Use of Weapons

[Gerretic]

Since so many people in other book threads have mentioned it as one of their favorite Culture books, and since I just finished the audiobook the other day, I thought we could have a discussion thread for Use of Weapons in particular.

 

Spoilers for the entire book:

The chair pretty much destroyed me. Throughout the book there were moments where I was thinking, "Seriously, this guy has a deathly fear of chairs?" but when I realized what it was I wanted to cry. And then the reveal at the end made me want to go back and read the whole thing again in the best way. That kind of 'he was someone else ALL ALONG' thing is a bit of a cliché, but with Zakalwe and Elethiomel it completely worked for me.

 

I could probably go on and on but I'll leave it there for now.

[Nachimir]

I loved that book when I was 18, though I'm not sure I'd love it the same if I was reading it for the first time now.

 

I think the "He was someone else all along" trope works so well in this because the interleaving chapters frame him against his supposed past self and his actual past self. The revelation is more than a Scooby Doo ending or Kaiser Sose moment because you feel betrayed and suckered by Zakalwe too. The scene with the chair preceding it serves to solidify perceptions before the rug gets pulled. The earlier chapter in which Zakalwe is enamoured with a giant plasma rifle and uses it to take down a ship pokes a big hole in any notion of him being a hero rather than a psychopath, but in the context of other macho images in media and my teenage brain, could totally pass as "Heh, cool". Use of Weapons did a lot to dismantle my notion of the hero at an impressionable time in my life.

 

… which in turn went on to shape a lot of my outlook when it comes to the narratives we're typically presented in films, games, etc. that are aimed at guys or present masculine images. One example: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

 

I'd have hated the Wish Granter endings to that game if I were still enamoured of heroes. Instead I thought "I probably deserved that".

[osmosisch]

Well said, Nachimir.

[Gormongous]

I loved that book when I was 18, though I'm not sure I'd love it the same if I was reading it for the first time now.

 

I think the "He was someone else all along" trope works so well in this because the interleaving chapters frame him against his supposed past self and his actual past self. The revelation is more than a Scooby Doo ending or Kaiser Sose moment because you feel betrayed and suckered by Zakalwe too. The scene with the chair preceding it serves to solidify perceptions before the rug gets pulled. The earlier chapter in which Zakalwe is enamoured with a giant plasma rifle and uses it to take down a ship pokes a big hole in any notion of him being a hero rather than a psychopath, but in the context of other macho images in media and my teenage brain, could totally pass as "Heh, cool". Use of Weapons did a lot to dismantle my notion of the hero at an impressionable time in my life.

 

Yeah, excellent observation. Having read the book for the first time at the age of twenty-three, it meant something a little different for me, but I still loved it.

 

I enjoyed it most as an incredibly bleak study of how much an evil person can try to change. The alternating timelines of the chapters force us to juxtapose different versions of Zakalwe, but in a kind of pessimism endemic to Banks, what we are shown is that, given infinite time and resources, Zakalwe is able to distance himself from the Chairmaker only in his own mind. In short, the redemption he craves is achievable only when he is the last living memory of his own misdeeds... and maybe not even then, considering how every other thought and word of his is about the Chair or Staberinde or something that happened to "someone else" centuries ago.

 

That's what made the prologue and epilogue so powerful for me, in hindsight. They're nominally about Zakalwe alienated from the Culture, which could not give him a clean conscience despite being maybe the most powerful civilization in the history of science fiction, and now mourning Diziet Sma like he mourns Livueta, but they also show Zakalwe most clearly to still be Elethiomel in his use of weapons, just older and sadder to boot. It was incredibly moving to me at the time, and I don't doubt it still would be.

 

And because of that, I refuse to suggest the pointless continuity with the epilogue of Surface Detail. The one thing that could ruin the ending of Use of Weapons is showing Zakalwe happy and useful somewhere, but Banks still did it for reasons we'll never know now.

[Gerretic]

Great points, thanks folks!

 

What are peoples' thoughts on Skaffen-Amtiskaw and the Culture's use of weapons in general?

 

Spoilers for The Player of Games and Use of Weapons:

I've only read those two and Consider Phlebas and they would combine to give me the impression that a lot of Culture drones are murderous by nature. I'm not sure what Skaffen-Amtiskaw killing all those people says about the themes of the book, except maybe that the larger Culture minds that orchestrate Special Circumstances should also perhaps not be trusted as behaving ethically. In general the Culture seems to be much more of a true utopia than most that you see in SF, but I'm not too sure about the ethics of Special Circumstances / Contact. I'm a Star Trek kid and I've internalized the Prime Directive pretty thoroughly, but we know that in real life every choice is political and the apparently apolitical stance is always an endorsement of the status quo. That might be OK for the Federation, who's not advanced enough to predict the consequences of their actions, but the Culture at least believes itself to be in a position to map the outcomes of intervention and steer things in a good direction based on their own ethical framework.

 

I think Player of Games shows, albeit in a heavy-handed way, a society that can definitely be made better for its population by changing. The thought that horrifies me is that enlisting war criminals like Zakalwe to act as agents might be the most ethical thing they can do; if they keep them on a tight leash they're able to get those ruthless tactics out of someone who's soul is already destroyed, rather than putting somebody new through the grinder.

[Gormongous]

Great points, thanks folks!

 

What are peoples' thoughts on Skaffen-Amtiskaw and the Culture's use of weapons in general?

 

Spoilers for The Player of Games and Use of Weapons:

I've only read those two and Consider Phlebas and they would combine to give me the impression that a lot of Culture drones are murderous by nature. I'm not sure what Skaffen-Amtiskaw killing all those people says about the themes of the book, except maybe that the larger Culture minds that orchestrate Special Circumstances should also perhaps not be trusted as behaving ethically. In general the Culture seems to be much more of a true utopia than most that you see in SF, but I'm not too sure about the ethics of Special Circumstances / Contact. I'm a Star Trek kid and I've internalized the Prime Directive pretty thoroughly, but we know that in real life every choice is political and the apparently apolitical stance is always an endorsement of the status quo. That might be OK for the Federation, who's not advanced enough to predict the consequences of their actions, but the Culture at least believes itself to be in a position to map the outcomes of intervention and steer things in a good direction based on their own ethical framework.

 

I think Player of Games shows, albeit in a heavy-handed way, a society that can definitely be made better for its population by changing. The thought that horrifies me is that enlisting war criminals like Zakalwe to act as agents might be the most ethical thing they can do; if they keep them on a tight leash they're able to get those ruthless tactics out of someone who's soul is already destroyed, rather than putting somebody new through the grinder.

 

I think your analysis is spot on, if you replace "Culture drones" with "Special Circumstances" drones.

 

I especially like the Culture novels as a study of science fiction after Star Trek. Both purport to depict post-scarcity societies, but while Star Trek is caught up in depicting the ideal transnational state, the Culture is something more amorphous, although the characters we tend to see are still occupied with importing violence and exporting order along the fringe, just with near-omniscient policy-makers directing them. SC drones are just a purer expression of the philosophy that recruits Zakalwe to be a monster in the name of good.

 

The real shame with the Culture novels is that we get a better idea of the society as a whole with more novels, rather than just their military and special forces, but the quality of those novels degrades and their length bloats up pretty noticeably. Excession is the turning point for me, although Look to Windward has lots of good points.