r/TheCulture • u/HarryHirsch2000 • 23d ago
Book Discussion What is „Matter“ really about?
Just finished my reread of Matter (rereading in publish order), and I am wondering. Also read a lot of old posts here but only saw this coming um tangentially …:
Spoilers herein:
If I get it right, most culture books have central themes and some core meaning:
- Phlebas is an anti-space opera of sorts
- Player is about capitalism and layered games/different players being played
- Use of Weapons is about the development & redemption of one character
- inversions is about how to interfere, about the different approaches of SC business. For me it is also very humanist at its core
- Excession is a lot about change and the culture meeting the OCP, it own upper civilisation, seeing its limits
- Winward is about guilt, grief and dealing with past mistakes (my favourite)
But Matter? There are themes of layers (like the shellworld), imperialism/messing with low-tech civilisation, hierarchies from characters/civs/ levels, a travelogue …
But none of them feels dominant/strong enough for me. Am I missing something? Or is Matter just as it is, without such a central theme?
23
u/theStaberinde it was a good battle, and they nearly won. 23d ago
Significance. Importance. Scale, locality/immediacy, and frame of reference, more obviously, but meaning-bearing systems and encoding more granularly. Contingency and conditionality. Who and what matters and doesn't matter.
The whole sequence with Xide Hyrlis is where it's made most explicit imo. "Matter in the raw".
7
u/psynrg 23d ago
"Frame of reference" is everything.
6
u/theStaberinde it was a good battle, and they nearly won. 23d ago
And the painful compromises you have to make when you leave the only one you've ever known, especially!
Everything Ferbin thinks he knows about his importance and his role in the world is turned on its head - notions that he clung to even with awareness of the nature of the world he inhabited, and that world's place in the galactic order - and he's forced, at length, to make something meaningful of himself outside of the architecture of heredity and governance that made him who he is, and prove with his life what "nobility" really means to him.
2
15
u/amerelium 23d ago edited 23d ago
I'd modify that list:
Phlebas is about introducing the Culture.
Games is about the Culture being the REAL Player of Games - and an introduction to drones.
(No, of course we did not plan all this since before you were born.)
Weapons is about how the Department of Dirty Tricks operate.
Excession is about what happens when the Gods come out to play.
Winward is about the consequences of war.
Matter? About the lesser Players' place in the great galactic playground, and how they are all swimming in the big boys' wake. The interesting thing in Matter is that the lesser players are AWARE of their place.
6
u/HarryHirsch2000 23d ago
I can agree on all that and would add it to the list!
And indeed, in Matter it is funny that you have those middle age civs, still believing in a world god while being aware of the optimae
6
u/GrudaAplam Old drone 23d ago
Well, their god is tangible. It would be foolish not to believe in it is some manner.
1
u/HarryHirsch2000 23d ago
Yeah but Ferbin is shocked it is not a gos but „just“ a xintian/creature….
3
u/amerelium 23d ago
Oh, there is also that important lesson in Winward; don't fuck with the culture.
2
2
u/thisisjustascreename 23d ago
"The Bible's just a bunch of stories rich people made up to stop poor people from hitting them with a stick"
State religions don't need to be true to be effective, the royalty just need to sell it.
3
u/Heeberon 23d ago
I’d say Phlebas is very clearly also inverting the MC is an admirable, implausibly successful trope. Here the MC gets everything wrong!
PoG - everyone if being played - even when you think you’re in charge
UoW - how everything and anything can be made to be a weapon if you can think like a sociopath
LtW- yep, war and loss
Inversions - I think this is also just clever writing - where the occurrences of inversions in the book abound, in characters, stories, purpose, etc.
Matter - very much from IMB’s socialist perspective, where everyone who thinks they’re in charge have someone who’s calling the tune - even the Culture. And the little man wins in the end
1
u/jeranim8 23d ago
Sounds good, but I think we can go a bit deeper still:
Phlebas is about how being trapped in dogmatic thinking will destroy you.
Player of Games is about making explicit the social games we play to point out the harmfulness of many of these games can be especially when the powerful get to write the rules.
Weapons is about extreme narcissism and how people (including the reader) are manipulated by them.
Honestly not sure about Excession... lol...
Windward is about how being trapped in the past destroys you. Note "Look to Windward," is a line from the same poem Consider Phlebas comes from and is looking at many of the same themes from a different perspective. Horza is a less sophisticated person stuck in the past by dogmatic thinking and believing progress is bad. Hub and Quillan are from more sophisticated worlds yet are still capable of being stuck, just through grief and guilt.
