I needed to read this SF novel for the Urmston Science Fiction Book Group that meets in the wonderful Urmston Book Shop, the first Thursday monthly.
Set in a far‑future where faster‑than‑light travel is only possible via fixed wormhole gates, leaving most star systems isolated. The story follows Fassin Taak, a “Slow Seer” anthropologist from the gas‑giant planet Nasqueron in the Ulubis system. His specialty is studying the Dwellers—an ancient, enigmatic species living within gas giants, who possess vast, cryptic knowledge but don’t take life seriously, at all.
When the Ulubis system’s only wormhole is destroyed by a hostile empire the Mercatoria (the galaxy’s ruling power) faces invasion. Fassin is sent on a mission to find a possibly mythical Dweller List—a secret database of hidden wormholes that could save Ulubis, and a Transform – a key to de-encrypt the list.
The book starts and ends with Seer Fassin Task talking with HG (Head Gardner) on a rocky, moon planet orbiting around Nasqueron. IE. The novel comes full circle, a kind of authorial conceit and ‘nice’ – I like to do it too.
Fassin and 3 friends – Saluus Kehar, Taince and Ilen, explore an ancient ship on a rocky planet ‘glantine. ***Spoiler***Taince witnesses Sal push Ilen to her death. At the end Taince flies into the wreck killing both herself and Saluus.
Main Characters – brief notes
Fassin Task: Protagonist, (of the Seer Sept Bantrabal, ‘glantine moon, Nasqueron gas-giant planet, Ulibis star and system. P47) human. Girlfriend Jaal Tanderon – rarely mentioned as are few female characters. Ironically, the best described character: gold coiled hair, brown red skin, wide round face.
Dwellers: ancient gas giant beings with a non-linear sense of time. Have huge hidden knowledge. They don’t respect their young and take very little seriously.
Saluus Kehar; childhood friend of Fassin. Now a rich industrialist. Killed Ilen.
Colonel Hatherence: a Septame – globular being, Mercatoria officer. Assigned to accompany Fassin on mission. Killed. Female.
Archimandrite Lesferous: Antagonist, ruthless warlord.
Y’Sul: Dweller friend of Fassin
Valseir: A former Dweller acquiring mythic status, holding secrets and ‘helping’ Fassin
Notes: Slow pacing in the middle would’ve benefitted from serious editing. Fast pace in last quarter. I have trouble enough recalling characters and places without the MC also having memory problems!!
***Spoiler: the equation hidden in the image-leaf tag Fassin had been given by Valseir (p477 – 500) and taken all over the galaxy, resulted in zero for the Transform meaning that the secret wormholes were inside the Dwellers giant gas planets all along. Not sure Ian M Banks understands the meaning of equations but even if the value of an equation is zero, it doesn’t mean it is meaningless. Every equation can be rearranged to be equal to zero. Even nothing isn’t really nothing.
Notable moments: p39 even off-duty fatigues come with active camouflage.
p150 ‘Prepping’: taking natives and ‘seeding’ them in other systems so to be superior when original people tech finally catch up. This is to explain why when humans finally explore outer space (books, films) they find upright bipeds closely resembling humans. (and speaking English)
p152 Braam Ganserel chief Seer, walks with head back and chest out as if vowed to NOT stoop in his old age but looks as if he’ll fall backwards! 1700 years old but not say which ‘year’. Sometimes the term standard year is used but not explained. NOTE: One Jupiter Year = 13 Earth Years.
p165 Algebraist term used and scrits = glitches
p197 history of Luseferous (sounds like Lucifer) p200 his philosophy of life is that it is cruel so exploit it since none of it might be real anyway.
p218 best line IMO: Please take a dent.
p230 ‘even money isn’t like money used to be.’
p230 Fassin liked that the Dweller Setstyin could converse with respect ‘over the phone’. Archaic concept now, isn’t it?
p232 If the Dwellers thought something was worth reacting to then it was also worth overreacting to. (cf from a Sheffield uni philosophy course: if a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing badly)
p262 harpoons, gun holsters etc like Space Cowboys
p268 liked the ‘Slow down’ with Fassin’s talk with Jundriance in the library. Quaint they’d still have libraries! Catalogue of catalogues (Russell’s paradox: Consider a master catalogue of catalogues that don’t list themselves. If this master catalogue lists itself, it shouldn’t; if it doesn’t, it should.)
p357 The twins Quercer and Janath say that two AI’s stops one from going mad.
p358 Biggest fictional character? The Clouder being, Holstruem is a light year across! (our solar system is about that)
p407-8 Morbs are an interesting species – doomed to collect corpses as a war-lost penance millions of years ago.
p466+ I get that the Ship’s AI personality was convinced it was dead and couldn’t be persuaded otherwise..
Algebraist is littered with human, Earth, time-originated idioms: eg ‘ring any bells?’, ‘hunted down like dogs’, ‘Are we there yet?’
Final comment and shameful name dropping.
I sat next to Ian Banks at NewCon in Northampton, 2008. He was a guest of honour along with Storm Constantine, Paul Cornell and Ken MacLeod. Ian was launching his anthology Subterfuge. I was signing my Exit, Pursued by a Bee (now only available as kindle under Alien Exit). Ian’s queue was huge going all round the fishmarket venue. I sometimes had two people. Every now and then, Ian would say to his queue something like, “Consider stopping by Geoff, here. His book is brilliant, it has aliens doing the opposite of invading Earth.” What a gent!!
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