Surface Detail

The news of Iain Banks' cancer stunned me. One second I had been sat in the common room at 39 Park Square on a mini-pupillage, looking forward to a day in court. The next, I was floored by Banks' press release. I love his books. He has a knack of wowing me with his characters, his settings, his use of prose. As a writer, he's what I aspire to be.

It's still five months until his latest Culture novel, The Hydrogen Sonata, goes paperback. My copy is already on order (and has been for some months). But if I can't celebrate Banks' writing with a new book, then I thought I'd go back and read an old one or two. A few weeks back I re-read Use of Weapons for the second time, and found it as tightly-plotted, expansively written and emotionally engrossing as ever.

Next up was Surface Detail, the 2010 Culture novel, and his most recent entry to the series.

For those not in the know, the Culture is a series of connected but independent books set on the fringes of a pan-galactic utopia known as the Culture. Since 1987 and Consider Phlebas, Banks has written ten novels in the series, including The Hydrogen Sonata. Mostly, the stories are set around the goings-on of Contact, the area of the Culture concentrating on making contact with other races, and the sub-division Special Circumstances - or, as it was put in Surface Detail, the dirty tricks section.

Over the years the novels have gotten gradually more complex and ambitious. Consider Phlebas was a fairly straightforward novel in both style and structure. Use of Weapons, the third full novel in the series, was probably the most radical in its narrative structure, but it still had just one central plot. By Look to Windward the series was seeing recurring plotlines and overlaps from book to book. And in Surface Detail we have Banks' most ambitious space opera epic yet.

On one hand, there's the revenge story which drives the bulk of the narrative, that of Lededje Y'breq, murdered on her homeworld and out to exact retribution on her killer. But in reality that isn't the focus of the novel: the true focus is on the virtual war regarding the use of virtual 'hells' to store souls in perpetual agony, and that has multiple plot threads dedicated to it. There's a virtual warrior in the war, an activist who gets trapped in one of the hells, a protester against them... and the Culture apparently standing aside.

If it sounds complex and bloated, that's because it is. There's no denying the ambitious scope of Surface Detail, but it needed a good editor to take his red pen to it. Sub-plots prove themselves to be superfluous, on occasion the story drags, and Banks' usually lyrical prose isn't quite up to his highest standard. At 626 pages, it's no light read, and it proves in some ways that Banks is at his best writing space opera of 300-400 pages, where he can be expansive but restrained. Unrestricted, his mind seems to go wild, and it needs the focus of definitive structure and length to keep his creative juices from corroding the standard of his work.

But. But... But... It has to be said that the Culture, following on from the thoroughly underwhelming Matter, is truly back. Although it's easy to criticise the technical problems of Surface Detail, it's possible to overlook them purely because it's so entertaining. As ever, Banks is overblown with violence and sex and sarcasm. He throws massive set-pieces around like a child throws mud without making half the mess. His characters' motivations may be easily readable, but the same characters are also easy to connect with because they seem so human.

So. Although Surface Detail won't go down as Banks' best work, it will go down as a good entry into the finest space opera series possibly ever written. I've said it before, and I have no doubt I'll say it again: when Banks is average by his standards he's still surpassing the finest efforts of some of the most talented writers also in the field. He still shows the flashes of brilliance that made so many fall in love with his writing in the first place. He's not been at his very best often of late (some of us remember The Algebraist and Inversions), but when he does get to that level he's still the best there is.

GOU (Demilitarised) More Gravitas Than Expected

Thank you, Iain (M.) Banks, for making my life that little bit richer.

I, like many others, love your books. In fact, I'm thoroughly enjoying Use of Weapons for the third time at the moment. There aren't many writers who can release a book I get genuinely excited, but you're one of the few. I'd even go so far as to say I get a buzz even when I pick up something of yours I'm familiar with. I know I'll get interesting characters, an absorbing plot, and a style and structure I can spend hours analysing before realising I'll probably never get to that level with my own writing.

But you give myself and many other aspiring writers something to aspire towards. I could look at any number of other writers who don't write such excellent, challenging prose and settle for writing to their standard. But because of you I don't want to write to that standard. Even when your work hasn't been at its finest it's been better than 90% of others could dream of producing. Why aim for the ceiling when you can aim for the sky - as inhabited by a certain bearded Scotsman?

