Simone CarotiRecensioni

An excellent overview of Iain (M.) Banks's Culture fiction, with detailed commentary on each book. (There's also a bit of material about some of Banks's "mainstream" fiction and non-Culture SF, but it's really all about the Culture.)

Warning: The book is, essentially, nothing but spoilers about the books; if you haven't already read them, you'll find discussion of subtle events that turn out to be Very Important, as well as extensive plot summaries.

Even though I've read the Culture books (and everything else except _The Quarry_ (which I'm saving?), some multiple times, I learned a few things I hadn't picked up on myself, both from Caroti's commentary and insights he includes from Banks, Ken Macleod, various interviews, and other academic reviews. [Note that an important takeaway may be that academic critics are bad at reading or understanding science fiction, as nearly every example he discusses includes wild misunderstandings or misconstruings, possibly deliberate. One of Caroti's concerns seems to be that the Culture books are misunderstood by these accredited academic critics, but, honestly, I've never heard of any of them (unlike the genre-savvy critics who publish in SF community venues), and based on their apparent insistence on reinterpreting the stories to make them fit into their own schemas and flat-out ignoring the words on the page, I can't say I'm likely to waste time with them or the journals they publish in.]

If you're a fan of Banks's Culture, or maybe even if you're not, for some reason, Caroti's book is worth a read. It might have been interesting for him to write about some of the more recent and contemporary SF-nal utopias and modern "space opera" fiction (especially what I like to call "SJW space opera"), but you can't have everything. He does mention Ken Macleod, Elizabeth Bear, and Kim Stanley Robinson in passing; I'd add Becky Chambers, Ann Leckie, Arkady Martine, and Tim Pratt to that list. Charlie Stross, Walter Jon Williams, and Suzanne Palmer hew more closely to the dystopian space opera model, but are also good reads; Stan Robinson has long tended towards a pessimistic view of humanity's future prospects in space (e.g., the Mars trilogy), and his _Aurora_ essentially condemns humans to Earth (and, at best, maybe some mining operations and unsustainable attempts at lunar or Martian colonies).

Sadly, while I love the idea of the Culture, my own pessimism has grown over the years, as, in fact, did Banks's. There could be a Culture somewhere, but it's unlikely that we Earth humans would (or could) ever be part of such a civilization, not least because it seems likely that we'll kill ourselves off well before people stop being horrible to each other. (I grew in the Reagan years, when it seemed like nuclear war was always a possibility; now, not only is that threat back, with less stable actors than the US and USSR, but we've managed to set the planet on a course for ecological disaster, and apparently have no interest in doing anything to slow the approach of that catastrophe.

Luckily we have science fiction to help us imagine a better world while we wait to burn, drown, starve, or die from heat exhaustion!

The movie Wall-E recently brought the concept of a generation starship to a large popular audience. Like most ideas we see in the movies, science fiction literature has been throwing that concept around for a lot of years. In the September 1934 issue of Wonder Stories appeared Laurence Manning's "The Living Galaxy", the "first fully fledged generation starship narrative". From this starting point, Simone Caroti takes us on a tour of what science fiction has had to say on the subject of generation starships.

The book covers a lot of territory. Caroti does not have the laser focus that the title suggests, but instead, in true "in order to tell you this, I need to make sure you are aware of this" fashion, he digresses into other aspects of the history of science fiction, like editors, the magazines they edited, the popular authors of the period, and a bit about the world's political situation. Each section of the book covers a period of history, and each section is introduced with a description of that period apart from the concept at hand.

1. Fathers
2. The Gernsback Era, 1926-1940
3. The Campbell Era, 1937-1949
4. The Birth of the Space Age, 1946-1957
5. The New Wave and Beyond, 1957-1979
6. The Information Age, 1980-2001

After that introductory material, Caroti discusses stories in great detail, comparing and contrasting the growing scientific knowledge and changing attitudes of the stories with those that came before.

Overall, a very good book for those interested in the history of science fiction and the development of concepts in the genre.

