Words&Dirt

This collection of stories is a small but significant contribution to Iain M. Banks’s inimitable Culture Series. I didn’t have much of a reaction one way or another to the smattering of Culture-based short stories, so this review will focus entirely on the book’s eponymous novella. “The State of the Art” is a brief but striking juxtaposition of Banks’s ultra-progressive Culture civilization and Earth circa 1977. When a Culture ship and some members of Contact arrive to study humanity’s home planet in the late twentieth century, they set about creating records of all present and past human knowledge, and ultimately must decide whether or not to reveal themselves to the clueless Earthlings. Sma, the protagonist, develops a tense friendship with Linter, another Contact member who, beguiled by Earth and its primitive inhabitants, decides to become human and stay on Earth permanently.

I think Banks would have admitted that some of the symbolism and ethical discussions in “The State of the Art” are somewhat heavy-handed, and I also think that was his intention. Shying away from his predilection for narrative sprawl––which sometimes dominates Culture novels to their detriment––Banks offers up a series of bald, incisive, and heartfelt critiques of Earth as seen through the eyes of a far more advanced civilization. During her time on Earth, Sma grows to understand humanity as a rather simple but potentially capable mixed bag of curiosity, ingenuity, virtue, ignorance, and cruelty. Linter, on the other hand, becomes completely enchanted with humanity’s lack of post-scarcity technology, our embeddedness in material and spiritual uncertainty, and our devotion to Christianity. It’s a clever set-up in which most readers will probably conclude along with Sma that, despite his occasionally compelling arguments, Linter is a fool for wanting to abandon the Culture for a life on Earth.

I won’t reveal anything more about the story, but I do want to share a few quotes that should give prospective readers a good idea of what juicy mind nuggets reside in this delightful story.

Sma imploring Linter not to stay on Earth:

How long do you think this place is going to stay the way it is now? Ten years? Twenty? Can’t you see how much this place has to alter…in just the next century? We’re so used to things staying much the same, to society and technology––at least immediately available technology––hardly changing over our lifetimes that…I don’t know any of us could cope for long down here. I think it’ll affect you a lot more than the locals. They’re used to change, used to it all happening fast. All right, you like the way it is now, but what happens later? What if 2077 is as different from now as this is from 1877? This might be the end of a Golden Age, world war or not. What chance to you think the West has of keeping the status quo with the Third World? I’m telling you; end of the century and you’ll feel lonely and afraid and wonder why they’ve deserted you. (133)

Sma reflecting on Linter’s love for humanity and her own desire for Culture intervention:

Here we are with our fabulous GCU, our supreme machine; capable of outgenerating their entire civilization and taking in Proxima Centauri on a day trip…here we are with our ship and our modules and platforms, satellites and scooters and drones and bugs, sieving their planet for its most precious art, its most sensitive secrets, its finest thoughts and greatest achievements…and for all that, for all our power and our superiority in scale, science, technology, thought and behaviour, here was this poor sucker, besotted with them when they didn’t even know he existed, spellbound with them, adoring them; and powerless. An immoral victory for the barbarians.

Not that I was in a much better position myself. I may have wanted the exact opposite of Dervley Linter, but I very much doubted I was going to get my way, either. I didn’t want to leave, I didn’t want to keep them safe from us and let them devour themselves; I wanted maximum interference…I wanted to see the junta generals fill their pants when they realized that the future is––in Earth terms––bright, bright red.

Naturally the ship thought I was crazy too. Perhaps it imagined Linter and I would cancel each other out somehow, and we’d both be restored to sanity. (136-7)

Linter justifying his decision and critiquing the Culture lifestyle:

I have to do what feels right. This is very important to me; more important than anything else I’ve ever done before. I don’t want to upset anybody, but…look, I’m sorry…We’re the ones who’re different, we’re the self-mutilated, the self-mutated. This is the mainstream; we’re just like very smart kids; infants with a brilliant construction kit. They’re real because they live the way they have to. We aren’t because we live the way we want to. (156)

The ship’s Mind chiding Sma for questioning its decision to help Linter fulfill his desire to stay on Earth:

What is the Culture? What do we believe in, even if it hardly ever is expressed, even if we are embarrassed about talking about it? Surely in freedom, more than anything else. A relativistic, changing sort of freedom, unbounded by laws or laid-down moral codes, but––in the end––just because it is so hard to pin down and express, a freedom of a far higher quality than anything to be found on a relevant scale on the planet beneath us at the moment.

The same technological expertise, the same productive surplus which, in pervading our society, first allows us to be here at all and after that allows us the degree of choice we have over what happens to Earth, long ago also allowed us to live exactly as we wish to live, limited only by being expected to respect the same principle applied to others. And that’s so basic that not only does every religion on Earth have some similar form of words in its literature, but almost every religion, philosophy or other belief system ever discovered anywhere else contains the same concept. It is the embedded achievement of that oft-expressed ideal that our society is––perversely––rather embarrassed about. We live with, use, simply get on with our freedom much as the good people of Earth talk about it; and we talk about it as often as genuine examples of this shy concept can be found down there.

Dervley Linter is as much a product of our society as I am, and as such, or at least until he can be proved to be in some real sense ‘mad,’ he’s perfectly correct in expecting to have his wishes fulfilled. Indeed the very fact he asked for such an alteration––and accepted it from me––may prove his thinking is still more Culture- than Earth-influenced.

In short, even if I had thought that I had sound tactical reasons for refusing his request, I’d have just as difficult a job justifying such an action as I would have had I just snapped the guy off-planet the instant I realized what he was thinking. I can only be sure in myself that I am in the right in trying to get Linter to come back if I am positive that my own behaviour––as the most sophisticated entity involved––is beyond reproach, and in as close accord with the basic principles of our society as it is within my power to make it. (161-2, emphasis his)

Sma’s final thoughts about the contrast between the Culture and Earth:

It strikes me that although we occasionally carp about Having To Suffer, and moan about never producing real Art, and become despondent or try too hard to compensate, we are indulging in our usual trick of synthesizing something to worry about, and should really be thanking ourselves that we live the life we do. We may think ourselves parasites, complain about Mind-generated tales, and long for ‘genuine’ feelings, ‘real’ emotion, but we are missing the point, and indeed making a work of art ourselves in imagining such an uncomplicated existence is even possible. We have the best of it. The alternative is something like Earth, where as much as they suffer, for all that they burn with pain and confused, bewildered angst, they produce more dross than anything else; soap operas and quiz programmes, junk papers and pulp romances.

Worse than that, there is an osmosis from fiction to reality, a constant contamination which distorts the truth behind both and fuzzes the telling distinctions in life itself, categorizing real situations and feelings by a set of rules largely culled from the most hoary fictional clichés, the most familiar and received nonsense. Hence the soap operas, and those who try to live their lives as soap operas, while believing the stories to be true; hence the quizzes where the ideal is to think as close to the mean as possible, and the one who conforms utterly is the one who stands above the rest; the Winner…

They always had too many stories, I believe; they were too free with their acclaim and their loyalty, too easily impressed by simple strength or a cunning word. They worshipped at too many altars. (201-2, emphasis his)

Banks’s acute understanding of humanity, along with his deft use of Culture concepts to prod our blind spots and provide inspiration for better futures, exceeds the capacity of most thinkers and looms large in the world of science fiction. Though not a full-on romp through the Culture Universe in all its weird glory, The State of the Art is a valuable star in Banks’s imaginative constellation.

Rating: 7/10