this: he could probably have just put in links to the irrelevant instead of writing five to ten pages of inconsequential blather that added nothing to the story. I would have appreciated it.

Or maybe it was the frankly uninteresting modern-day timeline (well, late 1990s timeline) regarding setting up a data haven in the Philipines (well, technically a neighbouring fictional Sultanate). He has dialogue that includes “business plan” and “diluting stock” and “NDAs” (Non Disclosure Agreements for those afraid of TLAs¹) and 1990s technospeak that just feels so dated now. Nothing turns me off quicker than out-of-date jargon and busine…zzzzzzzz…huh, what? Oh, sure, you could read the storyline as a period piece, but still.

(And it’s on the lower end of the annoyance scale, and most people wouldn’t pick it, but seeing as this book is a geek’s playground, it bugs me disproportionately: he has one of his techno-wizard characters say “My job is to program the routers, making sure the data will always have a clear path from Taiwan to Kinakuta” when I’m pretty sure if he really was even an occasional router-jockey he would say “configure the routers“².)

Or maybe it was that there were two timelines/storylines in play, and the threads tying them together (at the very end) were coincidental, contrived and unsatisfying. The numerous pairs of connections between the two timelines (all of which aren’t that apparent until well into the book) seems to me to be lazy story-telling³: sons and daughters and nephews and once-were-enemies who coincidentally meet each other in the 1990s and fathers and mothers and uncles and enemies who coincidentally meet during World War II, all related to all of the stories in some way, some tenuous, some at a tangent, some directly. It is just a little too much.

Maybe Stephenson was trying to be clever, setting up labyrinthine byways and crossroads. Unfortunately, to me it makes the world seem too small a place, where only a handful of people are involved in this story’s central plot (yes, it does have one, as subtle and hazy as it is), and where probability is given short shrift. I would have given odds of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, billions, to one against the book’s coincidental occurrences.

Or maybe it was that Stephenson comes across as a know-it-all intellectual superior who can use nouns and verbs and adjectives and adverbs and punctuation and knows the laws of grammar and how to break them and has an encyclopaedic knowledge of inconsequence and likes to show off. (Much like my reviews, probably.)

The inconsequences sure felt like showing off: “Here’s what I know and think, isn’t it impressive?” And the way in  which Stephenson holds off giving the reader any hint of a plot for a very large part of the book is almost disdain. I am rather old-fashioned and conventional in my tastes: I do like a good story to tie a bunch of words together.

Having said all of that, I do now have to say that it is not all bad. The World War II thread was actually pretty damn interesting, revolving around Bletchley Park and Alan Turing and a host of imaginary cryptologists and soldiers and things that never happened (but would have been damn interesting if they had) and probably a few things that actually did (and were still damn interesting).

If only Stephenson had stuck to that, and not introduced the maddeningly lame 1990s storyline, then I might have been more inclined to enjoy my read.

I am loathe to spend too much more time discussing this book⁵. It’s already eaten up too much of my time already, so I think I will leave it at that: many things bugged me about this book, too long, too irrelevant, insubstantial plot, coincidence, contrivance, 1990s dotcom business-speak laced with dated technobabble, and not enough held me. You have been warned.

At times very dry, oft a little bit too dry, betraying the distinguished author’s science-first-then-writing background, this book does have some fascinating insights into what nothing really means, including how it is probably at the heart of all creation.

I am willing to give the dryness some latitude: although I often found my eyes glazing over at some of the ideas and descriptions offered, such descriptions really cannot be dispensed with if you want the full story and if you hang in there, the surrounding interestingness soon permeates everything.

As with most tomes covering a history of humanity’s understanding on a particular subject, this book more or less follows chronologically: from the early civilisations who realised that with a zero more meaningful commerce could be done through to the latest (well, 2001, when this book was published) cosmological insights into how the vacuum shapes our universe.

Barrow touches on mathematics, philosophy and physics, and shows he has fantastic understanding of nothing. Not all his explanations will find understanding ears, especially with regards modern cosmology. But that is because what he presents is so far beyond the ken of our day-to-day understanding of the world as to be almost gibberish to most lay people. If you are so inclined, however, stick with it, as lucidity can be found amongst the mathematical scratchings.

Oh, what fun John D Barrow must be at parties when he says he’s written a book about nothing. And how disappointed Seinfeld aficionados must be that a book about nothing is nowhere near as hilarious as a show about nothing.

Light Years is a testament to Brian Clegg’s power of clarity. He offers fantastic explanations of some of the more bizarre aspects of light, eschewing mathematics, relying on clear prose to convey appreciation of both the problem and, if we know the solution, the solution. He’s not above using a diagram or two, but only when strictly necessary.

The usual suspects are all covered here: Galileo, Newton, Maxwell, Einstein. The giants. And many esoteric suspects you’ve probably never heard of, but who made today’s world what it is: Muslim scientist Alhazen, Roger Bacon, aka Doctor Mirabilis, lens makers Hans and Zacharias Janssen, Anton van Leeuvenhoek, the father of microbiology, and those associated with the invention of the telescope Hans Lippershey, Leonard and Thomas Digges. The list goes on.

The book starts off with the very latest in research (at least at the time the book was published), and reads like science fiction: Bose Einstein Condensates and slow glass (a term which I’d never heard before), travelling the spectrum (ha ha ha) to faster-than-light communication through quantum tunnelling. OK, many of the concepts Clegg discusses here are still in the realm of science fiction, but the point he is making is that light is still throwing up surprises and our current understanding, while wide-ranging, is by no means comprehensive.

After this quick introduction into the (more-or-less) current state of affairs, Clegg takes us right back to the beginning: the Greek myths, Icarus and Daedalus, the Greek philosophers, Archimedes, Ptolemy, the Bible, “Let there be light”. Light was a much thought about, yet little understood, phenomenon. The power that light holds over us can be seen in our names for the periods that Clegg takes us through: the Dark Ages, the Enlightenment.