"Banks loved metafictional negotiations, complex plots, and deconstructionist approaches, but he also loved story; he tied every subplot, told the tale of every character, and made sure to repay out good faith in him in kind.”

In “The Culture Series of Iain M. Banks - A Critical Introduction” by Simone Caroti

As a wildly innovative, imaginative, popular and subversive novelist, his works are infused with darker elements that give them a forbidden, cultish, underground status, but the fictions that are perceived as being in his more conventional and less evidently speculative mode fail to. It's entirely possible that readers expect SF to be simpler and less demanding based on their previous experience of reading SF, rather than on mere prejudice. After all, you don't have to eat all that much crap before you become unable or unwilling to distinguish it from fudge brownies.

Well I've done a systems check this morning and it appears that, yes, the anal probe has caused some slight damage to the self-censorship circuit boards, which may also have caused the nuance software to be over-ridden. This meant that the remains of the message was diverted to the spamsac. I include it here under the Full Disclosure subroutine:

"Of course, this logic doesn't just apply to SF. If, for example, someone gave me “Amsterdam”, “Freedom” and "My Brilliant Friend” to read, telling me that it was the best of contemporary fiction, then I would legitimately be led to expect that there was no such thing as a fudge brownie, and that the main requirement for reading contemporary fiction would be to install the Brainfuck 2.0 virus whilst sticking hot knitting needles in one’s ocular sensors." (although in italics, they're my own words)

If Iain (M) Banks hadn't written non-genre fiction, lit critics wouldn't have given him the time of day. A damn shame, because, as he said "My best writing is my Skiffy stuff". Good and bad literature can be found in any form, since Sturgeon's Law applies. Some of the best written, most thought provoking things I have read are SF; some of the worst drivel, non-genre. Banks revealed in one of his last interviews that his SF never sold as well as the ‘literary’ novels. Which surprised me at least. The Culture was his true love. It's a damn shame. Most of his best writing about ethics, morality and the consequences of technological change - plus a lot of very funny observational stuff - are in the Culture novels. Mind you, “The Quarry” was a masterpiece of non-genre fiction.

The sheer dullness of the biases in favour of mundane fiction, which is usually about middle class people having divorces and is thus correspondingly dull. If some people would shaved their heads, stuck electrodes all over them, put them in perspex capsules and given them orders via an octopus in a crash helmet they'd have approached the experiment in a much more SF frame of mind. And I do read mundane fiction. Sometimes all that divorcing is livened up with a bit of satire.

Caroti’s take on the Banks’ works comes from a fan, and that’s the best kind of literary criticism to read. I’ve read the culture novels several times and I’ve also written several posts about those journeys. And I was still was able to find something worth reading.

My takes on some of the Culture Books:

1. Use of Weapons
So much going on in this one. With Sma, we see the Culture in all its high-minded liberal splendour. Then through Zakalwe we see the gritty, grubby reality of what the Culture's interventionist ideals really demand. Add to that one of the more charismatic drones, a dual narrative and one of the most gut-wrenching twists I've ever experienced and you've got yourself a Big Book.

2. Consider Phlebas
A close contender for number one. The scope and scale of this story and its locations are simply incredible, and Horza is a protagonist (?) who really gets under your skin. Many of his objections to the Culture are not unfounded and reflect the tendency of the progressive left to almost become a monoculture in its quest for diversity and inclusiveness. What I remember most of all from this one though, is Banks' shocking brutality (the train crash, most of all) and the miserable futility of it all, capped by Balveda's section of the epilogue.

3. Inversions
One of my favourites, though I gather not so popular with many fans of the series. I think it just chimes with my interest in interventionism, combining it with more show-don't-tell (another weakness of mine) than we're used to from the Culture books. I found both Vossil and DeWar to be very relatable, even though they're so different, and I enjoyed trying to piece together the snatches we're given of their past relationship. The two nations are presented in an interesting manner - with the royalists and their charismatic king facing up against a republican nation who are perhaps more meritocratic, but also clearly more authoritarian. Once again, Banks treats us to a shocking climax, this time one that underlines the price of winning power.

