Matter (2008)

Matter is a science fiction novel from Iain M. Banks set in his Culture universe. It was published on 25 January 2008.

Matter was a finalist for the 2009 Prometheus Award.

Creation

From an interview with The Guardian newspaper at the Hay Literary Festival on 25 May 2007:

Banks tells me that he has spent the past three months writing another Culture novel. It will be called Matter and is to be published next February. "It's a real shelf-breaker," he says enthusiastically. "It's 204,000 words long and the last 4,000 consist of appendices and glossaries. It's so complicated that even in its complexity it's complex. I'm not sure the publishers will go for the appendices, but readers will need them. It's filled with neologisms and characters who disappear for 150 pages and come back, with lots of flashbacks and -forwards. And the story involves different civilizations at different stages of technological evolution. There's even one group who have disappeared up their own fundaments into non-matter-based societies".

The working title of Banks' earlier novel The Steep Approach to Garbadale was also Matter.

Synopsis

The book follows the experiences of three members of the royal household of the Sarl, a feudal, early-industrial humanoid race living on the eighth level of the Shellworld of Sursamen. Constructed for an unknown purpose by a long-dead race called the Veil, Shellworlds are ancient artificial planets consisting of nested concentric spheres internally lit by tiny thermonuclear "stars". The spheres are inhabited by various primitive races along with progressively more advanced mentoring species, up to the level of what the Sarl call "Optimae." (The Optimae themselves, particularly the Culture, prefer the term "Involved.") Approximately 4,000 Shellworlds were built, but over 2,000 were deliberately destroyed, for reasons unknown, by another presumed extinct race, the Iln. Like many Shellworlds, the core of Sursamen is known to be inhabited by a mysterious creature called a Xinthian Tensile Aeranothaur, whom the Sarl worship as their "WorldGod."

Prince Ferbin, the self-centred heir to the Sarl throne, has to flee his home level on the Shellworld and the Shellworld itself after witnessing the murder of his father, King Hausk, by Mertis tyl Loesp, the King's second-in-command. Prince Oramen, Ferbin's studious younger brother, is unaware of the treachery and trusts tyl Loesp fully. After Ferbin's disappearance—and presumed death—tyl Loesp takes on the role of regent, ostensibly until Prince Regent Oramen comes of age and can be crowned king.

The Oct, the direct mentoring species over the Sarl, meanwhile have been organizing the takeover of the ninth level of Sursamen (owned by the Deldeyn, another human nation of approximately equal level of development to the Sarl), using the Sarl royal court and military as their pawns. It becomes increasingly clear that they are searching for something hidden in the Nameless City, a metropolis buried under several hundred million years of sediment which is currently being stripped away by the giant Hyeng-zhar waterfalls. The ninth level was only recently re-colonised in a move by the Oct, which was retrospectively validated, with reluctance, by Sursamen's mentoring races, the Nariscene and the more senior Morthanveld. (The Culture itself has no jurisdiction over Sursamen, since the Morthanveld are - like the Culture - "High Level Involved", technically regarded as sort-of-equals in an uneasy although peaceful diplomatic relationship: although despite this, the human(oid) Sarl seem to have more affinity with the Culture although their hierarchy of patronage comes from the Morthanveld.) Opposed to the Oct at an approximately equal stage of development are another species, the Aultridia, who opposed the Oct's incursions into the ninth level, and there is a risk of Oct/Aultridia war breaking out - which may become worse if the intermediate-level Nariscene, themselves patrons of the Oct, are dragged into involvement, or worse still, the high-level Morthanveld themselves.

Elsewhere, Djan Seriy Anaplian, another child of King Hausk, had left Sursamen fifteen years earlier to become a member of the Culture as part of a cultural exchange and later joined the Culture's covert Special Circumstances (SC) intelligence and intervention organisation. Anaplian decides to return to Sursamen, originally to pay her respects to her dead father and presumed-dead brother. (Initial reports from Sursamen only described the king and prince's causes of death as combat-related.) Meanwhile, the fleeing Ferbin is seeking out his long-absent sister hoping that, with her powerful connections and SC access, she could help him attain revenge against tyl Loesp.

Within the Culture, other channels of intelligence later validate suspicions that the Oct are planning something mysterious on Sursamen and SC contacts Anaplian en route via a humanoid avatar of the Culture ship Liveware Problem, Klatsli Quike. SC asks Anaplian to investigate, upgrading her bereavement travel to an official Culture mission - one which will be necessarily highly sensitive since Sursamen is not under Culture jurisdiction, nor are any of the species involved in the Morthanveld chain of patronage. Quike is soon replaced by another avatoid of The Liveware Problem, Pone Hippinse, as Anaplian's tactical partner in the mission. Her combat drone, Turminder Xuss, had covertly stowed away in her belongings at the beginning of her journey, disguised initially as a Knife Missile resembling a dildo; Anaplian has had most SC tactical enhancements to her mind and body disabled for her personal journey out of diplomatic considerations, but she restores most of them after her trip is upgraded to an official mission, and Xuss will prove critically useful as well. At this point, Anaplian is reunited with her fugitive brother, Ferbin, and his faithful (but increasingly independently-minded) servant Choubris Holse.