Coming to the Enlightenment, Clegg excels in explaining the great scientists and their thought patterns. The ones who really shaped our world and understanding of it: Galileo, Newton, Maxwell, Einstein, Feynman. The ones who have not been superseded (yet). Clegg’s descriptions of Einstein’s thinking, in particular, are very clear and offer an insightful look into how the great man came up with his defining theories. The people, the ideas, the theories. Many ancients thought light emanated from our eye; the truth of our eyes only being receptors was surprisingly a long time in becoming apparent to all. Clegg weaves it all together in a satisfying manner.

For those who wish a modicum of understanding of the electromagnetic wave/particle/it really is a particle/with wave-like features/warticle?/pave? that is light, but don’t want to have to endure three or four years of a university physics degree to get it, you could do a lot worse than this book.

Characters I couldn’t relate to. Action — mostly macho hunting action — that was boring. Dialogue that was even more boring. An antagonist, in the form of a giant burrowing alien, that was intriguing, yet at the same time immensely boring. (In more ways than one. Ha ha.)  Some thinly-veiled political allegory about socialism vs capitalism that came in on the boring-o-meter even below the rest. And an ending that came on a-sudden, briefly threatening to move the boring-o-meter, but not having the punch after all.

I have since learnt that this hard-to-find book (it’s out of print; I’m not all that surprised) is based on, or is a homage to, or something akin to, a William Faulkner short called The Bear.

In a way, this explains much of the feel of the book. The feel is old-school: a bunch of men hunting. A bunch-of-men that covers the usual bunch-of-men spectrum, from the old and grizzled, to the young and idealistic (our protagonist, Manuel), from the trigger-happy, to the, well, still trigger-happy. These are hunters after all. It could all have happened in some pioneer enclave in 18th or 19th or even 20th century America/Africa/Asia/Australia/Another A. The fact that it happens on Ganymede, a moon of Jupiter, hundreds of years in the future doesn’t diminish the old-timey feel.

While I’m being picky, the mix of technologies didn’t gel with me: in fact I think it pretty much has things backwards. In the future imagined in this story, the human race is genius at biological manipulation yet poor at electronics.

On the biology side there is magical genetic engineering (beasts that have been engineered to help terra-form Ganymede) and medical rehabilitation (regrow limbs). And on the electronics side there are crap radios and a general lack of interconnectedness and information flow. Come on, their radios don’t work properly? Really? In the words of a once-popular catchphrase of British comedic origin, “I don’t believe it”. And on that interconnectedness thing I just mentioned, there is not even a hint of the information age in all of this. The people are all disconnected (notwithstanding their faulty radios), and there is a sense of isolation that, even on a moon of Jupiter, I have a hard time coming to grips with. Maybe this is because this book was written back in the 1980s (1990s), before the advent of the World Wide Web. I therefore have the lens of the last couple of decades to look back through, but still, in this age of Facebook and Twitter and RFID and targeted advertisements and GPS and other technological terrors, it grates.

All right, fair enough, maybe in the future we will be genius at genetic engineering and have marvels of medicine that we can’t even dream about today. But to not have radios that work? That, my friends, is bollocks. And lazy convenience for the sake of the story. You see, plot points rely on this incongruence. Radios that don’t work properly, so people can be out of communication at inopportune times. How convenient indeed.

And, if biological science is so far advanced, where are the bioengineered humans? Where are the super-senses, the super-powers? Even if the bioengineering humans to that degree is not a done thing, where are the power-assisted space suits and the other accoutrements? I think that’s the problem: there are no great leaps of imagination in the technology. It reads like a 1950s pulp novel.

To the story: I’m afraid the 1950s pulp novel comparison is still apt. There is an otherworldly vibe going on with the mysterious alien artefact, but the surrounding hunt is just plain uninteresting, and the lack of strong female characters makes it feel too boys own.

I also failed to pick up much in the way of character development. There might have been, but if there was it was too subtle for me. The protagonist felt too passive: things happened to him that he had no control over and his powerlessness transferred to me reading the book. Maybe that was the intention, but it’s not a good feeling.

And the ending? Oh, the ending. With a denouement that stopped off at some orbital facility and had a diatribe on capitalism versus communism that washed right over me, the very conclusion to the book  just did not do it for me. OK, people who walk with me wear those T-shirts with the “I’m with stoopid” slogans on them, arrows all pointing at me, but I just did not get the ending. I think there might be some heavily encoded diatribe on the human condition in there somewhere, but I can’t be too sure.

I found the book a shame, because the concept was intriguing: an impervious mysterious alien artefact rumbles around Ganymede — a Ganymede in the throes of being terraformed, what is more — and a boy seems to have a connection with it. But the execution missed its mark for my mind: it felt like I was reading it through frosted glass.

It was never high on my priorities, either. Even less so now, short decades after leaving childhood’s shores. A children’s book that I hadn’t read when I was a child: what would be the point now? Of course, nothing has much point anyway, so when I stumbled across a well-worn paperback copy at my parents’ house a few months ago (uh, where did that come from?) I figured I may as well give it a go.

It wasn’t quite what I expected. More episodic than I thought it would be: the chapters are almost serialised, and I can imagine that they wouldn’t have been out of place spread over a weekly or monthly children’s magazine back in the day. It made it easy to put the book down for a day or so, and jump right back in and not feel you have to re-read anything to come back up to speed. Although, I must admit I found the sudden jump from page 102 to 137 a bit jarring. Did everyone else find that?

Hang on, I think something might be amiss here. Page 137 doesn’t usually follow straight on after page 102, does it? This isn’t one of those avant garde books that throws convention out the window, is it? It seemed so normal. Kenneth Grahame hasn’t perpetuated a giant practical joke down the century since he wrote this, somehow managing to brainwash everybody who read, adapted or studied this book into overlooking a rather large gap? Am I going to be swamped by some secret squad of book goons (don’t tell me they don’t exist…) and taken away never to be seen again just for letting this out in the ope–

Uh huh. So, um, I think something is amiss with this copy. And, yeah, looking at the really expensive binding method used (yes, sarcasm), I can see what might have happened: the pages just kinda fell out. Somewhere. Not here. Dang. I’m going to have to find another copy. Well, I could read the book on Project Gutenberg, but I’d rather hold a proper book and I don’t yet have one of those new-fangled Kindle or iPad wotsits for even a simulated experience. Nuts, reading on hiatus until replacement pages can be found. It is lucky the book is so episodic. Do I really want to buy a new book? Who gets the money now? It’s out of copyright, so I’m guessing the publisher? Plenty of options out there around the $15–25 mark. Meh, other options? I’d quite like a copy myself. Steal it? Nah, probably not the right thing to do. Ah ha! Second-hand. Yes. Pre-loved. Done and done. Back into it…

So, where was I? Episodic, yes. But more than that: it’s life. An adventure here. An adventure there. In between not much. Happiness here. Fear there. In between not much. Happily Grahame concentrates more on the adventure episodes than the not-adventure episodes, but we still get a feeling of progression, whether it be by the changing of the seasons, or the changing of the characters.

