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Matter
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Matter (2008) (edit title/settings)

by Iain Banks (Author) (edit contributors)

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In a world renowned even within a galaxy full of wonders, a crime within a war. For one brother it means a desperate flight, and a search for the one - maybe two - people who could clear his name. For his brother it means a life lived under constant threat of treachery and murder. And for... read more

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The book follows the experiences of three members of the royal household of the Sarl, a humanoid race living on the 8th level of the Shellworld of Sursamen. The Shellworld is an ancient artificial planet consisting of fourteen nested concentric spheres internally lit by tiny thermonuclear... read more (warning: may contain spoilers)

The book follows the experiences of three members of the royal household of the Sarl, a humanoid race living on the 8th level of the Shellworld of Sursamen. The Shellworld is an ancient artificial planet consisting of fourteen nested concentric spheres internally lit by tiny thermonuclear "stars", whose layers are inhabited by various races. They are guarded and mentored by progressively more advanced species, up to the level of what the Sarl call "Optimae". The Culture is considered one of the Optimae, though Sursamen is not in their direct sphere of influence. Ferbin, the heir to the Sarl throne, has to flee his home level on the Shellworld after witnessing the murder of his father, King Hausk, by tyl Loesp, the King's second-in-command. Oramen, Ferbin's studious younger brother, is unaware of the treachery and trusts tyl Loesp fully. After Ferbin's disappearance, tyl Loesp takes on the role of regent, supposedly until Prince Oramen comes of age and can be crowned King.

The Oct, the mentoring species of the Sarl, meanwhile have been organizing the takeover of the 9th level of Sursamen, using the Sarl as their pawns. It becomes increasingly clear that they are searching for something hidden in the Nameless City, a metropolis buried under several hundred million years of sediment which is currently being stripped away by the giant Hyeng-zhar waterfalls. The 9th level was only recently re-colonized in a move by the Oct which was retrospectively validated, with reluctance, by the mentoring races.

Elsewhere, Djan Seriy Anaplian, another child of King Hausk, had left Sursamen fifteen years previously to become a member of the Culture, and of an organization called Special Circumstances (SC). Anaplian (the author uses this as her primary name, rather than Djan) decides to return to her home planet, originally simply to pay her respects to her dead father. On her way back, she joins up with the fleeing Ferbin and his faithful (but increasingly independently-minded) servant Choubris Holse, from whom she learns that her father's death was in fact a murder.

Other channels of intelligence indicate that the Oct are planning something mysterious on Sursamen. Special Circumstances asks her to investigate, and she meets Klatsli Quike en route, who turns out to be an avatoid (indistinguishable from human) of the Liveware Problem, probably an undercover SC ship. Her ornery assigned combat drone (Turminder Xuss) stows away in her kit, disguised initially as a dildo. Anaplian has had most SC enhancements disabled (the Morthanveld well know the fearsome reputation of such an SC combat team), but she begins to restore them, and Xuss will prove critically useful.

Returning to Sursamen, they realize that they have come too late - though Oramen, warned by several botched assassinations, had begun an open struggle with tyl Loesp, neither of them could (or wanted to) stop the excavations in the Nameless City before a fateful discovery - a member (or possibly a machine) of a long dead civilization known as the Iln is uncovered deep beneath the city and wakes. The Iln were responsible for the destruction of thousands of shellworlds before ultimately disappearing. The revived Iln's intention is the destruction of shellworld Sursamen. Its nature comes as a horrible surprise to humans and Oct both - with the Oct having thought that they were excavating one of the Involucra (the 'Veil') who had originally built the shellworlds and from whom they claim to be descended as a matter of faith. The Iln entity kills all present with a thermonuclear explosion including tyl Loesp and several hundreds of thousands of workers excavating the Nameless City (but not Oramen, who has been carried away - he dies of other wounds and radiation sickness shortly afterwards), before heading towards the core of the world, aiming to destroy Sursamen completely using antimatter.

Anaplian, Ferbin, and Holse head towards the core level, equipped with highly sophisticated SC-technology level combat suits. They are accompanied by Xuss and Hippinse, another of several avatars of the Liveware Problem. This takes damage from Nariscene weapons during descent (the constrained tunnel and the nature of the 4 dimensional shellworld limiting its defenses). The team is thus outgunned by the Iln, who has taken over the programming of several Morthanveld combat machines emplaced in the core. Xuss is MIA, as is Hippinse whose parent ship sacrifices itself in combat by ramming in final desperation one of the compromised Morthanveld machines (Anaplian accounts for the other). Result: the Iln remains too strong for the remaining compatriots, whose resources are seriously depleted.

In the end, the sacrifice of two (Ferbin and Anaplian) saves one and defeats the Iln. Ferbin is killed outright, but satisfies the Iln that the group are not harmful when disarmed and permits Anaplian a close approach. Despite her advanced armor, she is shredded beyond the point where a non-SC enhanced human would be dead, but she remains conscious enough to detonate the tiny grain of antimatter in her skull that provides power to her SC enhanced body.

