The Hydrogen Sonata is one of the last novels of Iain M. Banks before his death last June. It's also the last "Culture novel," one of a series of essentially disconnected novels about a galactic, post-scarcity civilization called "The Culture," and the various other civilizations with which it shares the galaxy.
I loved this book.
While some people complain that Banks's Culture novels are all basically the same, I find every one of them to be distinctive and highly unique. And while some themes may recur in multiple novels, each novel is clearly its own story, each examining those themes from different directions. They're all wrought with outrageous yet exquisitely detailed events and spectacles, by turns lovely and gory. Banks also paints different cultures beautifully; different enough to be startlingly alien, yet all with some tiny bit of familiarity to them that draws the reader in.
For instance, in this novel, there is what might be best described as a space station that orbits a planet, but inside a kilometres-wide trough sliced round the planet's girth - the station actually orbits the planet below ground level. I've been reading SF close to 50 years now, and I ain't ever read anything like that before!
The plots are also ridiculously complex and worked out in stunning detail. In this case, the plot revolves around the impending Subliming of the Gzilt, one of the non-Culture civilizations of the galaxy. Old enough to have been around when the Culture was first created, the Gzilt have reached a point in their development that they're ready to evolve - every one of them all at once - beyond the physical. This ultimate step of evolution, Subliming, has been mentioned in many of Banks's previous Culture novels, but never dealt with head on. Till now.
The Gzilt have a holy book, and a weird one at that. It's a book that seems to fully outline all their major achievements with surprising accuracy. But there is a distinct possibility that there is a perfectly natural explanation for the book's existence, and that explanation might, if widely known, cause all manner of ugliness. The Culture, and especially the virtually omnipotent AI "Minds" that inhabit giant spaceships, regarding the Gzilt as one of its progenitors, feels some obligation to try to make sure things run smoothly during their Subliming.
And so begins the intrigue.
It's not possible to give a short description of the varied characters and roller-coaster plot that are involved in this story, so I won't even try. I will give this one, entirely inadequate, example, though, just to whet your appetite. A man some 10,000 years old - apparently the oldest man alive in the galaxy by orders of magnitude, knows the truth about the Gzilt holy book. He had those memories put into extra memory enhancements in his eyes, then eventually had those eyes removed and replaced with an extra set of ears. He gave his eyes, containing the memories of the secret of the Gzilt, to another person who wore them on a necklace - and who has 53 penises.
Betcha didn't see that coming.
What I found particular about the Hydrogen Sonata was that it dealt quite directly with Subliming - and it was written just before Banks died. It is even possible that he knew he was ill as he wrote it. I wonder if he wrote it thinking of the notion of death and the possibility of after-life. While Banks was atheist, it does seem reasonable that his thoughts might turn to the finality of death, given the circumstances.
Even if he didn't think that way while writing The Hydrogen Sonata, I certainly read it that way. It was quite bittersweet, reading the novel as I did, knowing it was the last Culture novel I'd ever read, and I couldn't help but see it as a kind of manifesto by Banks about his thoughts on existence and death. In the Culture, you can live forever, transferring from one body to another, keeping one body for centuries and another for only hours, having your mind Stored for awakening and re-embodiment under conditions you specify before being Stored, and where the body you assume can be pretty much whatever shape and size you want it to be.
And then there's Subliming. A completely mysterious state of existence, all but certainly real, only not in any sense we could appreciate. Nestled somewhere in the onion skin of multiple dimensions and universes that comprise hyperspace in Banks's world, there is another existence to which whole civilizations can gain entry, assisted by Presences (whatever they are - it's never made clear) or by an appropriately powerful AI. Sometimes, entities return to "The Real" from "The Sublimed" - like ghosts or angels - but are unable to describe in Real terms what being Sublimed is like.
If this is anywhere near a reasonable reading of The Hydrogen Sonata, then its ending is surprisingly appropriate. And that is all I'm going to say about that.
Needless to say, if you like Banks's Culture novels, then you should love The Hydrogen Sonata.
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