Iain M.Banks is the name used by the author Iain Banks who has written novels such as the Wasp Factory, Canal Dreams and the Crow Road. Banks has added the middle initial to his name to distinguish books that would be classed as science fiction. Excession is one of Banks’ later science fiction novels, for this reason you would need to have read some of his earlier works as the book is quite complicated. Excession assumes the reader already knows about certain concepts and ideas that Banks has dreamed up. For this reason I can’t recommend reading Excession unless you have read some of the earlier sci-fi novels such as Consider Phlebas or The Player of Games (see earlier review).

One of the main reasons Excession is such a complicated book is because of the fact that the overall story is made up of smaller stories which at first you do not think are related. The smaller stories eventually all become intertwined as the book progresses. The main feature in Excession is a strange artefact that has appeared in space, the artefact is in the form of a mysterious black sphere orbiting around an ancient sun. The Culture Minds have monitored this sphere, but have gained very little data about it. The sphere is relatively weightless, attempts have been made to get inside of it but to no avail, what could this sphere be? Mysterious occurrences have happened to space craft orbiting the sphere for any length of time such as the crew aboard turning very eccentric or the spacecraft completely disappearing. Trying to find out what this mysterious sphere might be makes Excession quite a compulsive read once you have started. The Culture Minds decide that the sphere is probably a threat to the Culture as a whole, therefore the Minds decide to class the sphere as an “outside context problem” or “Excession”, hence the name of the book. Another reason the book is such a complicated read is that much of it is about the communication between the minds. Following the Minds “conversations” is a little like reading a string of e-mail attachments or following a conversation on “Yahoo messenger”, you have to pay attention to who is saying what and remember the names of the Minds (which Mind is which). Sometimes some of the Minds have highly technical discussions which can be very difficult to follow, at the same time you have to have a memory for names of the minds themselves. I think a large part of Excession is not about humans and human interaction, but about interactions between artificial intelligence and machines.

Another key theme that occurs in Excession is a story of infidelity that occurs between two humans from the Culture, the two humans are named Dajeil Gelian and Genar Hofoen. Personally I found this part of the story, the weakest and a bit unbelievable in a civilization that is meant to be so hedonistic. Humans in the Culture tend to live for about 400 years on average, marriage and lifetime partnership is very unusual in the Culture, instead humans in the Culture express love for one another in a very strange way that involves changing gender and producing a child. All culture humans have the ability to change gender by simply going into a trance, the process is totally painless but does take some time. I won’t try to explain any more about this strange process of sex changing as it is quite complicated, you would really need to read the book. Anyway Genar Hofoen the male in the partnership cheats on Dajeil Gelian during the process of changing sex, this leads to a whole chain of events that are key to the story.

Ulver Seich – Ulver Seich is another one of my favourite characters in the story, she is used by the “Sleeper Service” in a plot to seduce Genar Hofoen. Ulver Seich has managed to achieve IT girl status in the Culture, this is quite an achievement in a civilization that is so egalitarian. Ulver Seich is one of the ancestors of the founders of the Culture civilization and she normally lives aboard a giant rocket propelled asteroid. Ulver Seich is in general quite a feisty character and she sounded like quite a fox, she has long dark hair, quite dark skin and blue eyes.