Consider Phlebas
The Culture's debut and British space opera's resurrection note; its galaxy-of-plenty-with-doubts framework set the agenda for the next three decades of the form.
Book Entry · Science Fiction
What is Use of Weapons about?
Cheradenine Zakalwe, the Culture's favourite deniable instrument, is fetched out of retirement by Special Circumstances agent Diziet Sma and the drone Skaffen-Amtiskaw for one more dirty war among the uncivilised — while the novel's second strand runs backwards through his previous missions toward the thing in his past involving a chair, which the forward strand spends the whole book flinching from. Structure as ambush: the two streams meet in a reveal that re-files every page before it. War, conscience and the title's thesis — that anything, and anyone, can be made a weapon — in Banks's most formally daring SF novel.
Why it matters
Routinely voted the best Culture novel; its interleaved-chronology structure (suggested by Ken MacLeod) is among the most influential formal gambits in modern space opera.
Where does it sit in the series?
Banks's post-scarcity utopia of humans, drones and godlike ship Minds — and the morally compromised business of nudging less fortunate civilisations, handled by Contact and the ominously named Special Circumstances.
In the Guide from The Culture:
- Consider Phlebas (1987)
- The Player of Games (1988)
- Use of Weapons (1990)