The verdict
A strange, dark, deliberately awkward first entry to a great series. Not the best Culture novel and the most interesting one to argue with. Read it for the outsider's view and the set pieces, and go on to the others for the Utopia itself.
Quick facts
- Author
- Iain M. Banks
- First published
- 1987
- Publisher
- Macmillan
- Series
- The Culture, book one
- Best for
- Meeting the Culture from the outside before you meet it from within
- Skip it if
- You want the Culture explained or a tidy hero
Author Iain M. Banks
Consider Phlebas is the first Culture novel, published in 1987, and it is not about the Culture. It is about a war between the Culture and the Idirans, told from the side that is losing, by a man who works for the Culture’s enemy. It is a deliberate outsider’s view of one of the great settings in science fiction, and that is what makes it worth starting here.
The idea behind it
Iain M. Banks built the Culture as a Utopia: a post-scarcity civilisation run by benevolent artificial intelligences, where nobody needs to work and almost anything is permitted. The interesting move in this first book is that the hero is not a part of it. Bora Horza Gobuchul is a Changer, a shapeshifter, and he has thrown in with the Idirans, an expansionist religious empire, because he finds the Culture’s easy abundance repellent. The war he is fighting is one the Culture is probably right to be fighting, and he is on the other side.
That inversion is the novel. Banks does not stack the deck. Horza is capable and often decent, the Idirans are not monsters, and the Culture is not simply good. It is a book about a man who has chosen the losing side for reasons he cannot fully defend, and it is honest about how thin those reasons look from outside.
The story, spoiler-light
The plot is a chase. A Culture ship has been destroyed and its Mind, the artificial intelligence that was the ship, has gone to ground on a world the Idirans hold. Horza is sent to find it before the Culture does. Along the way he falls in with a crew of pirates, mercenaries and misfits, and the book becomes a picaresque, a set of episodes across a war that keeps getting in the way of the job.
It is a darker and more violent book than the Culture novels that followed, and the title is a clue. It comes from a line in T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land about a man who was once handsome and tall, and the book takes that seriously. If you want to know what the Culture is, this is not the book that explains it. If you want to see it from outside, and wonder, it is exactly that book.
What makes it science fiction
The Culture itself is the invention, even though it is mostly offstage here. A civilisation of orbitals and ships, run by Minds that are far smarter than any human, with a foreign policy that oscillates between indifference and interference, is one of the richest settings the genre has produced. The war with the Idirans gives it stakes, and the search for a single Mind gives it a plot.
Its place in the genre is high. Banks wrote space opera with a satirist’s eye and a romantic’s taste for scale, and the Culture books that follow are better than this one while being unimaginable without it.
Who should read it, and who should give it a miss
- Read it if you want to meet the Culture from the outside before you meet it from within.
- Read it if you like a morally complicated protagonist who is wrong and knows it.
- Read it if you enjoy episodic space adventure with a dark streak.
- Give it a miss if you want the Culture explained. This book deliberately does not do that.
- Give it a miss if you want a tidy hero. Horza is not one, and the book is not sorry.
- Give it a miss if you would rather start the Culture with its best-liked book. The Player of Games is the usual recommendation for that.
Where to start, and what to read next
The Culture novels are standalone and can be read in any order, which is unusual and useful. Consider Phlebas is the first published and the outsider’s view. If you want the friendliest and most purely enjoyable entry, read The Player of Games next, or instead, and it will show you what the Culture is actually like from inside. Use of Weapons is the one people call the best.
Reading order genuinely does not matter, which is the point. Pick one, and if you like the setting, pick another.
The verdict
A strange, dark, deliberately awkward first entry to a great series. It is not the best Culture novel and it is the most interesting one to argue with. Read it for the outsider’s view and the set pieces, and go on to the others for the Utopia itself.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need to read the Culture books in order?
No. Each Culture novel is a standalone story sharing a setting, and they can be read in any order. Consider Phlebas is the first published.
What is the Culture?
A post-scarcity, galaxy-spanning civilisation run by superintelligent artificial intelligences called Minds, where humans live in abundance and the machines do the governing. Banks uses it to explore how a Utopia behaves when it interferes with everyone else.
Is it a good place to start the series?
It is the first published book and a legitimate starting point, but it is not the most welcoming. Many readers prefer to start with The Player of Games.
Where can I buy it?
It is available as a Kindle edition, and the buy links for Amazon.com and Amazon.in are on this page.