Ah, the characters. It is the characters that make this book. As it should be in a good story.

Mole, who sees the world with wide-eyes when he first wanders out of his house in the book’s opening pages. Who later, as his adventures progress through the chapters, becomes more comfortable with his new surrounds, the dangers they hold and at the same time becomes much more sure of himself. And in the end…well, you probably have to read for yourself. Clichéd? Only in the manner of a thousand other heroes.

Strong, competent Ratty, and aloof, intelligent, yet caring Badger and Toad. Toad. Mr Toad. What can we say of Toad? Immature. Fearless. Unthinking. Irresponsible. A gad. And someone we, on some level, want to be. Pure fun. And they are all imbued with character progression by Grahame — no mean feat.

Without these characters, The Wind in the Willows would not be The Wind in the Willows. Obvious, of course. The accoutrements of the English countryside provide a setting, but it could just as easily be anthropomorphised animals living in the middle of New York, or on the steppes of the Himalayas, or in deepest, darkest Africa. Yes, there is an innate English-ness about The Wind in the Willows, and the mannerisms are all English, but the characters, their characteristics, are universal.

Although the characters are not paint-by-numbers, there is a simplicity about the story Grahame tells. He doesn’t bother too much with keeping a consistency within his world: animals and humans interact when it’s funny, or even just when he feels like it, otherwise the two worlds are completely separate. For example, Mr Toad drives a car with humorous consequences, boards a barge and interacts with the human population on equal footing, getting arrested, being mistaken for a washer-woman. And yet the world of the animals is otherwise quite separate from the world of the humans. When the stoats and ferrets invade Toad Hall, the human police force isn’t called. Instead it’s left to Badger, Mole, Ratty and Toad to save the day.

Because of that simplicity, it is simply a fun tale with nicely rounded characters. There are the usual children’s tales morals of friendship and courage, which the one hundred-plus years between the writing and the reading haven’t really dulled. Read it and put that smile of childhood innocence back on your face.

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 always 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.

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. Lack of character development: well, that’s a bit of a cross, really.

For all the made-up words thrown around and the fun to be had with an opera in space, Banks is not above a smidgeon of character development. The characters are shaded, filled in past mere caricature. For the most part; the Archmandrite Luceferous is a little bit over-the-top.

Fortunately, Banks plays over-the-top extremely well, and counters what would be pretentious grandeur in lesser writers with humour, mixing techno-babble and characterisation to craft a story that, while not particularly deep, should stimulate the amusement centres of your brain.

Yes, Banks has a wicked sense of humour. The pratfalls and slapstick comedy stylings of the mysterious Dwellers exhibit Banks at his most playful, and are often laugh out loud funny. Quite an achievement when you consider how powerful and enigmatic a species Banks has constructed in these ancient aliens, who lie at the heart of what is really a thriller/mystery wrapped up in the imagery of space opera. Nothing is above finger pointing and laughing. Even when the wicked humour gets more wicked than humorous. The fortunes of the Archmandrite Luseferous’s enemies are shocking and yet at the same time reek of the funnier side of tragicomedy.

Even the introduction of the Archmandrite Luseferous, the main villain, has Banks’ tongue firmly in his cheek:

The Archmandrite Luseferous, warrior priest of the Starveling Cult of Luseum9 IV and effective ruler of one hundred and seventeen stellar systems…[blah blah blah]…Executive High Admiral of the Shroud Wing Squadron of the Four-Hundred-and-Sixty-Eighth Ambient Fleet (Det.)…[blah blah blah]…Triumvirate Rotational human/non-human Representative for Cluster Epiphany Five at the Supreme Galactic Assembly…[blah blah blah]…had some years ago caused the head of his once-greatest enemy, the rebel chief Stinausin, to be struck from his shoulders, attached without delay to a long-term life-support mechanism…[blah blah blah]…so that the Archmandrite could, when the mood took him, which was fairly frequently, use his old adversary’s head as a punchball.

See what I mean? Pure Douglas Adams, albeit with a meaner streak. (Oh, and somewhat reminiscent of these hilarious YouTube videos by British comedian Adam Buxton: “A New Pope” and “Remembrance on Xantiar”.)

Banks delights in throwing around his newly constructed locutions without explanation, as if they are the most natural things in the world. I like that: with explanations, this book would have been more or less twice the length, four times less interesting and sixteen times less magical, if I can say that about a science fiction book. The made-up words mostly make sense straight away; you can see where they’re coming from semantically. And most of the words that don’t make sense immediately will make sense eventually. The few that don’t ever make sense you don’t really need to worry about. Just appreciate them for what they are. It’s all about context.

The main protagonist, Fassin Taak, slow seer and heir to the position of paterfamilias of the Seer Sept Bantrabal, denizen of the planet-moon ‘glantine, which orbits Nasqueron, “Nest of Winds”, a Dweller homeworld, and all part of the system of Ulubis, doesn’t get half the grandiose introduction Luseferous does. This is because Fassin is quite an everyman, albeit an intelligent one.

And, being an everyman, Fassin is very obviously human. Quite a thing for a space opera populated by super villains and super superlatives. He is very obviously human not because it is obvious he is physically a human — Banks says as much — but his character, his flaws, his likes, his dislikes are all recognisably homo sapien. He is someone you can relate to, for all the otherworldly stuff he has to deal with.

