The Algebraist
Iain M. Banks
pages
published in 2004

It had been four years since Iain M. Banks had published his last novel Look to Windward, so my expectations for The Algebraist were high. Banks has been one of my top five favourite science fiction writers since I'd discovered his writing with Consider Phlebas some years after it had first come out, he hadn't written a bad book yet and with most of his work had managed to blow my mind in the way only first class science fiction can.

Unfortunately, it turned out my expectations were set too high. The Algebraist is the first Iain M. Banks book I've been disappointed by. The reasons for this disappointment are complex, but can be summed up as follows: Banks is following where he used to lead. With his previous science fiction novels, Culture and non-Culture alike, Banks used to explore grounds that, if not entirely untrotten, were certainly in a near-virginial state. Here however, we have a setting that keeps reminding me of other writers, in particular of his Scotland-based companions Ken MacLeod and Charles Stross, but also of Vernor Vinge, Dan Simmons and even David Brin.

The background against which The Algebraist takes place is that of a more or less Galaxy wide civilisation, consisting of hundrerds upon thousands of alien species, which can roughly be divided in fast living species like humans, who do not tend to stick around much and long lived species like the Dwellers, the oldest intelligent species still existing, with individual members over a billion years old. The Dwellers are sort of outside the system, mostly left alone in their gas giant worlds and little regarded. However, since the Dwellers have been around since effectively forever and have a tendency to record things, they have a lot of valuable data for those people willing to interact with them, which takes a lot of patience.

The Ulubis system, is one of the most highly regarded centres of Dweller research, where various species have been doing research for untold numbers of years. Currently it is humans who work as seers and our protagonist, Fassin Taak, is such a Seer and may have inadvertenly stumbled upon one of the biggest secrets the Dwellers may or may not hold: the location of a secret network of wormholes existing outside of the official network of wormholes that keeps civilisation together. Ulubis itself has been cut off from this system for 200 years by a Beyonder attack and it turns out the Beyonders are returning to occupy the system permanentely. It is partially for this reason, Fassin Taak is sent on a mission to recover the Dwellers secret, if it exists.

Most of the elements of the description above are familiar, from Hyperion, the Uplift books, Ken MacLeod's last novel, Newton's Wake and or Charles Stross' two novels, Singularity Sky and Iron Sunrise. Parts of the background, like the lack of AI, is also taken from Vinge and others. To be fair, the elements in Banks' Culture novel had antecedents as well, but in those they were used in novel and interesting ways. Here, the background feels as paint by numbers. Little new is done with it.

The other problem I had with The Algebraist is that it misses an emotional core. In most, if not all of Banks' earlier science fiction novels and especially his best ones, the plot is ultimately driven by the characters themselves, no matter how large the backdrop to their actions is. Consider Phlebas may be about the war between the Culture and the Idirans, a Galaxy wide war as big as any seen in Space Opera, it is still Horza's story. In his previous novels, you could not replace the protagonist and get the same story.

Here however, I get no sense of how Fassin Taak fits in with the plot or how the plot would differ if someone else had been the hero. He remains far too much of a cypher. There is an scene in the beginning of the book which is supposed to provide the emotional core of the book in the same way that scene did in Use of Weapons, but it rings hollow. It takes place before Ulubis was cut off from the rest of civilisation and involves Taak and his friends from youth, Saluus Kehar, later a powerful industrial leader and Taince Yarabokin, who would become one of the leaders of the reconnection fleet that is on its way to reconnect the system to civilisation in a deep, dark secret which should drive their actions for the rest of their lives.

In some ways, it does, but only on the most superficial and tawdry level and without the connection to the larger issues and story similar scenes had in earlier Banks' novels. Worse, Fassin Taak's merry quest has little connection to the threat of the oncoming Beyonder invasion and hence the two halves of the storyline never meet up. As a result of this, the book is unbalanced, with the focus either too much on Fassin Taak or too little on the other two main characters.

In all then, this book feels rushed and unfinished. The seed of a great novel is here, but it hasn't germinated. It isn't a bad novel, as Banks is incapable of writing a truly bad novel, but it is certainly far below the high standards he had set with his earlier works.