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 is 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 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.

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I had never heard of Gary Gibson; I had never heard of this book; yet for some reason when I saw it in a local book store I felt compelled to buy it on a whim. Yeah, buying things on whims is akin to making darts out of twenty dollar notes, throwing them off a bridge and hoping they come back reasonably intact. And yeah, there are these things called libraries which allow you to read books such as these for free. 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 25^th 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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