SURFACE DETAIL is published in 2010
It is a Culture novel
It begins in the realm of the Real, where matter still matters. It begins with a murder and it will not end until the Culture has gone to war with death itself.
Lededje Y’breq is one of the Intagliated, her marked body bearing witness to a family shame, her life belonging to a man whose lust for power is without limit. Prepared to risk everything for her freedom, her release - when it comes - is at a price, and to put things right she will need the help of the Culture.
Benevolent, enlightened and almost infinitely resourceful though it may be, the Culture can only do so much for any individual. With the assistance of one of its most powerful – and arguably deranged – warships, Lededje finds herself heading into a combat zone not even sure which side the Culture is really on. A war – brutal, far-reaching – is already raging within the digital realms that store the souls of the dead, and it’s about to erupt into reality.
It started in the realm of the Real and that is where it will end. It will touch countless lives and affect entire civilisations, but at the centre of it all is a young woman whose need for revenge masks another motive altogether.
Iain said, “I think [Hell] is nonsense. I think it’s oblivion for us! I just think it’s just a comforting myth that we’ve come up with. It’s very, very highly unlikely and I really don’t see it. I’m prepared to be proved wrong but yeah, there’s just no proof, nothing. I’m utterly sceptical. You can never be absolutely, totally sure about anything but at the same time you have to get on with your own life and what you believe so yeah, I’m pure atheist and I think it’s all bollocks basically.”
Iain again, “[Humanitarian and Socialist themes] matter to me, I guess. I think there’s a balance in societies as well as in individuals; just as people need a balance between self-interest and generosity, so societies have to weigh the rights of any given individual against the rights of the rest of that society – and the rights of those beyond it, for that matter. I’m using the concept of ‘rights’ here, but ‘interests’ or some more complicated formulation would work as well. I feel that our meta-society, our civilisation, has swung too far to the right, towards the dog-eat-dog, me-against-the-world, devil-take-the-hindmost end of the spectrum; towards selfishness, in other words. This is Greedism – the belief that greed is good. Marketolatry is another useful term; the worship of the market as the way to solve all social ills.”