4. The Player of Games
In which we are treated to Gergeh, something of a black sheep in a culture that's supposed to have none, being manipulated into subversively diverting the course of a less enlightened species. Though it doesn't have the big, smack-me-in-the-face moments of Use of Weapons and Consider Phlebas, this is probably the most tightly-written and pleasing book in the series.

5. Matter
Once again, one that I enjoyed a lot but many fans didn't. It's basically a more refined version of Use of Weapons, but with themes of family and coming of age taking centre stage. I also enjoyed the exploration of galactic politics as they are at this stage of the series, where the Culture is no longer the biggest dog in the fight.

6. Excession
A big favourite of many readers, and was amongst mine for a long time. Then I re-read it and realised that although the antics of the Minds and ships and the Affront are all great fun, the humans involved rather let the side down. It seemed implausible that Byr and Dajeil would want anything more to do with one another.

7. The Hydrogen Sonata
Great humans, great locations, great ships, great drones, and a fitting send off for the series, dealing as it does with events dating back to the birth of the Culture and the sublimation of a major galactic player. However, I didn't feel it was quite firing on all cylinders. The book's central McGuffin didn't seem big enough to justify all the fuss made over it. Most of all, I felt the process of subliming lost something in being translated from the abstract to the specific.

8. Look to Windward
I never thought this one was more than okay. I remember reviewers at the time speculating that Banks may have run out of steam and that this book, with its throwback to the Idiran War, might represent a bookend for the series. Although Quilan and Masaq Hub's are very moving, and we're treated to another example of what happens when the Culture's arrogance gets people killed, the rest of the goings on on Masaq just felt a bit tacked-on.

9. Surface Detail
This one just seemed a bit too 'cookie cutter' to me - a revenge fantasy protagonist goes after perhaps the most clichéd of Banks' villains. The best bit of the book are the Hells and the politics and conflict surrounding them. It's thought-provoking stuff, as you can sort of imagine a time when we might be able to digitise consciousness and there are probably already people on Earth who would advocate the use of virtual Hells. The Quietudinal Service was an interesting idea, but it seems unlikely we wouldn't have heard of them before now. It felt like Banks was kicking ideas around.

10. The State of the Art
One for the completists, really. The main draw here is the titular story, which is okay but only really serves to shock the reader that Earth is not, as we'd probably assumed, the birthplace of the species that eventually became the Culture. We get to see a little more of Sma and Skaffen Amtiskaw, but we don't really learn anything new about them.

NB: As you can see, I’m not exactly fanboying here. But I still think Banks fiction was one of the best things that happened to SF. If you do read genre fiction, or watch opera and ballet (typical plot: boy meets girl, girl meets wizard, wizard turns girl into waterfowl) or even read the classics - in short regularly take your brain outside of literary realism, which may as well be bloody soap operas, you’re going to have a whole extra bunch of mental levers available to get the most out of “other art”. Plus it’s not bloody soap operas.

SF = Speculative Fiction.

It is a poor review that criticizes a book for doing something other than what it sets out to do, rather than discussing the book on its own merits. However, I would really have liked to have seen the works discussed in this book placed into a larger context. The author has set out to analyze a truly narrow subset of science fiction works, and that's generally fine, as works focusing on life aboard generation starships certainly do share many common traits and tropes, but they also share a number of characteristics with other science fiction works that focus on life and societies in both space stations as well as those works looking at human colonies on other worlds, among many other sub-genres. This book sets out to provide a literary criticism of representative works of science fiction written from 1934-2001 detailing life aboard generation starships, and it certainly achieves that objective. In some ways, the book also functions as a kind of literary history of science fiction literature as a genre, adding to its appeal.

Caroti originally wrote this work as his doctoral dissertation (which is available electronically in the ProQuest dissertations and theses database). The book is organized around an introduction, which provides a brief overview of the genre, and six substantive chapters, plus a short conclusion. The first chapter briefly examines the influences of three men who might be termed "godfathers" of generation starship fiction: the scientists Robert Goddard, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, and J. D. Bernal. While there potted biographies are interesting in their own right, at times I would actually like to seen these men connected a little more closely with the concept of the generation starship. The remaining chapters take a chronological approach, examining roughly a decade or two worth of relevant fiction per chapter it also lives a chronological bibliography of, essentially, all the major short stories and novels concerning generation starships.

