Look to Windward is the seventh book in The Culture series of space opera novels written by Iain M. Banks. The Culture is the name of the Galaxy-spanning, technologically-advanced, post-scarcity society that Banks returned to time after time to serve as the setting for his lyrical, sometimes-comical science fiction novels. Banks is one of the rare authors who was equally celebrated for his traditional fiction (presented under his name without the middle initial) as well as his genre work. In Look to Windward, he incorporates a lot of the textual intricacy and emotional heft of his non-genre works into a book that features near-omniscient A.I.’s, three-legged, furry aliens as central characters and a solar-system sized artificial habitat with over 50 billion humans with no poverty, crime, sickness or danger.
The book’s main character are Quilan and Ziller, who are both Chelgrians. We spend most of Look to Windward reading Quilan’s first-person perspective. Ziller is a talented and popular classical composer who has renounced his Chelgrian citizenship, denigrated their political caste system and taken refuge at the Culture’s Masaq Orbital for over a decade. Quilan is a survivor of the Chelgrian civil war in which his wife was killed and he has been ostensibly sent to Masaq in order to convince Ziller to return to their home world. In actuality, Quilan is on a secret mission that even he doesn’t know about, because his memory was wiped after he agreed to do it. We do know that whatever Quilan is planning to do it’s probably not good for either Ziller or the Culture. In the era the book is set in, most civilized societies have a device which can store the memories and mental state of the wearer and serve as a backup in case of an untimely demise. Early in the book we discover that it turns out that the Culture has admitted culpability in meddling in Chelgrian politics before the start of the civil war and the Chelgrians now blame the Culture for the 5 billion who died in that conflict. In Quilan’s device he has had installed the personality of an old military general named Huyler who is (apparently) there to assist/support/monitor him in the suicide mission Quilan has agreed to be sent to the Culture to complete.
The central themes of Look to Windward are memory, loss, revenge and faith (or, more accurately, zealotry). As with any Culture novel, the themes of this particular book or plot are always overlaid with questions about the meaning of life and the limits of seemingly limitless technology. Quilan’s grief for his wife is told poignantly in flashbacks that we get as Quilan (and the reader) start to learn more from the memories that have been deleted and that are slowly resurfacing as the time where his mission will be revealed. We learn about the depths of despair Quilan felt back on Chel as he grieved for his wife, and how eventually he was recruited for and agreed to conduct a suicide mission by the head of the Chelgrian military (who also appears to be a bigwig in the Chelgrian religion as well). Banks writes so well that many times the reader forgets that Quilan is an alien, as one naturally anthropomorphizes the character.
It turns out that Hub, the Mind running Masaq Orbital, (that’s the near-omniscient artificial intelligence that is capable of running an orbital with 50 billion humans who are each able to personally interact with) was actually involved in some of the skirmishes in the Chelgrian civil war. Hub was involved in the evacuation of several billion people and saving most of their lives but that resulted in the deaths of several million.
By the end of Look to Windward the reader realizes that both Quilan and Hub are still reeling from the after-effects of the traumas caused by war. How they react to these traumas animate the plot. Overall, although I’m glad I finally read Look to Windward I’m not sure that I really enjoyed it. It’s definitely slow in some sections, and the basic story of watching someone realize that they have agreed to be a technologically-sophisticated suicide bomber is hard to describe as “entertainment.” But Banks does an incredibly job of building suspense about what the final result will be and his characterization of Quilan is so nuanced that it is very easy to identify and empathize with him. And of course it’s always fun to spend time in the Culture. I will definitely miss Bank’s well-written cerebral brand of science fiction and wish there were more of it to read.
Title: Look to Windward (Culture, #7).
Author: Iain M. Banks.
Format: Kindle.
Format: 384 pages.
Publisher: Pocket Books.
Date Published: August 27, 2001.
Date Read: March 30, 2021.
OVERALL GRADE: A/A- (3.83/4.0).
PLOT: A-.
IMAGERY: A.
IMPACT: A-.
WRITING: A.
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