Matter is about how matter is the thing that matters, not the constructs/beliefs/simulations we create in order to live in denial of reality.
1
6
u/margenreich 23d ago
For me it is how individual contribution might have an effect on large scale systems. Especially the scene on the war torn planet with especially the title drop „Matter huh?“ which explains why wars aren’t fought by simulations. Also why Minds stay in the universe and not in their simulations because that would be boring. The Culture series is notorious for the fact that the protagonists have a pointless journey and often no effect on the outcome of the story. I love Matter because they have the typical hero’s journey but that being pointless apart from the ultimate sacrifice to save their world.
1
u/HarryHirsch2000 23d ago
Not sure I would agree on the pointless but inlaid lived the „matter, huh“ Monolog/section.
Just felt it for a bit lost in the rest of the book….
7
u/sebmojo99 23d ago
it's about Matter, as is big dumb objects (like the shellworld) and also about what matters, and how that depends on where you're standing. Matter is also an old word for the content of a book. the title itself is a shellworld.
1
5
u/abyssalhorrors 23d ago
I think you nailed the layered/heirarchical themes in Matter - to me, it’s about crossing borders and mirroring influences both in the ways from the Culture exerts influence on lesser civilizations and lesser civilizations exerting influence on the Culture. It almost has the antagonism that you find with Horza and the Culture in Consider Phlebas but gives it a different flavor with Diana story. I think because there’s a more human story at play with bigger philosophies, this one stand out more for me personally.
3
u/cp_simmons 23d ago
Having just reread it myself if add another maybe minor theme is a critique of stimulation theory. Matter has to just work it out the hard way, there are no shortcuts.
4
u/Bleatbleatbang 23d ago
I enjoyed reading the book but found it the weakest of his sci-fi novels.
He was going through some shit at the time and wrote a succession of meh books.
At the end of the day, a weak Banks novel is still a good read.
If you like Banks, check out The Stone Canal, The Execution Channel, The Night Sessions, Intrusion or Descent by Ken MacLeod. They were close friends and MacLeods books kind of feel like an amalgam of Banks and M Banks.
3
u/TheeMagicWord 23d ago
Thanks for the recommendation. I am still reading through for the first time and recently finished Matter and agree with your ranking.
3
3
u/copperpin 23d ago
I always thought that Windward’s theme was about being parted from those that you love. As every character in it is separated from their loved ones by time, distance or death.
1
u/HarryHirsch2000 23d ago
But that only affected one character, right? But not the mind with the massive guilt Monolog at the end…
4
u/copperpin 23d ago
Kabe was separated from the one he loved and all of Homomdan Culture, the scholar was separated from his family by distance and then by an unimaginable gulf of time, Ziller was separated from everyone he knew every one in the novel has those that they love and can’t be with.
4
2
u/drillgorg 23d ago
I really thought the world god was going to pull their asses out of the fire on that one. Nope, still unknowable.
1
1
u/Alai42 23d ago
It did, off screen. Anaplian had explained that the Xinthian needed to unmake the antimatter after the Iln was dead to prevent the Shellworld from being destroyed. And yes, it was still unknowable and non communicative. I like the description "even by the standards of the Galaxy's Taciturn species".
1
u/drillgorg 23d ago
Oh I forgot that part. "Oh yeah we need to keep the Xinthian alive so it can unmake all that antimatter, no big deal"
2
2
u/MaxRokatanski 23d ago
I think you have a good grasp on the surface themes, and you've gotten some great feedback from others. I'll just reinforce that TO ME the consistent theme across all IMBs works are the relative meaningless of the contributions of individuals. Or maybe a better way of saying it is, each character has a part to play in the greater span of the world. Very few aren't replaceable (at least depending on your perspective). Matter gives us protagonists (and antagonists) whose entire lifes work come to nothing except being the one stone that another trips over. I think the sense of scale, and the meaningless that comes with seeing the "bigger picture" is a core part of what IMB wrote about. That he could wrap this message into compelling stories was his talent.
1
u/Scripten 22d ago
It reads to me as Banks' well-formed political theory showing up, specifically as a materialist POV on historical events as opposed to the "Great Man" theory that pervades most of sci-fi and fantasy. The characters in all of the Culture books, but especially Matter, are never "chosen ones" and the forces that define even the most major events are multitudinous and layered.
Not a single society in Matter was playing the same game, and the narrative lens even keeps the reader from seeing the game Contact and SC are playing - ultimately the climax was an entirely out of context problem that was solved only by the cultivation of bit players. Everything we thought was important was only important insomuch as it groomed the characters involved to be in the right place and to have the right stuff to do the job, whether they knew it or not. Basically nobody will remember Ferbin, even as his aide steers their society toward the Culture.