I wanted to write this while you're still with us because all too often things remain unsaid until its no longer possible to say things. I owe a genuine debt of gratitude to you, the man who gave us the Culture, The Wasp Factory, The Algebraist, and a dozen others. You entertain and inspire this young SF writer, and you'll be missed.

If you should read this, I apologise for sounding like an appalling suck-up.

The Fool's Gambit

Over the last few weeks I've been systematically putting all my writing into folders on my iCloud. After downloading Pages for my iPhone it made sense; I may as well have all of my writing available on the go. I could do some work on a lunchtime, or on the train, or when I'm waiting for someone or something. As I've been going through the process I've been having a brief look at that work, seeing what I could revive at a future date and what I should dispatch to a shallow, unmarked grave right now with the minimum of ceremony. Most of that work isn't great. There's no way the last completed draft of Empire Rising (from circa 2006) would be accepted by any professional publisher, for instance. Even the work I've produced over the last two years isn't up to the standards of the magazine market I want to be published by. I doubt Interzone's editors would think twice before sending me rejection after rejection for work of my current standard.

It's a spur to improve, not least because to impress the professionals improvement is a necessity, not an option. If I want to become a writer who has some form of income from his writings, I have no option but to analyse my work and see where I'm going wrong. Is it my ideas, or is my writing style flawed? Is it just a sub-standard story? The end result of this is that the quality of my writing increases, with my chances of publication rising with each improvement I make. The rigmarole of submitting and rejecting acts as quality control, meaning the readerbase of those magazines will only ever have the very finest work presented to them.

By and large, this is true at the big publishers. Although the ultimate aim is to generate a big profit on any investment made in a writer's work, the quality will be high. A book isn't generally marketable if it lacks in quality. Something riddled with mistakes will more often than not find itself filtered out of the editing process and rejected. It's not to say low-grade material won't find its way to the shelves and sell millions (like a couple of well-known recent examples), but it is safe to say that if someone can't construct a sentence properly they won't sell their book.

Just writing something of novel length is an achievement in itself. I've managed it three times in seven years, most recently clocking in with a 51,000-word Nanowrimo novel in November last year. Anyone who has the patience to manage to reach the end of what could be a two- or three-year process - especially if they have a full-time job or the kids to keep an eye on all the time - deserves respect and no small amount of admiration. Some people write purely for the sense of accomplishment the end of a lengthy project brings. But often at the end of a project the writer will decide to take the next step and look to publishing their work.

Without taking away that initial accomplishment, the big target is publication. Publication brings with it a seal of quality. Someone else thinks the writer's work is worth reading - or marketable, with functional sentences, in the case of paranormal romance - and will get it out there. But there's still a long way to go between completion of a first draft and the shelves of Waterstone's. There's the editing process to complete, hard work in itself, then a potential second draft, and then the next edit. I seriously doubt many writers are so gifted that they could write a 70,000-word novel and have it published without some degree of editing taking place.

Yet the platform exists that means a writer can now do just that. Self-publishing has always been an easy way out, but in years gone by it was frowned upon as a refuge for the desperate and the vain. Thanks to Amazon - and in particular the Kindle - it seems that this is no longer the case. The Kindle marketplace is flooded with self-published books published through Amazon's own service, most of which should never have seen the light of day.

Remember what I said above. The traditional model for publishing has the quality control checks in place. Whilst an editor's second job may be concerned with a book's marketability, their first job remains to edit. A story I heard some time back concerned high fantasy author and teenagers' favourite Terry Brooks and surrounded the time he submitted his second novel's manuscript to noted publisher Lester Del Rey. Del Rey insisted Brooks re-structure and re-write the entire middle third of the novel that went on to become The Elfstones of Shannara. Brooks himself accepts that this made him go back and consider where he'd gone wrong, and credits Del Rey's decision with making him a better writer. Although this is an extreme example (Brooks may have had to re-write 60-70,000 words in total), it demonstrates what editors do. If your work isn't up to scratch, and they consider you to have the talent, they'll throw it back at you and force you to write to the required standard. Even if you personally don't agree with changes they make, they'll make you think about your writing. Where in self-publishing does this quality control exist? The answer is simple: nowhere.

