Transition (Iain M. Banks)
Banks keeps getting better. I've heard that a lot of readers who read him principally for his space operatic sweep were upset with the ending of Matter. Whose side can I take here?
Shall I side with the reader who insistently ignores the highly developed subtext which the author has consistently developed over many books, repeatedly linked in through character dialog, spoken and written about publicly, and generally been as unsubtle about as possible while still trying to say something interesting? If you want pure trash, there's plenty out there to read. What? It's sometimes not as satisfying as the stuff that's trying to wrestle with the occasional interesting problem? Life is messy that way -- real meat has bones and connective tissue, organic greens have the occasional bug.
What about the author who has become popular in large part because his books make great popcorn, now beating his readers up for choosing to embrace this narrative strategy in a way that was absolutely predictable? Don't write multi-level stuff unless you're willing to have some people only skim the surface. If it will make you feel better, a visit to any classroom will remind you that Shakespeare and Kant both face the same problem with reader quality.
(As long as I'm berating the author: Mr. Banks, solipsism is just not as interesting a philosophical position as you seem to think. Really. At first glance it eliminates a large number of ontological problems, but it replaces them with variants of many classical epistemological problems. For a phenomenologist it hardly even presents a challenge: what defines the world is its relation to experienced consciousness, and the fact that most of our experienced world is not directly subject to conscious agency makes the solipsist claim a mute one. To claim that the whole world is in your mind you have to posit such a radically limited role for consciousness within mind that it robs solipsism of it's naïve meaning. So stop already -- almost every other problem you contemplate is a more interesting one.)
Anyways, all of this comes to mind with relation to Banks largely because Transition is classic Banks in it's innovative narrative structure and multi-layered approach to it's subtext. It's the sort of novel where you can expect debate between readers as to how many characters there actually are, much less the subtext. There are numerous philosophical arguments in the book in which the reader is invited by narrative structure to take a particular side, even though the book makes a point of not actually providing that side with an objective correlative. In case you're thinking of missing this point, Banks opens with the line "Apparently I am what is known as an Unreliable Narrator, though of course if you believe everything you're told you deserve whatever you get." Banks is channeling Brecht here -- even when he knows what conclusion he's reached, he wants you to think about it, damnit!
Of course, if you just want to read this as a rollicking story about multi-dimensional conspiracies and assassins, Banks can't actually stop you, and you'll have a plenty good time. I got caught up in the plot for the last couple hours, and am reasonably confident that there was some interesting subtext going on (beyond the point about evolutionary pressure between authority and insurgency) in the later plot developments that I missed because I was too tired to tease it out at 2:30 in the morning. I look forward to a future reread with great pleasure.