A review by tombomp
Look to Windward by Iain M. Banks
4.0
I sort of have a problem with the main backstory premise to the book, this spoiler reveals a lot of stuff that's revealed slowly over the course of the book
So like 1) In what way is it the culture's responsibility?
2) Why is the ending of the caste system presented as inevitably resulting in terrible violence worse than the caste system itself?
I don't want to be too like "well this doesn't follow my communist morality so it's bad" but it does feel like a very strange moral tale to have the oppressed become atrociously violent suddenly for no good reason and for it to be the wrong thing to have helped them at all. But even if we accept this, it seems strange to blame the Culture given that this was apparently something a significant amount of the population immediately took to. Although the Culture influenced things somewhat, apparently if the caste-enders had come to power "naturally" the same thing would have happened. If the politicians or even a decent amount of the population had a serious investment in the caste system they could easily have stopped things getting that far in the first place (although again that'd be bizarre, morally). So if there were no Culture intervention at all, either 1) the same thing would have happened, possibly over a longer timescale, given there seemed to be widespread agreement on what was done up until the war and no major pushback 2) the caste supporters would have objected, taken up a stronger position, and probably catalysed a civil war anyway which would probably have been just as bloody except with the oppressed castes in a far weaker position.
Of course, this is me being silly to a certain extent. Obviously it's fiction, you have a certain set up, and it's not pushing a super simplistic "oppressed people are bad for resisting" thing exactly. It's an attempt to set up a decent moral dilemma, and obviously if it's a moral dilemma there's no starting position that will totally satisfy me because it's always going to be unpleasant in some way! I mean like as a general opponent of most "intervention" in a real life context it's kind of weird of me to be defending the Culture in the book, even if it's not really like real interventions - we "know" the Culture is far more "good" than any state in real life, even with the bad stuff it does sometimes. The Chelgrian intervention also had very little benefit to them - in real life the bad consequences are often down to continuing oppression to benefit those who intervened.
But it's near impossible to create a close to real scenario in the Culture universe I think. I definitely appreciate the effort and think he did a great job - that I'm writing all these words about it is a good indication I think what he's written is worth thinking seriously about, heh. It's a pretty great thing to do to try and write a book about intervention like this - even if I don't think the premise is perfect to talk about the problems and consequences of "humanitarian intervention" even with seemingly "perfect" societies is good.
Although I did feel the civil war was intended to evoke memories of the Rwandan genocide, which seems kind of dodgy?
The book is good in general. It's full of descriptions of the Orbital, which are amazing although I'm bad at picturing stuff from descriptions and if you're better at that than me you'll probably like it even more. The truly alien environment of the airsphere was great to read about too. The ending is good - I did think (ending spoiler) Anyway yeah it's good
Spoiler
So the Culture is considered responsible for the caste civil war. They did this by influencing politics so a caste-ending politician became president, which led to a gradual but almost complete destruction of the caste system. Then the former lower castes just tried to kill the higher castes suddenly for some reason just at the moment the caste system was pretty nearly abolished. One of the members of the species suggests it was "natural" for it to happen because they're a "predator species". Yet it turns out that the two sides immediately make peace when it turns out the Culture had influenced things. The only reason the Culture are considered responsible for it is because they bribed parliamentarians to vote for this guy for president. The sudden civil war was entirely started by Chelgrians, apparently based on a sort of inevitability and their own plans.So like 1) In what way is it the culture's responsibility?
2) Why is the ending of the caste system presented as inevitably resulting in terrible violence worse than the caste system itself?
I don't want to be too like "well this doesn't follow my communist morality so it's bad" but it does feel like a very strange moral tale to have the oppressed become atrociously violent suddenly for no good reason and for it to be the wrong thing to have helped them at all. But even if we accept this, it seems strange to blame the Culture given that this was apparently something a significant amount of the population immediately took to. Although the Culture influenced things somewhat, apparently if the caste-enders had come to power "naturally" the same thing would have happened. If the politicians or even a decent amount of the population had a serious investment in the caste system they could easily have stopped things getting that far in the first place (although again that'd be bizarre, morally). So if there were no Culture intervention at all, either 1) the same thing would have happened, possibly over a longer timescale, given there seemed to be widespread agreement on what was done up until the war and no major pushback 2) the caste supporters would have objected, taken up a stronger position, and probably catalysed a civil war anyway which would probably have been just as bloody except with the oppressed castes in a far weaker position.
Of course, this is me being silly to a certain extent. Obviously it's fiction, you have a certain set up, and it's not pushing a super simplistic "oppressed people are bad for resisting" thing exactly. It's an attempt to set up a decent moral dilemma, and obviously if it's a moral dilemma there's no starting position that will totally satisfy me because it's always going to be unpleasant in some way! I mean like as a general opponent of most "intervention" in a real life context it's kind of weird of me to be defending the Culture in the book, even if it's not really like real interventions - we "know" the Culture is far more "good" than any state in real life, even with the bad stuff it does sometimes. The Chelgrian intervention also had very little benefit to them - in real life the bad consequences are often down to continuing oppression to benefit those who intervened.
But it's near impossible to create a close to real scenario in the Culture universe I think. I definitely appreciate the effort and think he did a great job - that I'm writing all these words about it is a good indication I think what he's written is worth thinking seriously about, heh. It's a pretty great thing to do to try and write a book about intervention like this - even if I don't think the premise is perfect to talk about the problems and consequences of "humanitarian intervention" even with seemingly "perfect" societies is good.
Although I did feel the civil war was intended to evoke memories of the Rwandan genocide, which seems kind of dodgy?
The book is good in general. It's full of descriptions of the Orbital, which are amazing although I'm bad at picturing stuff from descriptions and if you're better at that than me you'll probably like it even more. The truly alien environment of the airsphere was great to read about too. The ending is good - I did think (ending spoiler)