(Many other, less disturbing virtual afterlives exist, too.) In the Culture universe, some races have chosen, based on their religious convictions to create real hells, simulated environments in which miscreants’ brain states are brought back to life after death – or sometimes before – in order that they may live an eternity of agony. Another strand of the story sees Prin, a campaigner against hells, escaping from a mission to investigate one such hell – a mission that his wife, Chay, fails to return from. The main character, Lededje, dies in the first chapter, but her brain state is conveniently copied and ‘revented’ in a new body. There are several plot threads that explore this issue. Not in any mystical religious sense, but technologically enabled post-death virtual and physical existences. Surface Detail is a story about the afterlife – or afterlives. I think Iain Banks’s latest science fiction – and Culture – novel demonstrates both his mastery of the single-volume space opera and also highlights some of his deficiencies as a writer.
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