I may have mentioned this before but I have a big, gooey soft spot for Iain M Banks a mile wide, for reasons too numerous for me to really get into.
And so, in the spirit of this big, gooey soft spot, I shall now present one of my favourite little bits from Use Of Weapons, AKA the first Culture book I read back when I was, like, fifteen and had zero fucking idea what it was about or what was going on.
This bit is from where the main character of the book is wandering around a Culture ship for the first time, having only just been introduced to them and so not really having much of a feel for them yet.
Later, he had wandered off. The huge ship was an enchanted ocean in which you could never drown, and he threw himself into it to try to understand if not it, then the people who had built it.
He walked for days, stopping at bars and restaurants whenever he felt thirsty, hungry or tired; mostly they were automatic and he was served by little floating trays, though a few were staffed by real people. They seemed less like servants and more like customers who’d taken a notion to help out for a while.
‘Of course I don’t have to do this,’ one middle-aged man said, carefully cleaning the table with a damp cloth. He put the cloth in a little pouch, sat down beside him. ‘But look; this table’s clean.’
He agreed that the table was clean.
‘Usually,’ the man said. ‘I work on alien – no offence – alien religions; Directional Emphasis In Religious Observance; that’s my speciality…like when temples or graves or prayers always have to face a certain direction; that sort of thing? Well, I catalogue, evaluate, compare; I come up with theories and argue with colleagues, here and elsewhere. But…the job’s never finished; always new examples, and even the old ones get re-evaluated, and new people come along with new ideas about what you thought was settled…but,’ he slapped the table, ‘when you clean a table you clean a table. You feel you’ve done something. It’s an achievement.’
‘But in the end, it’s still cleaning a table.’
‘And therefore does not really signify on the cosmic scale of events?’ the man suggested.
He smiled in response to the man’s grin, ‘Well, yes.’
‘But then, what does signify? My other work? Is that really important, either? I could try composing wonderful musical works, or day-long entertainment epics, but what would that do? Give people pleasure? My wiping this table gives me pleasure. And people come to a clean table, which gives them pleasure. And anyway,’ the man laughed, ‘people die; stars die; universes die. What is any achievement, however great it was, once time itself is dead? Of course, if all I did was wipe tables, then of course it would seem a mean and despicable waste of my huge intellectual potential. But because I choose to do it, it gives me pleasure. And,’ the man said with a smile, ‘it’s a good way of meeting people. So; where are you from, anyway?’
Just gorgeous. Such beautiful talking, such wonderful meandering. Such long fucking sentences.
Let’s have another, where another character (Dziet Sma) is interacting with the avatar of a ship (as ships can make avatars to interact with the crew and such), here taking the form of a cute, cuddly, furry little animal:
‘Ooh, you’re nice and warm,’ the little brown and yellow creature mumbled sleepily, snuggling into Sma’s neck as they headed down a deeply carpeted corridor for Sma’s quarters. It stirred and she found herself patting its back. ‘Left here,’ it said, at a junction, then, ‘That’s us just breaking orbit now, by the way.’
‘Can I cuddle up with you when you sleep?’
Sma stopped, detached the creature from her shoulder with one hand and stared it in the face. ‘What?’
‘Just for chumminess’ sake,’ the little thing said, yawning wide and blinking. ‘I’m not being rude; it’s a good bonding procedure.’
Sma was aware of Skaffen-Amtiskaw glowing red just behind her. She brought the yellow and brown device closer to her face. ‘Listen, Xenophobe-‘
‘Xeny; you are a million-tonne starship; a Torturer class Rapid Offensive Unit. Even-‘
‘Even without your principle armament, I bet you could waste planets if you wanted to-‘
‘Aw, come on; any silly GCU can do that!’
Wonderful. There’s also Skaffen-Amtiskaw in this bit, too! I love that guy.
Basically just do what I did and read all the Culture books. And his other books. You won’t regret it!
