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Gul Banana posted:I just reread Use of Weapons, which reminded me of a question I had about it. I can't find any exploration of this idea on the internet, even though it seems to be to be crucial to the book's central character and his origins. I don't think there's enough information in the book to definitively answer #1. However, re: #2: They definitely lost the battle. "Almost won" applies to both. I think the way to look at is, Elethiomel's forces were encircled and in enormous danger, but his use of the chair was almost enough for them to break out despite their tactical disadvantage. This is important because in the Winter Palace, his last mission for the Culture, he is similarly under siege. The Culture minds expect him to lead a break out, but by this point he has lost faith in what he's doing and is unwilling to do something outrageous to achieve victory. SC concludes he's washed up. We might conclude he's on the verge of becoming a more healthy person. Of course, he ends up backsliding and doing the same stuff again, just outside the Culture's purview this time (plus his "present day" mission in the book). No one's ever accused Banks of forcing a happy ending.
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| # ¿ Feb 5, 2011 23:57 |
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| # ¿ May 21, 2013 22:36 |
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Esposito posted:But given the type of person he is, he would do it all again. Contact use him because he is capable of doing anything to win. Once you've read the whole book you can see that his experiences as an agent for SC, and just the passage of time, have made him want to be a better person and reject his old attitude about, er, the use of weapons. At first, he's content to keep fighting no holds barred so long as he has faith that the cause is noble, but eventually he becomes skeptical that the ends justify the means. His guilt won't let him simply retire to a quiet life, but he won't do whatever it takes any more. To SC, this means he's burnt out and useless...worse than useless, in fact. A menace, since he's trying to help people but won't mindlessly follow orders from Minds. They only recruit him for the "present day" episode in Use of Weapons because of his personal connection with the politician (so close that he had told him about the Staberinde).
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| # ¿ May 21, 2012 22:15 |
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Gangringo posted:Aren't the prologue and epilogue set after the last chapter? He has the shaved head in both and he still seems to be a culture agent.
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| # ¿ May 22, 2012 02:29 |
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Less Fat Luke posted:I don't know, I think it might be flattering and life-changing to think that almost omnipotent beings who control everything used *you* as a pawn in a (mostly bloodless) conflict with a new culture.
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| # ¿ Jun 10, 2012 23:51 |
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epilogue: Zakalwe is still trying to fight his way to redemption, just without the Culture's help Sma epilogue: When a weapon breaks, it's not a big deal. Just get a new one. In other words, Nothing gets better, everything stays in the same vicious cycle. But it's not getting worse, per se, so by Banks standards this is practically uplifting.
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| # ¿ Jun 20, 2012 23:38 |
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Pope Guilty posted:Finished Surface Detail. Laughed at the last two words of that, and wondered if I should've guessed. Edit: Then I felt enormously pleased with myself, and had no one to brag to because most people don't care and for my few friends who read Banks I couldn't explain it without unleashing a gigantic spoiler. This is finally the moment where I can kick back and 
Lex Talionis fucked around with this message at Jun 24, 2012 around 21:05 |
| # ¿ Jun 24, 2012 21:03 |
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WeAreTheRomans posted:Good catch on the anagram. Still, I don't know if the reveal in Surface Detail really made me reevaluate anything about the narrative. Seemed a little extraneous but if anyone has any thoughts I'd be curious.
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| # ¿ Jun 25, 2012 23:01 |
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Pope Guilty posted:I've been thinking about the amount of text devoted to the horrors of Hell in Surface Detail, and what strikes me is that it's an effective preventative for even a shred of sympathy for the pro-Hell forces. This is what they're fighting for. This is the thing they think is worth fighting other cultures over. Getting a whiff of moral ambiguity? gently caress you, here's a reminder that the pro-Hell forces are morally indefensible on every level.
