Book report: The Hydrogen Sonata, by Iain M. Banks
Book report: The Hydrogen Sonata, by Iain M. Banks Literature is people, so they say, but Iain M. Banks isn’t aware of this. Most of the characters in The Hydrogen Sonata are NOT people, but Ships, which is Banks’s shorthand for the massively smart and capable artificial intelligence units of spaceships belonging to the Culture. The Culture, in turn, is a collective of advanced (to us) civilizations that range throughout our galaxy. The civs in the Culture are post-scarcity societies, which is nice. Everybody has enough food, a place to live, and so forth. Machines do most of the work, so people are free to do pretty much whatever they want. Sounds pretty cushy, right? But even with people who have everything, there are still problems. Take the Gzilt, for example. They are an advanced civilization, on the same level as the Culture, but not a member of the Culture. They’ve all been there and done that, and now they are taking the Next Big Step: they are going to Sublime, which