"Use of Weapons"

Fun with typesetting: "Banks" is
the author's last name, not the title.

"Use of Weapons" made it onto my reading list thanks to a series of mini-articles published by the New York Times debating what science fiction movie or novel seems most prescient today¹. Brad DeLong's essay caught my attention:

Gene Roddenberry, the creator of "Star Trek," picked up that ball and ran with it to make a moral point about the limits of understanding and action, about how we should not mess with things that we don't understand. We, as Americans, have a bad history of following the Pottery Barn rule: We break things, and neglect to fix them or own them.

In "Use of Weapons," Iain M. Banks seeks to make a different point. He loads the dice. His civilization, the Culture, and its special action executive arm, Special Circumstances, has the knowledge and foresight that America’s best and brightest did not. They use their weapons for the utilitarian good.

Nonetheless, they use their weapons and they use them up. And their weapons are people.

Minor spoilers below.

"The Liar in Your Life"

Ironically, the subtitle is lying

"The Liar In Your Life" is about why people lie. It defines "lie" in a way that is unarguably true, though perhaps uncomfortable for many. Contrary to popular belief, lies are usually not told for personal gain. Most lies are either what we'd call lies of omission or "white lies," and these serve a specific social purpose. Often, people want to be deceived and the person telling the lie is simply playing along:

Unless we decide we want to know that our new haircut is a mess, that our child is a terrible Little Leaguer, that our colleague is not happy to run into us at the gym—and, indeed, unless we are prepared to tell other people this sort of thing—deception is here to stay.

"The Gardens of Light"

Prophet, painter, conscience-waker

"The Gardens of Light" introduces Mani, a third-century Babylonian prophet who founded the now-extinct Manichean religion and who preached nonviolence and tolerance across the Middle East. Very little about him has survived the passage of time, so Amin Maalouf dramatized his life and times in this work of historical fiction:

This book is dedicated to Mani. It [tries] to recount his life, or what can still be made out after so many centuries of lies and oblivion.

Minor spoilers below.