Even better, there are surprises in Fassin’s character that show up periodically and twist your perception ever so slightly of him; twist to match the twists in the character. On one occasion I had to re-read a passage to make sure I was reading what I thought I was reading. Yet, when you reflect on what you’ve just read, it doesn’t strike you as wrong for the character, but right for him to have shades of grey.

As I mentioned above, Fassin is a slow seer: an historical and social researcher who alters his perception of time in order to “delve” the depths of a Dweller home world — gas giants — and communicate directly with the Dwellers. Dwellers operate on a much slower time-scale than members of the “Quick” races. (Most of the species in the galaxy are Quick, including humans. An individual Dweller can live to be billions of years old, hence their perception of time is going to be much different to a creature who lives a fraction of a fraction of that period.)

Being of an academic persuasion, therefore, Fassin is not who you would usually think of as a hero. While definitely not a goody-two-shoes, he’s no John McClane. He doesn’t use guns; yes, he could punch himself out of a paper bag, but,no, he could not deal with four thugs all at once; and he would not be amongst the first called into action when an invading horde threatens. However, he does know things. A thinking man’s action hero. Or an action man’s thinking hero. Something like that.

In the path of his work, Fassin has stumbled upon rumours of a mythological Dweller work called “The Algebraist”. Once an object of academic curiosity — a Holy Grail that was assumed to exist, but if it turned out to be a mirage, then, oh well — it now, when Ulubis comes under threat of invasion from the aforementioned Archmandrite and his Beyonder allies, assumes premier importance.

The reason? Ulubis was once connected to the rest of the galaxy and its overarching Mercatoria hierarchy by a wormhole. Unfortunately, Beyonder raiders have managed to destroy the wormhole, effectively meaning Ulubis is cut off, isolated by the tyranny of Special Relativity. This results in a sitting target for the incoming Archmandrite Luseferous and his thousands of warships. Help is on the way from the nearest Mercatoria star system in the form of a new wormhole and a substantial force of Summed Fleet craft, all travelling at sub-light speeds (albeit a significant fraction of c) but timing will be an issue: the Archmandrite will reach Ulubis first.

Called into action by the recently sundered Mercatorial arm in Ulubis, Fassin’s possibly Quixotic mission is to delve into Nasqueron to attempt to recover “The Algebraist”. For it is purportedly a record (or more strictly, a set of coordinates and a mathematical transformation, hence the name “The Algebraist”) of secret Dweller wormhole portals. If it is as the myth holds, then being able to use an alternate wormhole would allow outside Mercatorial help to arrive almost instantaneously. Oh, and the discovery of this super-secret network of Dweller portals would forever change the political landscape of the galaxy, and possibly beyond.

All well and good: Banks has a fair plot to hang the book on. But what really makes the story is Banks descriptions and depictions of his characters. The Archmandrite leaps to mind, as he is one of the most extreme, yet not-out-of-place, villains ever to see the light of day. His atrocities would bear healthy comparison to Hitler or Stalin or Pol Pot. But it is the Dwellers that are most welcoming of Banks’ pen.

If eccentricities flesh out a character then the Dwellers are so three dimensional they slip into the fourth. From yacht races to formal wars to hunting their young to using kudos as their currency to having planetary defence clubs in charge of awesome weaponry to their playful curiosity, and dismissiveness, in the face of the ferocious seriousness of both the Mercatoria and the Archmandrite’s forces. Dwellers mind their own business, and would prefer that others did the same, but when forced to interact with others the results are fascinating.

Fassin’s dealings with the Dwellers, as he attempts to elicit the information he needs, cycle from comedic to life threatening: he becomes caught up in yacht racing, a formal war, the appearance of the planetary defence club, has close encounters with the Mercatoria’s shock troops — the impressive Voehn; now that is what a super-soldier should be like — and even closer dealings with anathematics: artificial intelligences, AIs, shunned by the Quick and hunted to seeming extinction by them, but accepted without hesitation by the Dwellers, who don’t really care.

Interspersed with Fassin’s adventures in his search for “The Algebraist” are cursory glances back to the happenings within the Ulubis system as the Archmandrite arrives with his invasion force and proceeds to prove his right to conquer by performing war obscenities left, right and centre. Part and parcel of this we also see the sundered Mercatoria’s attempts to repel the invasion. Both forces harass the Dwellers for their own ends, whose “do not disturb” responses are exercises in finality. We see the incoming Summed Fleet, some way behind the Archmandrite’s forces, but preparing for battle.

Banks’ descriptions, as always, excel when it comes to presenting grandeur. From the firing of a giant space weapon to an intimate, yet ferocious, battle between an AI and some Voehn to the ruthless extermination of an orbiting habitat, the visuals are striking.

In the end, through all of the carnage and excitement and ancient aliens throwing around exclamations such as “fuck” as though they were cops from a forgettable 1980s Hollywood movie, I cannot see any hidden messages: quite apart from Banks’ mastery of scenery, of characters and of humour, there does not seem to be a moral. It is all play-by-play.

Perhaps others can see more in this book, but in the end, despite the apparent subversions, the humour, the everyman protagonist, it really is nothing more than space opera, or a pure thriller/mystery that happens to occur in a large-scale science fiction universe. The villain is truly evil. The hero has his doubts and his secrets, but he is doing right. And the Dwellers are comic relief. I doubt Banks meant it to be more than that. If he did, then I’m afraid the underlying morals were too subtle for my feeble brain.

Full of twists and turns, full of aliens and alien mysteries, full of likeable characters and astounding set pieces, just read it and revel in the speculation and pure escapism.

Not right away.

No, 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.

Because at first glance it is very easy to disregard Inversions as having anything to do with the Culture, and it could possibly be enjoyed without that prior knowledge. But then it gains so many more levels after familiarising yourself with Banks’ imagined universe.