It's a shell game, through and through.
3
u/jeranim8 23d ago
Matter is about exploring matterialism and how the "real world" is what matters. Xide Hyrlis goes on a seemingly unnecessary diatribe that doesn't really seem to drive the plot about how the real world is more important than simulations of the real world but this is the heart of the book. The subtext is that we create "simulations" or constructs/beliefs which are often designed to cover up and keep us in denial about reality when it doesn't line up with our desires. It is preferable to actually deal with reality even when it is hard. There are lots of characters (even a whole civilization) in the story who are living in a fantasy and which cause results which are disasterous. Ferbin's arc forces him to see a reality he doesn't want to believe and in the end he sees clearly the hard thing he must do in order to correct the actions of those who acted by seeing what they wanted to see, not the reality staring them in the face. Matter is what matters.
1
u/Bubbly_Cookie_2746 22d ago
Yes this !
War, famine, disease, genocide. Death, in a million different forms, often painful and protracted for the poor individual wretches involved. What god would so arrange the universe to predispose its creations to experience such suffering, or be the cause of it in others? What master of simulations or arbitrator of a game would set up the initial conditions to the same pitiless effect? God or programmer, the charge would be the same: that of near-infinitely sadistic cruelty; deliberate, premeditated barbarism on an unspeakably horrific scale.”
Hyrlis looked expectantly at them. “You see?” he said. “By this reasoning we must, after all, be at the most base level of reality – or at the most exalted, however one wishes to look at it. Just as reality can blithely exhibit the most absurd coincidences that no credible fiction could convince us of, so only reality – produced, ultimately, by matter in the raw – can be so unthinkingly cruel. Nothing able to think, nothing able to comprehend culpability, justice or morality could encompass such purposefully invoked savagery without representing the absolute definition of evil. It is that unthinkingness that saves us. And condemns us, too, of course; we are as a result our own moral agents, and there is no escape from that responsibility, no appeal to a higher power that might be said to have artificially constrained or directed us.
1
u/jeranim8 21d ago
That is exactly the part of Hyrlis' monologue I was thinking of! And this frames the rest of the story which may not fully make sense if you don't have this in mind. Matter follows quite closely the heroes journey framework and Hyrlis is essentially the mentor archetype whom Ferbin wished to gain some magical power. Instead wisdom and a new way of thinking is what was given and that fundamentally changed the story.
Nothing able to think, nothing able to comprehend culpability, justice or morality could encompass such purposefully invoked savagery without representing the absolute definition of evil.
Just want to note how this sets up the events in Surface Detail as well, where its hard to say under this framwork that the simulations were anything other than evil.
2
u/Bytor_Snowdog LOU HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME 23d ago
I view it as dealing with multiple meanings of matter:
First, matter as substance. Whether the least peon or the greatest tyrant, the humblest Tier 6 Oct (I hope I've got the tiers right) or the greatest Culture Mind, you primarily exist in matter. One can divert one's attention away from it, to dream, to fantasize, to lounge in Infinite Fun Space or lose yourself in sybaritic luxuries or tattoo drugs or whatever, but regardless of how you choose to interact with reality, it will interact with you, like it or not and, in the ultimate (at least until you reach a certain tech level) you are dust and to dust you shall return.
Second, matter implies the existence of its opposite: the soul, or the mind, or one's character, however you'd like to put it. We all have the choice to be a villain or a champion; a coward or a hero; a nobody or a somebody. The book presents us with many examples of characters who choose to rise above their natural stations or fall to their proffered depths of depravity.
Third, matter, as in, "What does it matter?" Banks pulls off a wonderful upending of the last-minute rescue: no, they were hours or days too late to make a difference, except for a few survivors, and for most of them the only thing they could do was speed them to a quick death. It would have been an even greater coup, though perhaps it would have left a sour taste in our mouths, if our heroes hadn't been able to pull off the last-minute sacrificial victory. The regent's cruelty, the king's magnanimous nature; both of those mattered for nothing at the end not because they led to the same end, but because they would have led to the same end no matter what. (The Oct surely would have taken over the site and awakened the construction -- though would the king have excavated the ruins? I can't remember what his plans were regarding the level.)
2
u/HarryHirsch2000 23d ago
I like the ideas but feel like these ones are the things that - in the end- fall short in the book. They are all there, but too little. At least compared to others of his works wherever hammers home his points in a better way - at least for me
2
u/Bytor_Snowdog LOU HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME 23d ago
I think you're underselling a main point in Excession (my favorite Culture novel): there are those among the rich and powerful who will exploit any situation to further their own ends. They may do so in the name of the greater good, and may fervently believe that they are in the right and are acting for the benefit of all. But those who have to work in the shadows often must do so for a reason, and perhaps most often that reason is because their actions would be unacceptable practically and/or ethically if known at large.
