Consider Phlebas
by Iain M. Banks
Wrenching brilliance with odd title
Review by Lawrence I. Charters, March 19, 2014
The late Iain M. Banks wrote some of the best “hard” science fiction of the last quarter century, but unlike the classic science fiction of the 1930s-1960s, his characters are at the center of any story, not the technology. Consider Phlebas is a Culture novel centering around Horza, a non-Culture special agent, able to slowly change into the shape and character of those he is attempting to subvert. As a character, Horza is not in the least attractive, and his paymasters, a civilization wholly given over to conquest and xenophobic theology, are even less attractive. Yet the reader is gradually drawn to Horza’s side, wondering how his plot to undermine the Culture can possibly work, given a steady series of setbacks.
Chronologically, this was Banks’ first Culture book, but there is no reason to read them in any particular order. Dive in; the water is deep, the current is strong, and the scenery is spectacular.
Update
I still have no idea what “Phlebas” means. Aside from a mention in a T.S. Eliot poem, “The Waste Land,” it doesn’t seem to mean anything. Nothing in the novel is named Phlebas, either. Banks apparently was fond of poetic titles.