On the surface, it reads like an historical drama, a faux-medieval setting populated with kings and dukes and ladies-in-waiting and guards and waifs and wastrels. Even with references to two suns and many moons, a character’s preternatural ability to listen in on conversations she shouldn’t be able to, amongst other otherworldly allusions, it is easy enough to view the story at most as a half-blown fantasy, ye olde sword-and-sorcery. You could even ignore the fantastical touches, dismiss them prosaically, perhaps as an inaccurate telling of events by a sloppy story-teller, revert it back to a straight sword-without-the-sorcery.

None of these interpretations do the book justice, however. Yes, it is possible to enjoy this book without knowing an ounce about the Culture. Yes, 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 stray into the world of the Culture.

Because, once you have some experience of the Culture, you will know of the existence of Contact, the branch of the Culture that deals with contacting alien species. Once you know of Contact, you will know of Special Circumstances, the intelligence arm. Once you know of Special Circumstances, you will know they like to send agents to do intelligence, or even interventionist, work on those alien species, with a view of bringing them into contact with the wider Culture (and indeed wider galactic society) once they are deemed ready.

Once you know these things, Inversions is elevated from a straight character study to a slightly-less-straight character study that mixes pre-industrial primitives with a galactic civilisation, with the associated moral implications of a technologically superior civilisation interfering in another, far less able, society. Once you know these things, you can begin to see the fingerprint of Special Circumstances throughout the story. You can begin to see that not all is what it seems. That is the beauty of the story: there is one meaning in the text, and there is yet more behind it if you know where to look.

The story itself is two parallel narratives, indirectly connected. Each narrative is told by a third party. The first narrative, the Doctor narrative, is told in the first person by the apprentice of the eponymous doctor, and is in the form of a report to the apprentice’s “Master”, an unnamed, but by no means sinister, person who otherwise has no place in the story. The doctor, known as Vosill, has risen inordinately quickly to prominence as the King of Haspidus’ personal physician, doubly so considering she is a woman and misogynistic attitudes are rife.

The second narrative, the account of the Bodyguard, is introduced by an initially unknown narrator and is presented as a “Closed Chronicle” after the fashion of the “Jeritic fabulists”. Which only means it is told conventionally in the third person, although as an added attraction the reader can try to guess the identity of the narrator (“Now With Added Fun!”). The land of the bodyguard, who is called DeWar, is a Protectorate many miles from the Kingdom of Haspidus.

The narratives never cross, and therefore the characters never do either, save some oblique references here and there.

Armed with the knowledge that this is a Culture novel, and that there are Special Circumstances operatives somewhere (nowhere is it ever explicitly mentioned, although the throwaway line in the Epilogue, where one of the characters “… [declines] the invitation, citing an indisposition due to special circumstances” is revealing), it is tempting to label the doctor, Vosill, and the bodyguard, DeWar, as agents immediately.

The decision to split the narrative structure in two certainly points towards there being two Special Circumstances agents (as does a “fairy story” told in parts throughout the book), one at each location, and it’s natural to hone in on the main characters. But Banks, via his narrators, is very adept at not letting concrete information out. It takes a substantial portion of the novel before you can begin to say with conviction who is who and what is what. And confirmation is surprisingly hard to nail down.

There seem to be clues everywhere, but remember that you are seeing events through the narrators’ naïve eyes. For example, Vosill is purportedly from the exotic nation of Drezen, many weeks’ travel over the sea from the Kingdom of Haspidus. As the narrator observes Vosill attend the King, and others, with far more sophistication than the other court doctors, he muses that this is perhaps because, in Drezen, they have greater knowledge of medicine than in Haspidus. The reader may think, on the other hand, that Vosill knows so much because she is a Culture agent. Either interpretation is valid, but which?

I am inclined to think the narrator is in error, and the reader the more fully informed; it makes more sense to me. But Banks enjoys playing with readers’ expectations and it seems to me that one of the themes of this book, whether intended or not, is an investigation into the nature of perceived truth, despite what the underlying reality might be.

Indeed, DeWar’s narrator says:

[…] Truth is a question of where one stands, and the direction one is looking in at the time.

The tale of DeWar is even harder to discern. Bodyguard to the Cromwellian Protector UrLeyn, DeWar is portrayed as highly competent and extremely loyal, yet otherwise untoward. In fact, he displays many traits that would seem to preclude him being a representative of the Culture. He has an innocence that is repeatedly exposed during his meetings with Perrund, favoured concubine of the Protector, where the two play games of strategy and skill. DeWar is obviously not stupid, but the way in which Perrund plays him offers the reasonable assumption that perhaps it is Perrund and not DeWar who is the agent.

It is not necessary for Banks to keep up pretenses forever, whether he meant to pretend in the first place or not. The method he chooses to tell the story (through the eyes of naïve narrators) necessarily means that people and incidents are reported as is, with no understanding that might have been conferred by a more omniscient story-teller. This, of course, is the whole point of the book, and the choice of the title Inversions: Banks is telling the tale of Culture intervention in a primitive society from the perspective of that society. I don’t think it is Banks’ intention to deliberately mislead, but only to offer the best recount of events that the ignorant primitive society can muster. That the reader may be deceived as a byproduct is a bonus, for both the author and the reader. It also means that Banks is not held to keeping any pretense going forever: through his narrators he can give clues, or even threaten to give the game away entirely, whenever he wants.

As I alluded to above, another dimension to the book is the underlying social commentary Banks chooses to make. Through the Special Circumstances agents, the story deals with two different political views on how best to bring a primitive society forward. Do you as a technologically and socially superior civilisation physically thrust the primitives in one direction or another, which can often only be accomplished through violent means: assassination of impedances, allowing favoured leaders free rein to implement their (read “your”) policies? Or even precede your arrival on the alien world with a bombardment of meteorites to take out regimes and whole peoples that might prove resistant further down the line? Or do you gently guide from the background, suitably disguising the advice so that your aims are achieved, but the primitives think it is all their doing?

Of course, this skips the initial ethical dilemma of whether it is even moral to intercede at all. But, this being Special Circumstances, I guess a reason could be that these primitives left to their own devices may one day become extremely powerful in their own right and challenge the Culture. And in a worst case scenario, destroy it. Best to intercede early, no, before it comes to that?

