Matter
Finished — 2024-09-14
Started — 2024-06-08
Banks is a heavy meal, which I’m always glad to have enjoyed but reluctant to enjoy more than one of within the span of a year or two. The idea density is satisfyingly high, and I enjoyed a number of moments of staring off into space, savoring an evocative, galaxy-scale notion. But I did once again find myself wishing that the ever-building tension was toward something deeper, more universally philosophical, than the human adventure it ended up as. It does seem to me that Banks writes “true” sf, in a galaxy that is likely to really be out there and operating according to these principles in some corner of the greater multiverse.
Update of 2025-09-02 — On the back of my edition of Gene Wolfe’s Litany of the Long Sun is a blurb from an SF Eye review: “It releases delayed detonations of pleasure days after you’ve read it.” That measure of literature’s impact has stuck with me over the years, and I’ve recognized it in a number of works which are enjoyable enough while reading them, but that also make life itself more enjoyable for extended periods after putting them down. Matter has proven to be one of these works over the past year. I still often find myself thinking about various spheres of the Shellworld of Sursamen in particular.