The second chapter covers the 1920s and 30s, initially focusing on editor Hugo Gernsback, who, for better or for worse, more or less created science fiction as a coherent genre. Gernsback's vision of what "proper" science fiction stories would be influenced the genre for decades. Literature-wise, Caroti focuses on two short stories: Laurence Manning’s "The Living Galaxy" (1934) and John Wilcox is "The Voyage That Lasted 600 Years" (1940).

The third chapter covers the late 1930s and 1940s, characterizing this as the “Campbell Era,” after renowned editor John W. Campbell, who is largely credited with popularizing science fiction as a genre, emphasizing "hard" science fiction. Literature-wise, Caroti primarily discusses two linked generation ship short stories by Robert Heinlein: "Universe" and "Common Sense."

The fourth chapter covers the "birth of the space age," which Caroti describes as the second half of the 1940s and most of the 1950s. This is a short chapter and, to be honest, doesn't really say much about new generation starship fiction, mainly adding to the discussion about Heinlein and a few other authors.

The fifth chapter covers the “New Wave and Beyond,” 1957-79, seemingly a long, disparate period of time to squeeze into a single chapter. The generation starship stories discussed in detail include John Brunner’s “Lungfish,” Chad Oliver’s “The Wind Blows Free,” J. G. Ballard’s “Thirteen to Centaurus,” and Brian Aldiss’ Non-Stop (published in the U.S. as Starship).

Caroti’s final chapter covers the Information Age from 1980 to 2001, emphasizing Frank M. Robinson’s The Dark Beyond the Stars, Bruce Sterling’s Taklamakan, and Gene Wolfe’s Book of the Long Sun.

While I had read, or was otherwise familiar with, some of the stories and novels discussed in this book, there were still many I hadn’t read. That wasn't a problem though, as Caroti describes each of the works that he discussed in detail well enough that a reader's lack of familiarity with the work in question isn't a problem, as long as one doesn't mind being spoilered.

I give this book 3.5 stars out of five. At times I would've liked to seen Caroti place generation starship fiction into a broader context, and at other times, the text was a bit dry and I wanted to see him talk more specifically about individual works and do a deeper analysis of them. The book does exactly what it says it will, and no more. I’d also have liked to see Caroti include one final chapter that discusses the generation ship literature of the last decade – as he says in his brief conclusion, the first decade of the twenty-first century has produced a large number of new, relevant works. So why not tell us about those? I would recommend it for those interested in serious, literary criticism of science fiction works, as well as those science fiction fans who find themselves fascinated by the concept of a generation starship. If you just happen to be a science fiction fan who's looking for some fun, interesting commentary on one type of science fiction, I'd probably recommend a different work, as this will tends toward the academic and lit crit side of things.

Review copyright 2011 J. Andrew Byers½

The Generation Starship in Science Fiction, A Critical History, 1934-2001, by Simone Caroti, involved much more detail into individual stories than one would typically imagine in a book that covers so many decades of stories. Definitely not being an expert myself on the subject, but a mere science fiction fan who is decently read but still an infant in so many ways, I was surprised that so few stories fell into this subgenre, which obviously brought about the necessity by the author to go deeper in his analyses of these stories.

And that was fine with me, because the subject definitely proved quite fascinating. Obviously there are differing opinions on just how human behavior might play out in these scenarios, and whether certain authors intended to capture what they thought might actually occur or just plain wanted to tell an interesting tale, the readers of these stories come out the winners.

I must admit that I was not familiar with many of the stories Caroti discussed here. Especially the older stories he talked about, and I applaud him for his research on these. It would be nice if someone out there would take the short stories and novellas presented in this critical book and put them into an anthology. What a great companion piece!

