Surface Detail

I finished this mammoth space opera by Iain M. Banks recently. The scope and utter craziness of his writing completely boggles the mind. Set in a galactic spanning mass of a variety of civiliisations (civs) and dealing with them and classifying them almost such that a civilisation features as a character in the novel or like organisms in ecosystems. The strongest and dominant civ is 'The Culture' with the highest level of technology (civ's are measured like versions of software, where the Culture has the highest rating) .... interestingly and unusually for sf technology is a benign force and the Culture is as close to a utopia as anything I've read. A peace loving anarchic mess, mostly led and controlled by Minds which are AI units that have far surpassed humans in their intelligence and thus managed to help create a society which is good for humans, ironically.... To further complicate things the beings in Banks' world inhabit both the 'Real' and they also inhabit a sort of virtual reality where you can, for example, upload all your biological and psychological info and then be downloaded to a new body - in this way the people of the Culture are immortal, until they get bored and choose to be sublimated. As a matter of fact entire civs also get bored and choose to sublimate....

A book about utopia would be boring without some nastiness so this book, like most of Banks work includes very evil and nasty characters and civs. The central debate in Surface Detail concerns the way in which a number of civs have used technology to make their particular systems of religion 'real' by creating virtual heavens and ... hells to reward and punish behaviour deemed acceptable by the relevant powers that be, technology here taking a turn for the worse, unlike what happened in the Culture, but in this case under the less than wise guidance of 'biologicals'. A galaxy wide debate, and then a war, concerning the justification of running hells is fought and concluded in the book.

One moving part of the plot is a story of two lover activists Prin and Chay of the Pavuleans (a species which has two trunks) on a planet who choose to be sent to hell to verify its existence so that it can be dealt with by the courts of their own civ. This goes horribly wrong and Chay (the female) gets left behind in hell and we follow her progress there....  interestingly her surname ends in -daughter (as in Icelandic), and another book by Banks has a character who is Jesusdottir ... wonder how he came by that!

The main character  Y'breq is raped and murdered by her owner, Veppers (who is a kind of ultra massively evil Gordon Gekko) .... but she, due a coincidence and through highly advanced Culture tech, 'survives' and returns with her system set on revenge.... Her interaction with the Culture and its ships and the creation of the ship characters, well interesting to say the least. 

A truly challenging read intellectually, but also emotionally moving with battle scenes, love stories, ascetism, weird and wonderful ship names, like, Sense Amid Madness, Wit Amidst Folly and  Falling Outside the normal moral constraints and Noone knows what the dead think.... simply amazing stuff. 

Fantasy, new media and Björk

It seems clear that Iceland has not contributed significantly to fantasy literature or sf. We do have some pretty awesome writers, and actually Halldór Laxness who was mostly a sort of 'high brow' literary author wrote a couple of short stories, plays and at least one novel that contain strong elements of fantasy and surrealism.... currently the strongest writers seem to be writing crime stories - while this situation may be changing and possibly changing fast. Interestingly among the most successful musicians in Iceland there is a very strong fantastic tendency .... Sigurrós and then .... Björk of course.... Björk's most recent project seems to me to be a landamark - sadly I missed the concert but Biophilia seems to break new ground in the relationship between art, musicology and science and combines a great vision for how to approach music art creativity and the world .... with a restless curiosity as the introduction presented by David Attenborough has it.... Even if the content isn't fantasy or sf the weird and wonderful approach of Björk and Snibbe as he talks about it at TEDX London is deeply inspiring and magical and gives me a feeling similar to the one a remember when I went to a cinema downtown Reykjavík many many many years ago to see the Empire strike back....

In my short time as a Twitter I notice that the way people are doing art and communicating  their findings and creations selling them and offering others to participate I feel that we are in the midst of something interesting and powerful and I'm thrilled to be a witness and participant ....