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Consider Phlebas (The Culture) | 
 enlarge | Author: Iain M. Banks
Publisher: Orbit
Category: Book
List Price: £8.99
Buy Used: £0.01
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Rating:  54 reviews
Sales Rank: 9897
Media: Paperback
Edition: New edition
Pages: 467
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 5 x 1.3
ISBN: 1857231384
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9781857231380
ASIN: 1857231384
Publication Date: April 14, 1988
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Worn/used- good second hand reading copy. Fast dispatch from experienced British seller.*
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| Customer Reviews: Read 49 more reviews...
 Parochial, pedestrian storyline with operatic appendix August 17, 2008
Steven Stanecki (Australia)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Picking this book up with the intention of reading the Culture series, Banks' first foray into sci-fi is not as good as his later efforts (eg. The Alchemist). The main text of Consider Phlebas contains suggestions of the space opera promised by the cover, but the overarching drama in which the drawn out tale is set is barely present throughout most of the telling. Instead, the opera is confined to an all too brief series of appendices which gives a rapid, motiveless summary to the braoder context, including its eventual conclusion.
The two main climaxes of the book (the game of Damage and the Command System) were more a Hollywood-style shock soap opera than a philosophical inquiry into the conflicting ideologies, motivations and moralities of the Culture and the Idiran. This lack of philosophical inquiry is especially disappointing given the derivation of the title; Philebus ('Phlebas') debates Socrates on whether hedonism or wisdom is the source of true happiness - an issue posited but never tackled by the author.
The main protagonist, Horza, is a Changer, an identity-shifting humanoid, on the side of the Idiran. The dilemma posed in the loyalties of such a malleable persona to the strict, puritan Idiran was explained feebly, and remained unchanging despite various developments in the story.
Overall, the progress of the story suffers from an excessive build up and a need to describe everything that happens. There is little room for the reader to wonder at the directionsof the plot, and once resolved the importance of Horza's efforts are never examined.
I will endeavour to read The Player of Games, but with Consider Phlebas, the Culture novels are off to a weak start
 What Horza did next! July 3, 2008
James (UK)
2 out of 8 found this review helpful
Well, I am almost speechless! I've always held a prejudice against genre novels in general, but particularly science fiction. However, I have found myself wanting to vary my reading recently, and I saw this book on offer at the local bookshop. I have been aware of Iain Banks's alter ego for many years, having read many of his 'non-genre' novels. He has been somewhat inconsistent in quality, it's true, but 'The Wasp Factory' was undeniably a very good book, and even his recent effort, 'The Steep approach to Garbadale' was a decent read.
Why be prejudiced against science fiction? I asked myself. Surely a good writer can do anything with it; it doesn't have to be 'Star Wars'. On that basis, I bought, and started reading 'Consider Phlebas' with quite high expectations; this was a well recognised literary author, after all. Talk about being quickly disillusioned! The book is utter drivel; so bad that, like other reviewers have noted, it really is very difficult to believe that the author of 'The Wasp Factory' and the person who wrote this are one and the same; I couldn't recognise any echoes of style at all. The feeble narrative is almost exclusively given over to weak dialogue or action scenes, with the occasional respite of fairly average descriptive sequences. There are lots of fights, chases, explosions and corny dialogue; it reads like a screenplay for the next crappy-Hollywood-all action-epic-blockbuster movie, just utterly puerile. There is nothing profound in it whatsoever; nothing of any literary merit, despite the title. I always make a point of finishing books that I've started, but when I realised how much I was going to dislike this one, I felt like I had strapped myself inescapably on to some ghastly, cheesy roller-coaster ride; I couldn't wait to finish it; it really felt like I was wasting my life.
There may be such things as good 'Science Fiction' novels, but I'm afraid it's going to be a case of once bitten, twice shy, with me. And it will be a long time before I can forgive Iain Banks for inflicting this tripe on the discerning public (he has taken the 'credit' for it, whether he actually wrote it or not). Is he having a laugh, or what?
The Jinmoti of Bozlen Two April 24, 2008
cluricaune (Co. Armagh, N. Ireland)
Iain Banks was born in Scotland in 1954 and published his first book - "The Wasp Factory" - in 1984. In the years since, he's won critical acclaim, topped best-seller lists and has even written Science Fiction books under the cunning nom-de-plume 'Iain M. Banks'. "Consider Phlebas" was first published in 1987, and is the first of his sci-fi novels.
