{"id":120,"date":"2012-10-26T21:55:46","date_gmt":"2012-10-27T02:55:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/?p=120"},"modified":"2012-10-26T21:55:46","modified_gmt":"2012-10-27T02:55:46","slug":"book-review-the-hydrogen-sonata","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/2012\/10\/26\/book-review-the-hydrogen-sonata\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: The Hydrogen Sonata"},"content":{"rendered":"

I love me some good science fiction (and I quit watching the so called “syfy” channel when they changed the name).\u00a0 I like cerebral science fiction mostly, provided it’s not too dark.\u00a0 Steven Baxter is a great writers, but his stuff is so depressing.\u00a0 He’s destroyed the Earth 3 or 4 times, destroyed two universes at least once.<\/p>\n

Anyway, Ian M. Banks<\/a> is among my favorite writers.\u00a0 The Culture books are just great.\u00a0 The massively hedonistic, post-scarcity group of meddlers is just so much fun.<\/p>\n

The Hydrogen Sonata<\/a> is the latest book in the Culture universe.\u00a0 It deals with something mentioned in previous books, but never really examined… Subliming.\u00a0 When a culture (small ‘c’), a species, a Mind (capital ‘M’) vanishes from this world and transfers to a state of pure energy beyond the measly little 11-dimensional space we occupy now.\u00a0 It’s not heaven, it’s not hell (those are in other books).\u00a0 This is just not feeling like dealing with the physical anymore.<\/p>\n

It’s very odd to write a review about the Culture novels.\u00a0 If you read them, then I don’t have to write about it… you’ve probably already read it or you are reading it and don’t want me giving away things.\u00a0 If you haven’t read the culture novels, then there is absolutely nothing I could say that will make sense to you.<\/p>\n

The Culture novels started with The Player of Games<\/a>.\u00a0 I would encourage you to start there as well.\u00a0 It’s a great introduction to the Culture and how it all works.\u00a0 You’ll feel much more prepared for some of the crazy stuff in later books.\u00a0 For example, the first line of Player of Games starts “It begins with a battle that is not a battle and ends with a game that is not a game.”\u00a0 Then it gets really wild.<\/p>\n

SPOILER ALERT<\/p>\n

What’s really interesting about the Hydrogen Sonata is that the main theme of the book is religious manipulation, but you don’t realize it until the end.\u00a0 The main group of people in the book, the Gzilt, have lived, as a sentient, technology driven species for tens of thousands of years.\u00a0 But they have a Book of Truth.\u00a0 But what’s really interesting is that their book is true.\u00a0 They know it’s true because, unlike the Bible, the Book of Truth is internally and externally consistent.\u00a0 It has also predicted hundreds of future events over the course of the Gzilt history.<\/p>\n

The book was given to them by another race who had Sublimed ten thousand years ago or so.\u00a0 What they didn’t know was that the Book of Truth was a trick.\u00a0 It was an experiment by that Sublimed race in cultural manipulation.\u00a0 It was all true, but it was written specifically to manipulate the Gzilt.<\/p>\n

Twenty eight days or so before the Gzilt, as a species, Sublime, a remnant population of the other Sublimed race tries to tell the Gzilt.\u00a0 When that ship is destroyed, it sets in motion a chain of events that is almost unprecedented.\u00a0 A dozen Culture Minds get involved and when they discover the truth… that the Gzilt have been manipulated.\u00a0 They just walk away.\u00a0 After hundreds of deaths, even a Mind and the Culture ship it’s responsible for is destroyed… the rest just walk away.<\/p>\n

It’s a very interesting philosophical discussion.\u00a0 What do you do, when you discover a harsh truth, but you have almost no time to do anything about it.\u00a0 Plus, it wouldn’t matter anyway.\u00a0 Do you think you could change the minds of an entire species in just a day or two… about a Book of Truth that they know is true.<\/p>\n

It would be like an alien species coming to us and saying, “All that science stuff is really wrong.\u00a0 We just made it look that way.”\u00a0 Would we be able to stop science?<\/p>\n

I enjoyed it, because I enjoy stories about the Minds.\u00a0 Excession<\/a> is probably my favorite of the Culture books with Player of Games a very, very close second.\u00a0 I don’t think it’s the best Culture book, but it’s better than most.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I love me some good science fiction (and I quit watching the so called “syfy” channel when they changed the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[81,44,82],"tags":[83,85,84],"class_list":["post-120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review","category-culture","category-entertainment","tag-ian-banks","tag-the-culture","tag-the-hydrogen-sonata"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}