It may be the popular option, but it encourages mediocrity. Having read 20% of one self-published book available on the Kindle, I gave up. This isn't because the fantasy story grated on me (even though it did - an editor wouldn't let so many clichés past him, if nothing else), but because the author had clearly not edited properly, and nor had they thought about what they were writing. Use of 'arctic' and 'Baltic' to describe the weather conditions makes sense in our world, but in a fantasy world where neither the Arctic nor the Baltic regions actually exist using them to describe the weather makes no sense. Give an editor ten minutes with the original manuscript and they could improve it to the point where such stupid errors weren't made.

On a forum I moderate I consistently see people talking about the benefits of self-publishing. Yes, it's easy. Yes, it may mean more money in your pocket in a shorter period of time. But I have to rebut any argument someone makes on those grounds as being rubbish. No one ever celebrated easy achievements. And because of the dirge of self-published works we're seeing at the moment, the argument that it's more money in your pocket is only relevant if you're incredibly lucky and sell thousands - unlike the hundreds of thousands of other novels that end up going for free as people try to encourage reviews that will get people to buy their work.

I don't want to read low quality fiction. It does nothing for me. I want something where I don't notice horrible use of language every ten sentences, and I want to read something with structure and poise and elegance. I want to read fiction of high quality, and for that reason I will only read material that comes through the traditional model. And I will continue to aspire to write something that gets published through that model. At least that way I will have a real sense of accomplishment at the end of one day in the future.

The Dark Tower

I can't claim to be a graphic novels expert. I've read Watchmen, the leading light of the field, made a start on The Sandman, devoured Batman: Year One and The Dark Knight Returns, and dabbled with a handful of others including Mark Millar's Kick-Ass (yes, that one) and V For Vendetta, but compared to most I'm still a complete newcomer. I've never read any standalone Superman or Spiderman, for goodness' sake!

Which is why anything I say in this review of Marvel's adaptation of the backstory of Stephen King's The Dark Tower series should be taken with a handful of sodium chloride. What I found to be odd may be standard practice in the field, and may be the best way of doing it. Because there were a few things to criticise, but first I need to give some background.

For anyone unaware, The Dark Tower is Stephen King's magnum opus. It is the tale of Roland Deschain, last gunslinger of Gilead, and his quest for the eponymous Tower, which stands at the heart of time and space and threatens to topple under the duress of the Crimson King and his minions, thus plunging the multiverse back into the chaos from which it was birthed. Starting with The Gunslinger, it took King 33 years to write the seven volumes, and millions of readers (including myself) have devoted hours to the quest down the years. Its strength lies in no small part in the character of Roland himself, the cold-hearted gunslinger with a turbulent past, whom the reader comes to love through the eyes of others. His backstory is gradually revealed, culminating in a 500-page flashback in Wizard and Glass which reveals the tragic origins of the quest for the Tower.

It's from this that Marvel have reaped the basic source material for their prequel graphic novels. The first volume, The Gunslinger Born, is, in essence, a retelling of Wizard and Glass. It's an impressive work, but it lacks the depth and complexity of the original novel. Perhaps this is a necessity - there's a scarcity of words that's required in graphic storytelling - but I felt slightly disappointed by the storytelling, much as I enjoyed the adaptation as a whole.

Volume two, The Long Road Home, also lacks depth, with it basically being a story of how the Ka-tet got home from Hambry to Gilead. It isn't until Treachery when things begin to break into Dark Tower virgin territory. All of a sudden, we're seeing things that we haven't seen before, that we've only heard about. This is where the depth of Wizard and Glass really feels like it's missing. There are plots and intrigues that never quite feel as they should - everything feels superficial and lacking in substance. Which isn't to say that it's bad. No one will struggle to enjoy the new chapters in Roland's tale. However what could have been essential reading for all Tower junkies is instead relegated to being an interesting sideshow.

