Consider Phlebas

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Beenke Phlebas (English original title: Consider Phlebas , published 1987 ) by Iain M. Banks is a space opera and part of the culture cycle . The title of the book is borrowed from the poem The Waste Land by TS Eliot - as is the title of the book Blick windwärts .

content

The background to Phleba's concern is the war between the culture and the Idirans, which has been going on for several years. Both are interstellar civilizations, but they differ radically in their philosophy. The Idirans are a three-legged, physically almost immortal species whose worldview and inveterate religious fanaticism require them to organize the universe according to the ideas of their god. Countless civilizations are either subjugated or exterminated.

The story is told mostly from the perspective of a converter named Bora Horza Gobuchul . Converters are an almost extinct species of humanoid aliens who have the ability to completely adapt their physique to the image of any other panhuman. Horza fights on the side of the Idirans because of the complex attachment of culture to their brains , i.e. H. hyperintelligent artificial intelligences , finds unnatural. The Idirans give Horza a special assignment that only he can carry out on his own: he is to track down a young, untrained cultural brain that has saved itself on Schars world and hand it over to the Idirans. Access to this planet of the dead is controlled by a Dra'Azon , an overpowering being that only allows entry to those seeking refuge and shipwrecked people. Since Horza once belonged to the small base team on Schars Welt , staffed with converters , he is the Idirans' only hope of entering the world and commandeering the brain.

The converter, who embodies a high functionary in the Sorpen gerontocracy for his Idiran clients , is exposed by Perosteck Balveda , an agent of the cultural intelligence service section Special Circumstances . He just escapes death; the Idiran ship that rescued him is seized by a culture cruiser shortly afterwards. So that he cannot be caught or killed, the commander throws Horza into space without further ado, equipped with a signal transmitter and a survival pack. Before the Idiran fleet can take him on board, he is accidentally picked up by a privateer ship.

First, Horza fights his way into the crew of the privateer ship Clear Air Turbulence ( CAT ). He begins a relationship with one of the female members, exploring his situation and the chances of completing his assignment. Kraiklyn , the captain of the CAT , is hapless as a leader and his motto “quick in, quick out” becomes the winged word for unsuccessful operations. After the failed attack on the Temple of Light , the CAT flies to Orbital Vavatch , which is currently being evacuated from the culture and then destroyed so that it cannot serve as a base of operations for the advancing Idirans in the war.

Kraiklyn wants to get functional bow laser weapons out of a wrecked mega-ship. The group of privateers is severely decimated and eventually separated from one another. After an interlude as a shipwrecked man with a group of fanatically insane cannibals , Horza manages to track down Kraiklyn again. The converter kills Kraiklyn, takes over the Clear Air Turbulence with his identity and flies with the remaining crew members to Schars world .

The girl Fal 'Ngeestra is one of only 30 special cultural citizens (among about 500 billion) who are able to make probable predictions of events within given facts. For problem solving on Schars Welt, she names the names Perosteck Balveda , the Vavatch Orbital and Kraiklyn . Thereupon the cultural agent Perosteck Balveda receives the order to infiltrate the privateers and makes it to the CAT.

The Dra'Azon allows the CAT to land on Schars World. Horza finds the Wandler base crew murdered, including his former lover. A small group of Idirans has apparently succeeded in breaking the silent barrier around the planet and in search of the brain.

In the command system of an extinct civilization buried deep under the surface of the planet, the privateers under Horza's leadership are now looking for the Idirans and the hidden cultural brain. Horza has to painfully realize that the Idirans are not his allies, and he realizes the extremely unpleasant characteristics of their fanatical racism . In addition to the loyalty crisis that is looming, there is a personal identity crisis. Little by little, the members of his team are killed, until at the end only Perosteck Balveda and a small repair drone are left on Horza's side. Seriously injured and desperate, Horza finally dies in Perosteck's care. The cultural agent succeeds in salvaging the traumatized cultural brain and leaving Schars world.

After the end of the war, the recovered brain takes the name of the dead walker : Bora Horza Gobuchul . When asked about this strange name by a curious tourist, the book ends with the following sentences: "This is a long story ..." "I love long stories".

Context within the culture cycle

Consider Phlebas considers the culture mainly from the viewpoint of its opponents, with which it is in an interstellar conflict. Only in the sequences about the girl Fal'Ngeestra does the reader experience something like the everyday life of a cultural member. The book is supplemented by an appendix that presents the war between the culture and the Idirans in the form of a historical summary. The final statistics state: At 48 years and one month a small, short war, but nonetheless the most important conflict of the last 50,000 years.

Although 800 years have passed since the idiranischen War, can the novel looks to windward as a thematic continuation of Consider Phlebas read. Both narratives are based on very similar lines of conflict with regard to the unbroken interference strategies of culture .

criticism

  • Colin Greenland : " Consider Phlebas is not exactly a modern search for the Grail, at least not more than any other heroic legends with the clang of swords and din, in which a vaguely divine thing is striven for. But how Eliot's grave story for the drowned Phoenician seafarer (Phlebas) could This whole novel, too, is viewed as an act of memory, as a reminder of the dead, as a moral parable of epic breadth, which a machine transmits to a pregnant young woman many generations after the event. "

literature

swell

  1. ↑ In: Wolfgang Jeschke (Ed.): Das Science Fiction Jahr 1990 , Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich, ISBN 3-453-03905-X , p. 555.