He inflicts a lot of pain, witnesses a lot of death and destruction, and saves countless lives. He travels across the galaxy fighting wars, pulling strings, and generally trying to turn the screws in whatever direction the Culture deems agreeable. Zakalwe is employed and enhanced by the Culture, but not truly a part of it. Zakalwe soon discovers he is well-suited for this type of labor, and this unfortunate fact condemns him to a difficult but fitting existence, given that he’s already racked with guilt from events in his murky past. In Special Circumstances we deal in the moral equivalent of black holes, where the normal laws––the rules of right and wrong that people imagine apply everywhere else in the universe––break down beyond those metaphysical event horizons, there exist…special circumstances.

Cheradenine Zakalwe’s story unfolds in a teasing, nonlinear fashion, but we eventually learn that this poor sucker was recruited to do Special Circumstances’ dirty work: Banks is fond of victimizing his protagonists, and the central character in Use of Weapons is no exception. Similar to other Culture novels, Use of Weapons is a bemusing journey through times and places that appear both familiar and foreign, a tackling of omnipresent human problems platformed on the never-dull contrast between the magnanimous Culture and the poor corners of the galaxy that haven’t yet joined the fold. But did he create a once-in-a-generation vision of post-scarcity human life that should be honored and explored by all literate apes? I think so. Was his prose the best anyone could hope to find in the science fiction section? Unlikely. Was his grasp of science and futurism vastly superior to that of his many talented contemporaries? I doubt it. Was Banks the smartest or most creative science fiction writer of all time? Definitely not. Banks’s Culture novels, I can safely say that they should be required reading for all humans.

Ian banks use of weapons