I’ve been wanting to read this entry in the Culture series for ages but couldn’t because for some unknown reason it is not available on Kindle when all of the other books are. In the end, I was forced to buy a paperback book for the first time in years. I particularly wanted to read this book because it supposedly describes how the Culture responds when it encounters an entity far more powerful than itself. It’s easy to uphold your professed ideals when nothing actually threatens you so the real test is when you face at least a peer of equal power. Unfortunately this book did not adequately answer that dilemma at all as the entity is just not that hostile. It is arguably more about how the various factions inside the Culture itself exploits the opportunity the entity presents as well as a love story that I find distracting and not very interesting.

The narrative is spread across many perspectives and across very long time frames so it isn’t the easiest to understand especially when it involves the Minds sending messages to one another. The gist of it is that a seemingly impossible entity later called the Execession that violates the laws of physics as the Culture understands it appears on the edge of their space. A group of Minds within the Culture take it upon themselves to address the issue. The Sleeper Service, of one of the largest classes of ships but considered eccentric and therefore nominally not part of the Culture, heads towards it. But as part of its price for its assistance, it seeks to resolve an unsatisfying breakup between two humans. Meanwhile a technologically advanced yet morally barbaric civilization called the Affront is also made aware of the Excession. They believe that its power will give them an advantage over the Culture and launch a raid on a store of mothballed Culture warships with the help of a traitor from the Culture and thereby gain control of the Excession. Meanwhile an offshoot branch of the Culture known as the Zetetic Elench make contact with the Excession and at least one of their ships is seemingly destroyed. Other Minds within the Culture suspect a conspiracy among their own.

This book matters because it was here that Iain M. Banks coined the term Outside Context Problem. It is now commonly used to describe an existential threat to a civilization when it encounters a phenomenon upends its worldview. In this novel, the Culture struggles with what to do about the Affront, an entire society that delights in being cruel. The Culture could force them to change their ways but that would be unethical. Fortunately as the Affront are far too weak to pose any actual threat to the Culture, it is deemed fine to simply let them be and so they have an ambassador, Genar-Hofoen, monitor them and engage with them, hoping that they will slowly become more civilized over time. Of course things would be entirely different if the Affront were somehow gain the power of the Excession. I’d hoped that this book would portray a scenario in which the Culture were forced to compromise on their ideals in order to fight for their very existence. This is however not the case and to spoil a nearly 30 year book slightly, the Excession is never a genuine threat to the Culture itself. Instead the moral dilemma in play is quite the opposite as a radical faction within the Culture decides to exploit the opportunity the Excession presents to bait the Affront and so justify the Culture waging war on them.

That is depressingly reminiscent of what happens in the real world but from a science-fiction perspective is much less interesting to me. I’m particularly annoyed that it introduces the Sleeper Service as an eccentric Culture ship that has the very strange habit of creating vast historical tableaus out of the its passengers who choose to be stored away. What could possibly be the motivation given that Minds are written be vast intelligences far greater than any human. In the end, it’s the thoroughly mundane explanation that it is a deniable asset under deep cover. It’s the name itself, don’t you see? Banks does enjoy his little jokes but it’s such a failure of the imagination. The same goes for the romantic subplot between Genar-Hofoen and Dajeil. There are some swerves in the story, such as Genar-Hofoen physically transitioning to a female body and becoming pregnant, such is his devotion to the relationship, but that’s nothing too outré by modern standards or even what has previously been established in the Culture series. Inevitably they break up and despite the drama, it’s for all of the usual human reasons. Yet somehow this failed relationship deeply affects the Sleeper Service and so influences its response to the Excession. So there’s spy intrigue as some Minds attempt to smuggle Genar-Hofoen into the Sleeper Service to extract information about the Excession and you know what, none of that really matters. It’s just a huge distraction and a waste of words.

I think what Banks was going for here is to show that the people who are part of the Culture are still at heart ordinary people as we understand them and it would be good to have some kind of human interest story in this novel. But there’s no psychological depth here whatsoever and no payoff. It’s so facile and shallow. The one thing I liked in this affair is that it definitively proves that it is the Minds who are the movers and shakers in the Culture. They are the decision makers and the protagonists. The people who live inside the ships are just the passengers, or even pets. Without that romantic subplot, there would be no human characters at all and probably Banks did not think that would be fly in a novel. It is amusing that despite the grave level of threat the Excession poses to potentially the entire universe, at worst the Minds are apologetic to the humans they host about having their planned daily schedule of fun disrupted. Stiff upper lip indeed, Mr. Banks.

Anyway, I’d hoped to read about the Culture being forced to pivot in the face of an existential threat and in the end, they’re only mildly inconvenienced. I suppose the existence of the conspiracy proves that should such a threat truly emerge, there are factions within them who are willing and ready to do whatever is needed to safeguard the Culture as a whole even if it means abandoning their moral values and their reputation. Even so, this novel is kind of a cop out in that it doesn’t want to let that scenario happen and so the Culture gets to live on in their complacent, safe and boring way.