In the epilogue, Holse, the lone survivor of the Iln encounter, rejoins his family after a long absence, accompanied by Quike. He declares his intention to become a political leader of the Sarl, with the secret backing of the Culture. From Holse's survival, the Culture could be presumed to have a reasonably complete picture of events; from the continued existence of the shellworld, one may infer that Anaplian's sacrifice successfully foiled the Iln.

The final body count is not immediately clear. Anaplian was backed up before leaving her Special Circumstances post, but, if restored, such a backup would not remember more recent events. However, part of her "insurance" taken out before the final confrontation may have been a more up-to-date backup. Similarly, the drone Turminder Xuss proper survived, but the destruction of his knife-missile mind-copy would mean memories of earlier events were most likely lost.

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Quotes edit see section history

  • “…but the most ruthless tended to be the least trustworthy, and the least criminal, the most tentative.”
  • “Always be sure to leave surrogates in charge who will ensure your welcome on return is both genuine and enthusiastic.”
  • “It must look as though the gentleman has been careless with his own life, rather than had it surgeried from him.”
  • Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers
  • A temple was worth a dozen barracks; a militia man carrying a gun could control a small unarmed crowd only for as long as he was present; however, a single priest could put a policeman inside the head of every one of their flock, for ever.
    Highlighted by 33 Kindle customers
  • ‘One hundred idiots make idiotic plans and carry them out. All but one justly fail. The hundredth idiot, whose plan succeeded through pure luck, is immediately convinced he’s a genius.’
    Highlighted by 28 Kindle customers
  • In his opinion, only the very poor and downtrodden really needed religion, to make their laborious lives more bearable. People craved self-importance; they longed to be told they mattered as individuals, not just as part of a mass of people or some historical process. They needed the reassurance that while their life might be hard, bitter and thankless, some reward would be theirs after death. Happily for the governing class, a well-formed faith also kept people from seeking their recompense in the here and now, through riot, insurrection or revolution.
    Highlighted by 10 Kindle customers
  • Most men – most women, too, no doubt – lived and died under the general weight of the drives and needs, expectations and demands they experienced from within and without, beaten this way and that by longings for sex, love, admiration, comfort, importance and wealth and whatever else was their particular fancy, as well as being at the same time channelled into whatever furrows were deemed appropriate for them by those on high.
    Highlighted by 10 Kindle customers
  • “We are information, gentlemen; all living things are. However, we are lucky enough to be encoded in matter itself, not running in some abstracted system as patterns of particles or standing waves of probability.”
    Highlighted by 10 Kindle customers
  • “War, famine, disease, genocide. Death, in a million different forms, often painful and protracted for the poor individual wretches involved. What god would so arrange the universe to predispose its creations to experience such suffering, or be the cause of it in others? What master of simulations or arbitrator of a game would set up the initial conditions to the same pitiless effect? God or programmer, the charge would be the same: that of near-infinitely sadistic cruelty; deliberate, premeditated barbarism on an unspeakably horrific scale.”
    Highlighted by 9 Kindle customers
  • Part of the training of a Special Circumstances agent was learning a) that the rules were supposed to be broken sometimes, b) just how to go about breaking the rules, and c) how to get away with it, whether the rule-breaking had led to a successful outcome or not.
    Highlighted by 9 Kindle customers
  • we have found that the underdisciplined child will bump up against life eventually and learn their lessons that way – albeit all the harder for their parents’ earlier lack of courage and concern. The overdisciplined child lives all its life in a self-made cage, or bursts from it so wild and profligate with untutored energy they harm all about them, and always themselves. We prefer to underdiscipline, reckoning it better in the long drift, though it may seem harsher at the time.”
    Highlighted by 8 Kindle customers
  • And to be human, to be anything like human, is to know what one lacks, to know what what one needs, to know what one must look for to find some semblance of completeness amongst strangers, all alone in the darkness.”
    Highlighted by 6 Kindle customers
  • “Even galaxy-spanning anarchist utopias of stupefying full-spectrum civilisational power have turf wars within their unacknowledged militaries.”
    Highlighted by 6 Kindle customers
Show all 13 quotes from this book

First Sentence edit see section history

A light breeze produced a dry rattling sound from some nearby bushes.

Table of Contents edit see section history

Epilogue

01. Factory
02. Palace
03. Folly
04. In Transit
05. Platform
06. Scholastory
07. Reception
08. Tower
09. One Finger Man
10. A Certain Lack
11. Bare Night
12. Cumuloform
13. Don't Try This At Home
14. Game
15. The Hundredth Idiot
16. Sea Drill
17. Departures
18. The Current Emergency
19. Dispatches
20. Inspiral, Coalescence, Ringdown
21. Many Worlds
22. The Falls
23. Livewire Problem
24. Steam, Water, Ice, Fire
25. The Levels
26. The Sarcophagus
27. The Core

Prologue

Glossary edit see section history

Series & Lists edit see section history

This is book 8 of 9 in The Culture. (standard series)

Preceded by Look to Windward, and followed by Surface Detail.

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. Iain Banks (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: Orbit
Country: United Kingdom
Publication Date: 2008
ISBN: 0316005363
Page Count: 608

Awards edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

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