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| # ¿ Nov 19, 2012 15:29 |
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Those On My Left posted:I would also like to remind myself exactly what happens at Winter Palace - the various sieges and battles in the book have kind of blended so I can't quite remember how Zakalwe fucks that up and what the ramifications are. You're getting at one of my favorite aspects of the novel. Guess this is all going to have to be spoilered. The Staberinde and the Winter Palace sieges mirror each other. At the Staberinde, Elethiomel was at the end of his initial career: under siege and seemingly in a hopeless situation, he uses his hostage as a weapon against the enemy commander, Zakalwe. Elethiomel then leads his forces in a breakout attempt timed to take advantage of Zakalwe being incapacitated by the discovery of the chair. The weapon works well: Zakalwe commits suicide. The breakout attempt doesn't seem to have quite been a success, in that Elethiomel's side loses the war, but he personally escapes and eventually sneaks off planet. At the Winter Palace, "Zakalwe" has been working for the Culture for a long time, but he's becoming more and more disenchanted. His redemptive project was based on the idea that the Culture are the "good guys" and even if he does terrible things, as long as he does them on their behalf he is on the side of the angels. The Culture has tasked Zakalwe with helping the aristocratic forces break out of a siege. But he fails. He's no longer willing to do whatever it takes to win, no longer willing to use whatever weapon is at hand. Most of us would consider this to be a dramatic improvement in his ethical makeup, but to the Culture, this means Zakalwe is washed up, and they part ways (he's only brought back for the "present day" plot because of his personal connection to Beychae). Yet because Zakalwe can't just live a quiet life, he ends up freelancing on his own. To the Culture, this is almost criminally reckless. To them, Zakalwe himself is a weapon, one meant to be used in their hands. If he does terrible things in their employ, that's OK, it's for the greater good as calculated by the nearly all-knowing Minds. For him to decide he's not willing to go to those lengths any more for them, but to then apply his own human reason to try to improve the world, is unacceptable (it's implied, although not stated clearly, they wouldn't have allowed it if he hadn't destroyed the knife missile keeping an eye on him). In the interests of non-spoilered content, did anyone else see articles like this one and immediately think "They have knife missiles now!"
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| # ¿ Mar 13, 2013 23:48 |
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Glen Cook's The Dragon Never Sleeps came out in 1988, just a year after Consider Phlebas and two years before Use of Weapons, yet if it had come out in 1998, I would be here saying it owes an immense debt to Banks' Culture universe in general and Use of Weapons in particular. It's a wide screen space opera with strange AI ships, an immense human civilization whose decadent core is surrounded by a surprisingly ferocious military, and centers on the question of whether that military's actions, and therefore the actions of those who fight for and against it, are ethical. Glen Cook's politics are more conventional than Banks, and the civilization he depicts is a nasty corporate oligarchy (intentionally) instead of a communitarian utopia, but I think it will appeal to anyone who likes Banks' Culture series. Unfortunately, the publisher went out of business (or something like that) on the eve of publication and the book vanished without a trace for two decades until its recent reprint by Night Shade, and Cook remains known today mainly for the totally different (and in my opinion not nearly as interesting, at least not any more) Black Company series.
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| # ¿ Apr 6, 2013 23:48 |
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| # ¿ May 21, 2013 22:36 |
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Jamsque posted:I really like a lot of your analysis here, but you are wrong about one important point. You are right about the prologue/epilogue, but wrong when you say I was wrong. The Winter Palace scene is not the prologue/epilogue, it's the chapter labeled XII. In case there is any doubt the Winter Palace happens before the present day narrative, I point you toward the first sentence in the chapter labeled "Four": 'The fact remains,' Skaffen-Amtiskaw insisted, 'that the last time we went through this rigmarole, Zakalwe hosed up. They froze his rear end in that Winter Palace.' He goes on to spends a lot of the following conversations arguing that the Winter Palace is proof Zalakwe is washed up and that any attempt to use him now will result in a "debacle".
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| # ¿ Apr 20, 2013 06:17 |
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