Abandoned Review of Transition, by Iain M. Banks

Back in October 2009, I started writing a review of Iain M. Banks' Transition, a novel about parallel universes and, tangentially, eclipses. For reasons unknown to me now, I abandoned the review; only four short paragraphs remain. I post them here because the review opens with a recounting of a conversation I had with my friend Allan back when we were roommates in the Bleak House of Blahs. That conversation has always lingered with me, now more than ever, for reasons that will soon become clear. What the conversation had to do with Transition, I don't recall.

Here's the text:

Sometime during the summer of 1992 or 1993 - one of the summers, at least, during the time of the Bleak House of Blahs - Allan and I talked about the times. He was sitting in front of his Commodore Amiga.

"For all we know," Allan said, "Even with all the terrible things that are happening in the world, a hundred years from now people might look back at the 90s and think of them as a golden age."

"Or they could think that way even ten or fifteen years from now," I said.

This conversation with Allan has stuck in my mind for some years now, and it was brought back to vivid life as I read the opening chapters of Iain M. Banks' newest novel, Transition. 

Earl, Moon and Sun

In Iain M. Banks' 2009 novel Transition, the author hints Earth is a popular destination for disguised alien tourists because our solar system possesses an almost unique astronomical phenomenon: our planet, moon and star are the perfect sizes and in the exact positions necessary to create total solar eclipses at regular intervals. Were the moon or the sun any larger or smaller, or were the moon any closer to or farther away from Earth, perfect solar eclipses would be impossible - and in fact they are a fleeting phenomenon, for eventually our star will indeed grow larger and the moon is getting farther away from us. Eventually - millions of years from now - we won't enjoy total solar eclipses any longer.

So when I learned that a total solar eclipse will cast its shadow across North America next summer, I started making plans. The best spot to see the eclipse in terms of duration and totality, falls somewhere close to Cerulean, Kentucky, at 6:24 p.m. on August 21, 2017. Driving down will take three or four days; alternatively, we could fly to Nashville and rent a car for the short drive to Cerulean.

Here's the main drag in Cerulean. Plenty of room for the tens of thousands of people who will turn out to see the eclipse!

Sylvia has given her tentative approval of this mad scheme, but of course we'll have to see how things go next summer. I really hope we can do this; it really is a rare opportunity. Maybe we'll meet some aliens...even if we don't realize it. 

Consider Banks

Sometime during my first year of study at the University of Alberta, during one of my regular trips to Greenwoods' on Whyte Avenue, I purchased a copy of Consider Phlebas, by Iain M. Banks. In this novel Banks introduced the Culture, a magnificent post-scarcity utopia comprised of humans and Artificial Intelligences known as Minds. I loved the book, particularly its stunning coda - a dry recitation of statistics showing the cost of the war depicted in the book.

And yet, for whatever reason, I didn't read another Banks novel until picking up Transition a couple of years ago, and only this spring did I read two of Banks' early mainstream novels, The Wasp Factory and The Bridge. All three are thought-provoking, richly textured works, and online reviews tell me that his Culture novels get even better. I have most of them on my bookshelf already, waiting to be savoured. But there is only one more Banks novel to come, to be published just a couple of weeks from now.

Today Banks died, stolen away too soon by cancer, denied the utopia he imagined because we haven't yet built it. During the past few months several great writers of science fiction have passed, but Banks' strikes me as particularly sad because of his relative youth and the vitality of his imagined worlds. In the Culture, Banks could have enjoyed centuries of life in a world of plenty and justice. Instead, living as he did in our imperfect world, he had to create something better, a target for human aspiration.

Banks was no starry-eyed idealist. His works are laced with arch satire and self-awareness; The Wasp Factory in particular is not for the faint of heart. But despite this dark mien, Banks has left us with a hopeful vision of the future that challenges us to work toward something better than the fatally flawed civilization dancing on the edge of catastrophe we endure today.

And who knows? Perhaps a Mind from the distant future or some parallel universe brought into being by the power of Banks' imagination has already breached the barriers of time and space and saved the author's consciousness, ferrying it to some brighter, better place, a world of wonders. I hope so.