Not content to explore these political views in their own light, Banks muddies the water and gives his agents personal, sometimes very personal, feelings towards the people they are trying to guide. Both agents get involved emotionally with the people around them, and even the hands-off agent physically intercedes. People get killed, and the agent’s ideology is compromised.

Banks does not make any overt judgment calls on the respective merits of each political view, sullied as they are, but come the end of the book, one system seems to be doing much better than the other. Was the favourable outcome because the political methodology employed was untarnished by personal feelings, or was it the opposite?

And speaking of outcomes, it is gratifying to note that there are a number of proper denouements covering the fate of various characters, and most questions are answered. The clues as to the nature of the Special Circumstances agents, when looked back upon, make sense in light of these denouements.

I didn’t really notice it while reading it because I wasn’t thinking about it, but in retrospect, unlike most of Banks’ other Culture novels, where characters and locations abound, Inversions feels positively claustrophobic. Or perhaps intimate is a better word. Banks is able to spend more time with each character than is usually expected in a space opera. A lot happens through dialogue and there are a number of satisfying set pieces, both on an intellectual level and a pure thrill level.

Having said that, it is often what happens off-page that is most devastating when it comes to building a character. Banks has a wonderful way of leaving connections unspoken, and it’s up to the reader to make them. Yet, the connections the reader will make are undoubtedly the ones Banks wants, and they are often the ones that tell you the most about a character. Such as how a number of deaths in the Kingdom of Haspidus are unexplained (or even unexplainable) to the narrator, yet the connections we can make to the Special Circumstances agent tell us in no mean terms that the agent is almost sociopathic when it comes to removing obstacles.

In a character-driven story such as this, you would expect that action is not as abundant as it would be in a story dealing with, for example, vast fleets of hyper-powered interstellar craft about to make war on each other. But that’s not to say there is a lack of action: there isn’t. In fact, when it appears it is quite shocking: for one, it doesn’t happen often, and for two, interventionist Special Circumstances agents have some quite devastating weaponry at their disposal.

Inversions is not your typical science fiction story. In fact, it has to be the least unlikely science fiction story I have read, and almost, although not entirely, relies on the reader’s interpretations to make it so. I don’t doubt that a number of Banks’ Culture fans will balk at it. But when it comes to science fiction disguised as historical drama with just a hint of faux-medieval fantasy, Inversions is about as good as it gets.

This was not what I was expecting.

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 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.

Bear splits the narrative between two times: present day (or as close as it makes no difference), which he calls ten zeroes, and the impossibly far future, which he calls fourteen zeroes. These names reference the age of the universe. The present day age is about 13–14 billion years old (or approximately a one followed by ten zeroes). The far future is therefore when the universe is about 100 trillion years old (a one followed by fourteen zeroes).

The world of ten zeroes is recognisable, but only up to a point. Superficially it is a grey Seattle, but a Seattle with a number of convergent and divergent world lines. These various world lines are the homes of the present day protagonists and antagonists. On the good side (possibly!) are Ginny, Jack and Daniel. All of them possess a special stone called a “sum-runner”. Daniel in fact possesses two.

Ginny and Jack dream of a city of the future: the “Kalpa” of 100 trillion years hence. They are also “fate-shifters”, capable of seeing their own immediate divergent world lines, and to some extent choosing which one they can take — a kind of cosmological undo button; a personal, temporal ctrl-Z.

Daniel’s gifts are similar, yet subtly different. He does not dream of the city, and his memory is often lacking on important pieces of his life, but he does have more ability to jump between parallel world lines. When he jumps he usually possesses (for want of a better word) the other version of himself in the alternate world line, although he has also found he is able to possess other people if required.

The present-day antagonists are an interesting bunch. The main one is an Englishman named Max Glaucous, who was plucked from an alternative 18th or 19th century London by a man named Whitlow to work for the ominous Chalk Princess, via her underling the Moth. Glaucous, like Daniel, has the ability to jump between world lines, which enables him to do the job the Chalk Princess chose him for: hunt down sum-runners. The presence of Ginny, Jack and Daniel in Seattle has called Glaucous, his hideous partner and other hunters (including Whitlow and the Moth).

Ostensibly helping the protagonists is the enigmatic Conan Arthur Bidewell. He provides sanctuary to firstly Ginny, and then Jack and Daniel. And then the self-titled Witches of Eastlake, the book group women: Ellen, Miriam and Azagutta. Bidewell’s sanctuary is a green warehouse in Seattle, within which he has stockpiled boxes and boxes of books. (Books, it turns out, form an important basis of Bear’s central conceit.)

Oh, and then there’s Bidewell’s cat. Don’t forget the cat.

The world of fourteen zeroes is completely unrecognisable. It is set in the Kalpa, possibly the last city anywhere. This universe outside the Kalpa is crumbling, slowly being overrun by a great and terrible chaos. The Kalpa, safe (for the moment) within its ring of reality generators, stands besieged.

Bear pulls upon his impressive world-building capabilities and fashions the world of the Kalpa so full of high technology and otherworldly culture that the terminology and descriptions border on the fantastical. Arthur C Clarke once famously said:

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Bear seems to have taken this quote to heart. How do you represent technology and culture from so far in the future? It is going to be like nothing we have at the moment. Description of a short-term future — a few hundred, or even thousand, years — is possible using today’s language. Sure, it’s likely more miss than hit, but at least, if the author puts some thought into it, it is plausible. But to describe 100 trillion years in the future in today’s terms is going to seem banal, as if civilisation has had time immeasurable to advance, and we find it’s never progressed past our feeble imaginings. Such a time frame requires extreme exoticism.

So, Bear uses the tropes of fantasy and magic: invent words for things that seemingly have no connection to anything we know of or have today and present them as is, with no explanation. We have to accept them, as we don’t know, or perhaps even cannot know, the basis for them. Bear flings around unfamiliar words such as “Eidolons”, “angelins”, “bions”, “noötic matter” as though they are the most natural thing in the world. They are never really explained: sure, there are hints as to what they are, some are easier to work out than others, but readers just have to go with the flow, and that can make for a difficult read.