The Fall of Gilead and Battle of Jericho Hill are riddled by the same problems. Things seem superficial. Characters don't feel adequately fleshed out, being cardboard cut-outs of the people whom we grew to love in the novels. But one character stands ahead of all others - Roland's development from duty-bound boy to lovestruck teenager to cold-hearted man is most noticeable. With each casualty of the Affiliation's war with John Farson and the agents of the Crimson King he becomes noticeably more withdrawn emotionally until we recognise the gunslinger who followed the Man in Black across the desert.

This is, to a point, as it should be. This is Roland's tale, after all. Everyone else is incidental, no matter how much of a part they play in his tale. But it would have been nice to see the depth given to Roland also given to Alain, Cuthbert or Aileen in the later stages of the series.

One thing I haven't mentioned is the artwork. And if one thing has to be mentioned, it's just that. Of all the graphic novels I've read, I've never read one with such a bold style as these. It's gothic and dark and detailed in the foreground. It draws the eye to what is meant to be seen. Every character's motivations can be read on their face. Every action seems dynamic. Art buffs would go mad for the style. I'm not an art buff, but I couldn't help but fall in love with it.

The question has to be answered: Did I enjoy the series? Yes, I did. I spent a day working my way through almost 1,000 pages of it, and didn't put it down until I was finished with all five. There's something to be said for something that keeps me reading like that. But is it worth a newbie reading without knowledge of The Dark Tower? I'd say not. It's a series for fans of the novels, which will add to their enjoyment of King's series, rather than something for everyone.

Song of Kali

An American writer is dispatched to India to trace a poet thought dead, but who seems to have made a reappearance with a new manuscript. He takes with him his wife - and cultural liaison - and baby daughter, and becomes embroiled in a cult that reanimates the dead, and has more than a couple of links to the Hindu goddess Kali.

Thus goes Song of Kali, Dan Simmons 1985 début novel. Before he brought the world The Hyperion Cantos he was terrifying it with stories of an Indian underworld that brought out the worst in humanity. There is a lot of familiar ground that anyone who has previously read his work will notice - literary references, strongly-drawn characters, overwhelming bleakness, and out-and-out terror.

India is apparently ripe material for writers to plunder for their horror, and Kali seems to have found herself being used more often than others. Rememeber the bloodthirsty scenes in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom? You'll find there's that common ground here - with cults obsessed with death and running things behind the scenes. It makes sense to a point - Indian culture and religion is alien to those with Western sensibilities, even with the constant modernising Western influence of these days, and it's easy to find something destabilising in the unfamiliarity of the land and its customs. It worked for George Lucas and Stephen Spielberg, and it works for Dan Simmons.

As ever, Simmons prose is tight and eminently readable. And on this occasion there's a real intensity to the prose akin to the Father Dure scenes in Hyperion. The intensity comes in no small part from the constant undercurrent of violence that Simmons manages to infuse every scene with. Calcutta promises violence from the word go, and it never loses that level of threat. Add to it the very real horror in the depictions of slum towns, rats running from place to place, children grown up before their time and the admission must be made that the backdrop is superbly painted.

The book always feels an uneasy read, but it's always compelling. There are a few scenes where Simmons skill at making the skin crawl comes through - one forty-page flashback sequence leaves the reader breathless and troubled. And then there's one scene near the end that will haunt you for days - I can't stop thinking about the horror of it. It's not nice, easy reading. It's horror at its psychological best.

But it's not all darkness. Like the ending of Endymion, there's some brightness to be seen. Simmons has that trick of creating a near-relentlessly dark world, but just giving the reader the chinks of light to see a potential happy outcome. Perhaps Simmons is a proponent of the Dark Knight Rises school of giving people hope to induce despair. Whatever he is, it's masterfully managed.

If you're a horror fan, read Song of Kali. The most haunting scenes will stay with you for an age. You may not want to read it again (I don't), but it's a sign that it's done its job. It's a book to get inside your head, and that you'll feel glad to have experienced. Just expect to want to take a shower straight after.

The year's challenge

Every year I like to set myself a reading and writing challenge. Normally I set myself a number of books to read (this year it's 60, exactly the same as last year), plus something a little different. In 2011 it was to 'read the alphabet' - so for 'A' it would be Asimov, 'M' Mieville and so on. I failed. I didn't read any authors whose last names began with X or Y, among others. But it gave something a bit different to my reading and made me read things I wouldn't normally try.