Caroti broke his history down into six logical sections and did a nice job of explaining why he did such, the science fiction that was going on in those eras, and where these stories and ideas seemed to fit in with the science of the day. But the book starts off with a nice introduction of real science and the seeming impossibility of traveling far and long into space, or at least in a faster-than-light mode. If you decide to read this book, which I recommend to any science fiction lover, don't skip the intro. Although I believe that most science fiction readers already know that some of the best nuggets come from introductions, so I'm probably preaching to the choir.

I must admit that after having read this book I previously had no real reading experience within this sub-genre, although I have read Rendezvous With Rama and a couple of the Vinge books that are mentioned. And Caroti was successful, at least as far as I'm personally concerned, because I'm now interested in reading several of the pieces he discussed, such as the Brian Aldis book Non-Stop and Lungfish by John Brunner. I've always been fascinated by how people react when put in controlled situations that are out of their control, such as the TV show Survivor. Though that may come as a "disconnect" to some people, to me there is a relationship; hence, another reason to read generation starship stories.

I definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in the history of science fiction and those who dream of going beyond the stars.

This is an interesting but somewhat dry critical account of generation starships. I haven't read most of the works analyzed, so it was interesting to see tropes appear in them that I had experienced elsewhere.

Some more specific, if somewhat disjointed, thoughts about it:

1) I wish the author had more to say about the common ending to this sort of book, where it turns out that the second generation of interstellar travelers has better engines (often, but not always, FTL) and ends up beating out the first generation. There was some discussion of books like this (and I've read several others that he didn't touch on) but I would have liked a unified analysis of them.
2) The choice of 2001 -- and specifically the 9/11 attacks -- as an endpoint to the analysis seemed entirely random to me. The epilogue admits that an uptick in generation-ship stories that started in the '90s continued and in fact intensified in the '00s; this would seem to suggest that 9/11 had no effect whatsoever on people's desire to write/read these works, and the analogies the book made between Manhattan and generation ships when felt extraordinarily strained to me.½

I have mixed feelings about this book on several levels. The title was about Generation Starships in Science Fiction but quite often he would spill over into other areas or just Science Fiction in general. Some of that is expected but it sometimes got tedious. Some of the asides were interesting and others made me want to skip over parts.

I think one of the biggest problems I had with this is I hadn't actually read any of the works in question and many of them sounded really fun to read. This drove me crazy because while reading along he would get to a point in the book describing the events and I'd decide I want to read this story! And he would proceed to finish giving the rest of the plot away. That coupled with his jumping back and forth referring to different parts of books or stories he'd already covered made it hard to follow for someone who was as unfamiliar with the subject as I turned out to be.

I also got the feeling that at times the author was trying to impress with his vocabulary. Outside of Calvin & Hobbes I have not come across the word 'transmogrify' and he used it at least 3 times. There are several others that stuck out to me as I read as well. Overall, not bad, I suspect that if you have read fairly heavily in the genre it would be a fun book to read, and it has given me a long list of book to try out, once I forget how they end.

Disclosure: I received this book as part of the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program. Some people think this may bias a reviewer so I am making sure to put this information up front. I don't think it biases my reviews, but I'll let others be the judge of that.

Science fiction is full of stories of humans traveling to the stars by various means. To enable people to traverse the vast interstellar distances, science fiction writers have imagined various means of traveling faster than the speed of light - warp drives, hyper drives, inversion drives, and even the silly bloater drive. Or they have imagined means of extending human lifespans, or allowing humans to sleep in suspended animation for the duration of the long journey while traveling at less than the speed of light. But these stories all require the author to do violence to the known laws of physics or postulate as yet undiscovered technologies. Of all the methods imagined for going to the stars, the only one for which humans currently have is to imagine massive arks in space in which entire generations of people would be born, live their lives, and die while wandering the dark void between the stars: the generation starship.