The Kalpa is the last remaining bastion of a universal human civilisation. Humanity has changed immensely: for a start most humans are now composed of the aforementioned noötic matter, which is “…hardly matter at all — more like a binding compact between space, fate and two out of seven aspects of time.” The notion of noötic matter seems to be taken from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s concept of the Noösphere. The elite humans are known as Eidolons, which are apparently vast intellects stored in machines. The elite of the elite are known as Great Eidolons. Bear looks to have lifted the concept from the theosophical eidolon: an astral being, the shade of a human. Oh, and in case you didn’t know, a kalpa is a Hindu measurement of time. Bear has certainly been reading some very ontological subjects.

Within this city at the end of time it is assumed that the Great Eidolons wonder whether, out amongst the chaos, another city, Nataraja (yes, another Hindu allusion), has survived the chaos. For this purpose, breeds are made. Breeds are representations of ancient humans made not of noötic matter, but of primordial matter, the matter of which we are currently made. Breeds, suitably protected, can cross into the chaos (something which the Eidolons are incapable of doing) and search out the lost city. Two such breeds are Tiadba, a curious female, and Jebrassy, a would-be warrior. These two are connected via dreams to Ginny and Jack, and are the breeds that will make it further than all of the others in working out the mystery of the chaos, Nataraja, and the shifting story of Sangmer and Ishanaxade.

The story is classic apocalyptical, albeit told non-linearly: the world/universe will end unless our heroes can save the day (almost literally). The cause of the end of the universe, and the book’s ultimate antagonist, is “The Typhon”. As you may have gathered above, there are many allusions in this book, and I have probably not recognised a fifth of them, but one of the more obvious is Bear taking his overarching antagonist from Greek mythology. Bear’s Typhon is, for some part, far more powerful and terrifying than its Greek provenance. And it is most often presented matter-of-factly, an unstoppable and unknowable force of nature: the universe is tearing itself up for no good reason other than that is what it does. It is inevitable.

But, for the other part, Bear also presents the Typhon as a supernatural being, the real Typhon from mythology, something that can be negotiated with: “The City Princes made a deal with the Typhon”. Something that has a will, and is external to the universe — a vengeful god from another plane of existence. In fact, near the end of the book, Bear devotes an entire section to anthropomorphising the Typhon. I find this ultimately a little unsatisfying, pandering to my, and others’, need to have some explanation proffered. Personally, this was a choice I hope that I wouldn’t have made were I writing the story: to me the Typhon as an uncaring, unexplained, inevitability is much more frightening than a childish, capricious god.

Quite apart from the origins or intentions of the Typhon, Bear’s descriptions of the fates of those affected by it are horrifying. (And I think that Bear has substantial talents in horror: parts of his most overt horror novel, Psychlone, scared the bejesus out of me.) The Typhon tears at the reality of the universe, which, among other things, rends it into chunks of time and space. Everything so torn up also degrades into a grey, colourless, thoroughly distorted mirror of what it was. People, or any beings, caught in the rip, crashing into the Terminus (where everything ends), are consciously subjected to a degrading (in more ways than one) Sisyphean existence.

This book is a tour de force of science fiction, fantasy, mythology and philosophy. It is rich and infuriating. Bear is not afraid to leave strands untied, although he does finally draw together Ginny, Jack, Daniel, Glaucous, Tiadba, Jebrassy and others to offer a denouement. Personally, the ending didn’t satisfy me entirely. But that is how the entire book is: tantalising, with the feeling that a straightforward explanation is just around the corner. It is only as fulfilling as you want it to be. That is intriguing.

Some characters that you may think are important disappear out of the story without explanation. Most character’s motives are left unexplored. There are a number of parts where Bear stumbles with the story (or at least he seems to; there may be some underlying meta-reason that explains it; one I will probably never get), and despite the seeming urgency — after all, the universe is supposedly ending shortly (whatever that means when time itself ends for all time) — the story moves as if in treacle, if it could be said to move at all.

On a first read — and possibly second, third, fourth… — most things will not make sense. More questions are asked than answered. And yes, not everyone will like it. Some will be thoroughly put off by it, and give it one star on Amazon. A substantial number will not even bother to finish it. But some will love it. It can be thought about, dissected, critiqued as much as you want.

Don’t say you weren’t warned.

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.

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.

Before I get into the meat, it turns out this book is the beginning of a trilogy, the second of which — Nova War — has only just been published. Much of what seems to be unfinished in this book, therefore, has the capacity to be expanded upon. So don’t expect answers come the end (of either the book or this review).

I must confess that it took me two attempts to start Stealing Light.

It is not that the writing is bad, or that the story is boring. Gibson is an able wordsmith: more prosaic than poetic, aiming to have the imagery they suggest rather than the words themselves wonder the reader.

The opening few lines are certainly attention grabbing. (Although amidst an introduction comprising full sentences I almost got thrown out immediately with the incongruent elliptical sentence “Trying to take it all in.” I cannot articulate why it grated me, but it did. It probably is only because it is elliptical, and maybe I half expected a Microsoft Word green wavy incorrect grammar line to appear under it. Am I really being schooled by a bloated piece of software?) To Gibson’s credit, after the full-on introduction, he doesn’t relent on the action throughout the rest of the book. (And no further ellipses annoyed me.) Descriptions were clear, and I didn’t have a problem seeing Gibson’s vistas in my mind’s eye.

I value clarity in the words I am reading, even if the story itself is convoluted beyond imagination. Which brings me back to the reason it took me two attempts to begin Stealing Light: the chapters in the first half of the book are consistently non-linear, and because of this convolution I lost interest about five or six chapters in on my first attempt. The narrative jumped in time (and space) often. To help the reader, the chapters where the narrative jumps are headed with the relevant information, for example:

Standard Consortium Date: 03.06.2538
25 kilometres south of Port Gabriel, Redstone Colony
Port Gabriel Incident + 45 minutes

Or:

Redstone Colony
Consortium Standard Date: 01.06.2538
3 Days to Port Gabriel Incident

Or even just a location with no time:

Trans-Jovian Space, Mesa Verde

This I took to mean present day, even though some chapter headings added “Present Day” anyway.

