"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.

"Use of Weapons" follows the life of one of the Culture's operatives and weaves together two stories, one moving forward in time, the other moving back. In the forward-moving timeline, Zakalwe is portrayed as a washed-up agent who failed a few too many assignments, but must be re-activated one last time for a sensitive political mission. In the backward-moving timeline, we see the previous missions he's carried out, the mistakes he's made in the name of some greater good he doesn't understand, and ultimately his reason for fighting.

The interesting thing is that "Use of Weapons" isn't really about the Culture, per se. The Culture is described as an almost unfathomably wealthy and powerful interstellar civilization with unlimited resources to meet its material and energy needs, and whose citizens have almost complete freedom – a society based on shared ideals rather than a government's monopolization of force. There isn't much room for conflict in any of that. Conflict occurs when the Culture attempts to manipulate other civilizations' development, triggering smaller-scale atrocities to prevent larger ones later, and causing short-term suffering for longer-term stability – stability that, incidentally, Zakalwe never sees. As soon as one mission is done he's whisked off to another planet and the next conflict, eerily similar to the last. This book is really about what Zakalwe is and isn't willing to do to "win," and what those decisions do to his soul.

I found the ending pretty upsetting. It's one of those books I felt like throwing across the room, but an hour later I was reading every online review I could find to try to figure out what I'd missed. After some more thought, I believe Brad DeLong gets it right: this book explores the immorality of using weapons – not just guns and knives, but people – and what form redemption might take. "Use of Weapons" gives few answers, but ultimately it may be one of the most compelling anti-war books I've read.

My highly subjective rating: I don't know that call it an enjoyable read, per se, but this book made me think, even more than "Fahrenheit 451" or "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" (Heinlein), and there's definitely something to be said for that.


1 "Fahrenheit 451" also made the NYTimes cut, and "The Fifth Season" is on my one-day list. I'm sure I'll also watch "The Martian" sometime; it sounds like my cup of tea. (back)