The majority of Banks' sci-fi novels to date feature the Culture - a symbiotic society, part humanoid and part artificial intelligence. The artificial intelligence element to the Culture can be sub-divided into two parts - Drones and Minds. For the most part, the a Drone's intelligence will be roughly similar to a humanoids. However, while some drones will be significantly more intelligent, the Culture's essential work is carried out largely by non-sentient machines. Minds, on the other hand, are significantly more powerful than both humanoids and drones. They tend to act as the controlling intelligence behind, for example, the Culture's ships and Hubs (artificial habitats). Minds are also largely responsible for making decisions at the very highest levels of society - only a very small number of humanoid Referrers would be intelligent enough to join the process. In "Consider Phlebas", the Culture is at war with the Idiran Empire. Physically, Idirans are very imposing : they're about about three metres tall, fully grown, have three legs and are protected by a natural body-armour. They can also survive a great deal of damage, what would be more than enough to kill another species. They are also a deeply religious people and believe in converting as many as possible to the faith - preferably by conquest.
A little strangely, though, the book's hero isn't a Culture operative - or even a significant player in the war. Bora Horza Gobuchul is a Changer and works for the Idirans as a spy and a killer. Changers are shapeshifters, and have a couple of very impressive natural defences - including the ability to sweat acid and spit poison. The Changers' homeworld is an asteroid called Heibohre, which is located within Idiran space . However, he's not fighting because he's pro-Idiran - it's because he's anti-Culture. In "Consider Phlebas", Horza is sent to Schar's World - a Planet of the Dead - to retrieve a Culture Mind. Naturally, the Culture won't want a Mind to fall into enemy hands - though it won't be easy for them to retrieve it. Schar's World is 'protected' by the Dra'Azon - an exceptionally powerful race, who won't allow anyone other than Changers onto the planet. Nevertheless, Horza isn't without his problems either. Shortly after receiving his orders from Xoralundra, his Idiran contact,the spaceship on which they are traveling is attacked by a Culture vessel. Xoralundra promptly throws Horza out of an airlock and essentially tells him to hope for a lift. Luckily, the Clear Air Turbulence is passing - a ship that's staffed neither by Idirans nor Culture, but by space-faring pirates.
It's been a long time since I read any sci-fi, and the main reason I picked this up was of how highly I rate Banks' 'standard' fiction. I was slightly taken by surprise that the Culture were (technically) cast as the book's 'bad guys. (In a 'normal' book, the Idirans would've been the 'bad guys' - though things don't always have to be that straightforward when Iain Banks writes a book). Furthermore, while Horza is the book's hero, there's nothing villainous about the Culture's operatives who appear in the book - both Perosteck Balveda and Fal N'geestra are actually very likeable. The book's only flaw, for me, was the section that featured the Eaters - it really didn't add to much, and I couldn't see the point of including it. However, an enjoyable story overall and certainly good enough for me to try a few other Culture books.
Great story well told April 23, 2008
Kevin O'reilly (ireland)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is my first Iain Banks Novel and proved to be an absorbing and thrilling read. (Thks Mark). The plot (set in the backdrop of a Galatic war between the Idirans and the Culture) moves along at a nice pace and develops characters to a degree that you quickly sympathise with them even when they're diametrically opposed.
Bank's imagination is un-surpassed as you experience orbitals, GSV's, quirky robots,a life threatening game of poker called damage and much more..
The ending is a little disappointing but serves to emphasise that you have just read about the experiences of a small band of mercenaries, caught up in huge conflict played out over unimaginable distances spanning many years. (Also liked the small appendices at the back of the book detailing the reasons for the war)
On the whole this is a good introduction to Ian Banks and I would not hesitate in recommending this book to anyone.
Thoroughly disappointing March 12, 2008
BloodyOllie (Moseley, UK)
3 out of 7 found this review helpful
There was a time, shortly after reading The Wasp Factory, The Bridge and Walking On Glass, that I thought of Iain Banks as the most exciting and genre-defying writer of his generation. My enthusiasm for his early fiction persuaded me to try out some of his sci-fi endeavours. Sadly this was the first and last one which I read because it was so far from his usual standard I actually considered the possibility that this was an imposter writing under Banks's name.
Having read the other reviews here, most of which are generous to say the very least, I was shocked to find that nobody had picked up on my major gripe with the book, which is that the story is absolutely, unwaveringly linear in structure. It follows the same characters from page one right until the end, with no sub-plots, no background history, no auxilliary characters, just monotonous, unending action sequences. Sci-fi readers, in my opinion, are probably one of the most intelligent and discerning demographics in the literary sphere, and yet paradoxically the only people who would enjoy this book are the same people who never read books, preferring to sit mindlessly in front of a screen watching Jean-Claude Van Damme kicking the crap out of various things.
If you're looking for a thought provoking, exhilerating sci-fi experience and were thinking of buying this then take my advice: DON'T!
May I recommend Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds or the truly staggering Hyperion cantos by Dan Simmons.
This is very amateurish fiction by a writer who should know better (although the steady decline in the standard of his other fiction has tempted me to think that the first three were something of a fluke, but that's another story...)
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