Despite the labels, I managed to lose myself at times, frequently requiring me to oscillate between two or more chapter headings in an attempt to peg whereabouts I was in the story. Comparing the chapter headings was not always straightforward, as it involved checking between three or four pieces of information. And as can be seen above, often the information was ordered or labelled differently or just plain missing. I don’t mind non-linear narration, but I found this book’s beginning required a bit of effort on my part to keep track of the story. Oh my poor, feeble mind.

Fortunately, curiosity got the better of me (or maybe it was the fact that I’d bought the book, so I was damn well going to read it) and a week or so later I gave it another go. Helpfully armed with the conscious (and probably unconscious) memories of my first attempt, I made it through. And I am glad I did, because once past the labyrinthine beginning, things begin to get Big.

Big is probably the main reason I read science fiction, and in particular gravitate to space opera. Big is when your characters’ actions affect worlds and entire universes. The science fiction and fantasy genres lend themselves well to Big concepts. From JRR Tolkien’s Middle–earth to Frank Herbert’s human empire of the far future to JK Rowling’s hidden wizarding world the very best constructed worlds have a believability, or at the very least a self-consistency that is believable. Their characters and plots weave into those worlds in intellectually satisfying ways, and what the characters do affect the world, and vice versa, and you can see why.

World-building is where Gibson really shines in this book. His portrayal of the universe of the 26th century has a nice internal consistency and is rich enough to offer plenty of surprises throughout the book.

Despite writing in a field already rich with sentient starships, near-instantaneous travel and all other sorts of weird and wonderful technology, and managing to include most science fiction staples, Gibson at the same time renders them afresh and adds his own unique creations, from the grotesque bead-zombies to the mysterious giantkiller and nova-inducing weaponry to the…no, I’ve said far too much already. I’ll leave some things unsaid, waiting to be discovered by the reader.

Gibson’s characters are not built to quite the same standards as his world, although the protagonists are painted with more dimensionality than the antagonists. Stealing Light uses three main protagonists: two humans and one Shoal. The primary character — a human — is called Dakota Merrick. Merrick is a “machine head”, someone whose brain has been enhanced via advanced technology. This advanced technology includes improved computational capabilities, memory and, crucially for the story, the ability to communicate wirelessly (read “telepathically”) with any other entity with a similar interface, be it a run-of-the-mill computer, an interplanetary or interstellar ship, such Merrick’s Piri Reis, another machine head or even…no, I won’t spoil that one either.

The two secondary characters are the Iain-M-Banksian-named Trader-In-Faecal-Matter-Of-Animals, a Shoal who pops up everywhere that plot-important points occur (it is unlikely to be coincidence), and Lucas Corso, a xeno-data archaeologist (basically an historian interested in aliens).

Of the three, most time is spent with Merrick, and indeed most of the intertwined first part of the book deals with her via various flashbacks. The main flashback involves the infamous Port Gabriel Incident, which is a major turning point in Merrick’s character. By the time the book begins to get into its stride (the final third or so), you can see why Gibson spent so much time with Merrick’s backstory. (It’s just a more straightforward, less convoluted telling may have been preferable.)

Not much time is spent from Trader’s point of view. There are some tantalising views of the Shoal homeworld, as well as their social interactions and politics, but in the main, Trader appears at various points of the story almost as an adjunct, albeit an important one who has major influence on the plot. I trust things will become clearer as the trilogy progresses.

A considerable amount of time is spent with Corso: he is not presented as heroic in any great measure, but he is relatable. And even if his not-quite-cowardice can get annoying, he at least is credible.

Of the three, only Merrick seems to undergo much of an arc, from idealist through to independently-minded…I was going to say cynic, but I’m not sure that she is. Possibly she is more pragmatic come the end of the book. Corso is painted less thoroughly, and his arc is subtle, if indeed there is one. This being a trilogy, though, there is plenty of scope for him to grow or change (if he lasts that long!), and I hope Gibson uses that opportunity. Trader gets no arc, although is no less an interesting character because of that. Again, Gibson may use the remainder of the trilogy to take us inside Trader’s alien mind.

Of course, there are a number of minor characters, mainly the requisite villains. Gibson has tried to give plausible backgrounds to these antagonists so that they could see themselves as the heroes of their own stories, and up to a point he succeeds. However, for most of them, they are a little too cold and, despite being human, inhumane. They aren’t cardboard cutouts, because they do have believable motivations, but they are presented as is, with no discernible arc.

The most humane of the villains, Moss, is probably the most interesting from a story-telling point-of-view, as Gibson hands him enough motivation to give you the feeling that he could turn at any moment and help our protagonists. The other villains have only one thing on their minds, and you sense that nothing will change that. It does make for satisfying character deletions when their times come, of course. (I trust I’m not giving too much away when I say the villains generally meet bad ends.)

So now we come to why: why has Gibson written this story? What’s the point? As with most space opera, the point is not to superficially answer any big metaphysical questions. There may be a hidden meaning behind the trilogy that Gibson is ultimately going to write, but at the moment this is all just one big space adventure mystery.

So, rather than asking questions such as “what is our place in this universe?”, or “what does it mean to be human?”, Gibson follows the tried and true space opera route of asking concrete questions. Who are the Shoal? Why are they helping mankind? Yet, at the same time, why are they withholding FTL technology? What do Merrick, Corso and the villains have to do with this? What is Trader hoping to accomplish? Gibson’s 26th century political and religious creations (both human and alien) colour these questions with interesting side-plots, which feed into the actions of the protagonists and antagonists and help drive the main plot to a reasonable degree of satisfaction. Anyone looking for a treatise on the human condition is going to be disappointed. Anyone looking for a mystery thriller with some intriguing ideas shouldn’t be.

Being the first book in a trilogy, the end does not tie everything up, and some readers may be a little disappointed with the abrupt conclusion of the book, especially given the fantastically wild ride Gibson conjures up in the final hundred or so pages, which is reminiscent of Arthur C Clarke or Greg Bear at their awe-inducing best.

But that swift ending has only made me more inclined to want to finish the overall story. I, for one, will be reading Nova War, and hoping that the end of that book leaves me wanting for the final part.