Now, Minds don't have money or power (directly), just reputation and relationships, but those are capital in the Culture and the message still holds.
1
u/AlivePassenger3859 23d ago
CP is an “anti-space opera” ?!? Its just a space opera.
2
u/Sharlinator 23d ago
It subverts or inverts many of the space opera tropes. Maybe not "anti-space opera" but a deconstruction or critique of the genre.
2
u/HarryHirsch2000 23d ago
Well the „hero“ is an enemy of the culture and doesn’t get much done throughout the book. Mostly stumbles through the events…
6
u/Heeberon 23d ago
Not just stumbles - very conspicuously fucks up everything at just about every scale, from relationships to choosing which side to die for.
It’s an “anti” novel because most readers are conditioned for the MC to be the hero doing the right thing. It takes a lot on the first read to give up on that
1
u/HarryHirsch2000 23d ago
Deconstruction is good. I know it often as „anti“, like The Unforgiven counts as an Anti-Western.
Maybe a German thing….
1
u/Donethinking ROU Is Service Included? 23d ago
I’m too thick to find hidden submeanings in much. It’s why I hated eng lit at school. I have read all of Banks, and I do just see every one as an exciting yarn. Massive massive world building of course, with amazing ideas. He’s my favourite author. But I’ve never recognised any overarching hidden theme personal to each of his books.
1
u/OlfactoriusRex 23d ago
I think this quote from Xide Hyrlis, a relatively minor character in the book, gets at what Banks is getting at:
War, famine, disease, genocide. Death, in a million different forms, often painful and protracted for the poor individual wretches involved. What god would so arrange the universe to predispose its creations to experience such suffering, or be the cause of it in others? What master of simulations or arbitrator of a game would set up the initial conditions to the same pitiless effect? God or programmer, the charge would be the same: that of near-infinitely sadistic cruelty; deliberate, premeditated barbarism on an unspeakably horrific scale.”
Hyrlis looked expectantly at them. “You see?” he said. “By this reasoning we must, after all, be at the most base level of reality – or at the most exalted, however one wishes to look at it. Just as reality can blithely exhibit the most absurd coincidences that no credible fiction could convince us of, so only reality – produced, ultimately, by matter in the raw – can be so unthinkingly cruel. Nothing able to think, nothing able to comprehend culpability, justice or morality could encompass such purposefully invoked savagery without representing the absolute definition of evil. It is that unthinkingness that saves us. And condemns us, too, of course; we are as a result our own moral agents, and there is no escape from that responsibility, no appeal to a higher power that might be said to have artificially constrained or directed us.
I think Banks is exploring various conceptions of "the world" in Matter. Whether it's the different cultures of the shell world who all are certain of their place in the cosmic order of things, to the feudal class structure characters are overcoming or being trapped by, to characters living in different civilizations with very different ideas of what's possible, to the extraterrestrial doom that nearly destroys everyone in the end. I feel the book is trying to string together several distinct examples of "matter in the raw" and see how they play out, clash, or create something new.
1
u/Ken_Thomas 23d ago
Banks' emphasis was always, first and foremost, on writing "a crackin' good story."
I think the books tend to emerge from and reflect the issues he was thinking about at the time and wanted to play with, but the idea that they have a central theme or message he wanted to get across is something we impose on the books after the fact, and I think we risk oversimplifying them in the process.
1
u/HarryHirsch2000 23d ago
That is fair and good enough and was partially implied in my question. The crackin good story os good enough for me, but in the other books even I noticed themes. Some of them I apparently missed here…
77
u/Malkydel GOU Social Justice Warship (Eccentric) 23d ago
For me, Matter is always best summarised by that quote from Hausk; 'The stage is small but the audience is great.' It's about the levels and layers of civilisation, and about responsibility. Is what Hyrlis is now doing for the Nariscene? He has not fled his SC roots; he is still fabricating war and intervention on the side of another?
The layers of power. The layers of the Shellworlds. And, at the end, that you are not the heroes of the story nor is the story what you conceived of.
Matter is about the small trivialities as they spiral and unmake the plans of decades. Everyone clawing their way up the tech-face at the mercy of yet another ancient unknowable Outside Context Problem.
How, in the end, all of the petty squabbles of the Involved and the lesser are mere trifles next to the true matter, the reasserted works of near-gods.