Conscious Bob
Well-Known Member
Iain M Banks Culture novel number 9 or 10 concerns itself with the cousins of the Culture, an advanced civilisation called the Gzilt. The Gzilt having reached the done everything stage of galactic development have decided to leave the 'real' galaxy forever like millions of civilisations before them by a mysterious process called subliming.
Events however do not go smoothly and while the countdown continues the Culture gets involved trying to sort out a messy situation involving a Gzilt Reserve Lieutenant Commander and a 9000 year old Culture Citizen that may potentially know something heretically important about the Gzilt religion.
The Sublimed have been covered in previous Culture novels so I was hoping a little more light would be shed on this element of backstory, in the end though I was slightly frustrated...
There is plenty for the reader here, the Culture and the Gzilt are equivalent civilisations which means the Culture can't rely on technological supremacy to carry the day and the Sublimed are given a much more central role which has a flavour of the Arthur C. Clarke novel - Childhood's End, about it.
I got the impression that although the universe which the Culture inhabits is an atheist universe, the Sublimed fill the supernatural void pretty much to bursting.
Enjoyable.
Events however do not go smoothly and while the countdown continues the Culture gets involved trying to sort out a messy situation involving a Gzilt Reserve Lieutenant Commander and a 9000 year old Culture Citizen that may potentially know something heretically important about the Gzilt religion.
The Sublimed have been covered in previous Culture novels so I was hoping a little more light would be shed on this element of backstory, in the end though I was slightly frustrated...
There is plenty for the reader here, the Culture and the Gzilt are equivalent civilisations which means the Culture can't rely on technological supremacy to carry the day and the Sublimed are given a much more central role which has a flavour of the Arthur C. Clarke novel - Childhood's End, about it.
I got the impression that although the universe which the Culture inhabits is an atheist universe, the Sublimed fill the supernatural void pretty much to bursting.
Enjoyable.