As the only posited form of interstellar travel that amounts to nothing more than an engineering challenge coupled with a requirement of an investment of will and resources, the generation starship is a template upon which science fiction writers have imprinted the fears and aspirations of their era. And this template serves as the conduit by which Simone Caroti examines the history of science fiction, and as a result the popular thinking of the twentieth century. Starting with Bernal, Tsiolkovsky, and Goddard's proposals that were grounded in scientific speculation, and proceeding through the Gernsback era, the Campbell era, the Space Age, the New Wave, and the Information Age, detailing the science fiction stories produced by each period. The Generation Starship in Science Fiction is more or less an overgrown dissertation, but despite this, it offers a comprehensive look at how the generation starship story has evolved through the last seven decades. And as a result, it highlights how science fiction as a genre has evolved as well.

After explaining the roots of the idea of the generation starship, Caroti discusses how each successive generation imbued the idea with the ideas that were foremost in their minds. So in the Gernsback era the stories like The Living Galaxy imagined humanity perfected by technology and stories like The Voyage That Lasted 600 Years evince a bold optimism coupled with the growing fears of what might happen if the distinctly American values represented by the protagonist are allowed to fall out of favor. Then in the Campbell era, the stories reflect the distinctly Campbellian attitude that all problems are conquerable by the application of intelligence and effort - and the placement of the extraordinary man to at the heart of the narrative as in stories like Robert A. Heinlein's Universe and Common Sense (now compiled together under the title Orphans of the Sky). And as one can see, this mirrors the line of thought that dominated science fiction writing of those eras, merely transferring the thinking of the era to the generation starship setting.

And this pattern of transferring the main body of then-current science fiction thinking (which reflected the main body of then-current popular thinking) into the generation starship setting means that discussing the generation starship in science fiction is tantamount to discussing science fiction as a whole. So when popular culture began to be rife with the fears of a worldwide apocalypse followed by societies living in the ashes of a dead world, the generation starship stories reflected that and posited ship-wide disasters followed by bizarre post-apocalyptic societies picking through the remains. Or the stories posited the idea that an iron will could save humanity even after the disintegration of society, such as in Frank M. Robinsion's novella The Oceans Are Wide. And as society moved on, so did the generation starship story. And Caroti traces these developments all the way to the most recent stories, ending with Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun that seems to encapsulate everything that went before into one enormous comprehensive exploration of the subgenre.

The Generation Starship in Science Fiction offers the serious science fiction aficionado a detailed look at this particular subgenre. Though the account can be a bit dry and technical at points, it is comprehensive and thorough. For anyone interested in understanding science fiction as a whole, this book is an excellent guide. If you love science fiction and everything that it represents, and you are interested in learning how it evolved from its roots to the present day, then this book should be on your to read list.

This has also been posted to my blog Dreaming About Other Worlds.

It seems to cover the history of the generation starship enough, but it frequently seems an excuse to discourse on the nature of science fiction instead of the generation starship in particular.

Ever since first reading Arthur Clarke’s fantastic science fiction novel, Rendezvous with Rama, I’ve been fascinated with the idea of the “generation starship”, a self contained world, built and engineered for multi-generational space travel. I was therefore intrigued by this work when it became available in the Library Thing Early Reviewer program. Soon after its arrival, however, I realized that I had made a mistake.

I was looking for an entertaining and descriptive overview of the various treatments of multi-generational space travel throughout the years; an analysis of how the various issues involved with such travel have been addressed by a broad range of science fiction writers. While there is some of that in this work, it is much more a scholarly treatise, terribly boring at times and rarely entertaining.

Originally, I was somewhat perturbed upon receiving the book, as the subtitle notes “A Critical History, 1934-2001”. 2001? Is this book 10 years old? Isn’t this supposed to be a program for new works? Upon further investigation, it would appear that this book was in fact recently released. Why then, an ending date of 2001? Was this some kind of doctoral thesis that awaited publication for 10 years?

In any event, if you are a serious STUDENT of the science fiction art form, and/or are looking for a scholarly treatise on the anthropological, political and cultural aspects involved in both the writing and subject matter of multi-generational space travel, this could be the book for you. If, on the other hand, you enjoy reading science fiction and are looking for an entertaining look at the subject, you need to look elsewhere.

In my opinion, this book has an extremely narrow target audience, in which I do not reside.