This year my challenge is to split my reading between male and female writers, as well as to read a short story a day. In the past I've neglected too many talented ladies because I've had the works of male writers who I liked to read through. Already this year I've read five books - four of which have been by men, and the one woman whose novel I've read was well known to me. I never meant to not read the work of women. It just happened. But I intend to remedy it this year, with Connie Willis, Robin Hobb, Alison Littlewood, and K.J. Parker all waiting to be read. No doubt I'll be picking up more as the year goes on - the excellent SF Masterworks imprint from Gollancz seems to be releasing many more works by women at the moment, and I have no doubt I'll be picking up a dozen or so of those this year (with The Female Man top of the hitlist).

As for the short stories, I'm already well ahead of target. In 23 days I've read 35 stories, and kept my resolution to read a short story a day.

Sadly, the writing is a different story. There's no word count target in place this year, but I've yet to really start work on my monthly short story. I seem to be stuck in a rut where I sit down to work, do some work... and then leave the land fallow where an idea should go. It's not been helping that I have a few big ideas clamouring for attention, but that's no excuse. I need to write.

Sand on the wind

Imagine for a moment, if you will, a piece of science fiction written and published today. It focusses on the problems of ecology facing the world. It's up-front with its message: we need to do something about global warming now or we'll lose the lowlands of the world, and all the species they are home to.

Now imagine that same piece of science fiction thirty years in the future, in a future where worries of global warming have been eased - at least in terms of icecaps melting and raising sea levels - because of a series of dykes that have been raised the world over by pioneering Dutch engineers. The story becomes dated and easy to place - the second decade of the twenty-first century. It loses relevance. It may be a classic of its type, but there's every chance that it'll be forgotten and drowned beneath the tidal wave of new fiction concentrating on other contemporary problems, which in turn will be swept away by subsequent fiction of the same sort.

So how do you make sure a story set in its time remains relevant?

I would argue that the answer can only be found in fiction that doesn't tackle issues head-on - but tackles them through its cast of characters. Take Frank Herbert's Dune, for instance. I'm going to come clean and say that it's one of my favourite books, not least because I'm in love with the story (so I may be a little biased). I'm also going to say I'm not going to waste time and talk about the heavy-handed and over-preachy sequels written by either Frank or his son, Brian. If you want to read them, be my guest, but don't expect them to measure up to the magnificence of the original.

Dune was first published in 1965 and isn't about ecology - but it so easily could have been. It could also have been about resource wars, and I have no doubt that were it released today it would be taken as commentary on American foreign policy in the Middle East. And it's not really about resource wars either. What Dune is about is people - in particular, politics and religion, and often how those two combine. This may as well be explained in the first chapter, as Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam of the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood demonstrates the purpose of her order to Paul Atreides, Ducal heir and protagonist. As time goes on, Paul moves with his House to Arrakis, the only place in the universe where the spice Melange may be found, a desert planet with a savage climate. The family are put there by their ruler, and they find themselves engaged in vendetta with the Harkonnens, holders of the previous fief over the planet, who mined spice and provided the universe with its most precious commodity.


All I mentioned above - ecology in particular - form part of the background themes of the novel, but because of the vendetta and the politics that take place as a result of it and subsequent manoeuvrings the focus is forced onto the people - and more specifically, onto how those people react and behave and react to events around them.

People are the one perpetual truth in society and literature. Everything in life comes back to humanity and what's best for it. Even the biggest themes in literature - such as the old Arthur C. Clarke favourite of the human race's place in the universe - have the human element. But things relating to humanity change, while humanity does not. The world moves on while mankind exists in perpetuity. Mankind's invented interests - politics not least among them - travel with humanity like a second skin, unlike the events we react to such as global warming (see: ecology).

And this is what Dune is best at. It distils everything to a human level. And because it's not tied to its non-human themes, it means it can continue to be relevant.

If I were to go on and talk about how only science fiction can really do this (as other forms of literature are tethered to their time of writing in many ways) I'd be able to make a fair case. But it isn't one for today. My point has to be that the human side of writing is more important than the contextual side - one is a constant and this has to be remembered.