Hydrogen Sonata

Ian M Banks

Orbit

Otago Daily Times, 2013

The Hydrogen Sonata is the latest of Ian M Banks’ Culture novels, and marks something of a return to form; a sprawling space opera replete with mystery, adventure, gratuitous sex, violence and some interesting insights into the origins of the Culture.

The Gzilt are an ancient civilisation, involved in the original negotiations that led to the formation of the Culture, although ultimately deciding to remain independent.  They have now reached a technological and social stage where they have decided to Sublime, a mysterious process in which the collective consciousness of the society ascends to a higher, and vastly more complex dimension. The few individuals who return to the ‘real’ cannot explain what it is like and usually choose to re-sublime, so people assume it is a desirable state despite lack of evidence. Then, with only weeks to go before Sublimation Day, a ship bearing a shocking confession from their mentors, the Zhildren; the Book of Truth, the Gzilt’s primary religious text, was planted in the mind of its author not by God but by a renegade Zhildren scientist as a sociological experiment.

Naturally enough this revelation alarms those in authority with a vested interest in the Sublimation, and lest the news cause their people to rethink the decision to transcend, they order the destruction of the ship and the 14^th Fleet which intercepted it, but not before the commander recalls Lieutenant Commander (reserve) Vyr Cossont from retirement ­and orders her to find the one person who might know whether the claim is true.  After escaping the destruction of the 14^th Fleet, with the help of a Culture ship that has become interested in the whole affair, Vyr is determined to fulfil her mission and starts her search accompanied only by the Ship’s avatar and an android that is convinced that the whole thing is a simulation, and pursued by a Gzilt warship determined to stop her.

The novel’s title refers to an unlistenable composition for an unplayable instrument, an exercise intended to prove how easy – and pointless – it is to write mathematical programmable music.  Unfortunately the joke has been completely lost on subsequent generations, and in what may be the ultimate irony the sonata is now regarded as one of the most important musical pieces of the era. It is tempting to interpret this as a metaphor for the Culture novels themselves, and speculate that Banks is now only producing them in order to satisfy his loyal readers. My sense, however, is that he still enjoys the writing, and The Hydrogen Sonata is considerably more light-hearted and optimistic than some of his recent work. He may well be having a subtle laugh at the reader’s expense (I suspect the plot is one long anti-Macguffin), but this is all part of the fun.