Iain Banks 'Transition'

{Published in The Sunday Times of Malta, 21/11/2010, p.48}

Crisis On Infinite Earths

It must be quite tiresome for a writer of Iain Banks’ stature to have to keep categorizing his novels so explicitly as either ‘science-fiction’ - identified by his middle initial added to his name, as Iain M Banks, on the cover - or ‘mainstream’, without the eminent M.

Set on infinite parallel versions of Earth, Transition sees Iain minus-the-M Banks seizing the middle ground. Similar to this year’s mega blockbuster film Inception, this novel seems to fall under a new-wave of sci-fi that is rising steadily, where the sci-fi simply serves as the premise, rather than the be-all and end-all of the plot.

The multiple realities are unknowingly watched over by The Concern, an all-powerful organisation that takes it into its own responsibility to issue orders to execute individuals it deems to be of particular threat to the well-being of any singular Earth. With the help of an incomprehensible drug called septus, recruited assassins called transitionaries possess the ability to “flit” into - and thereby occupy - the consciousness of unaware inhabitants of the multiple realities. The transitionaries can then go about their instructed duty of death, protecting the Earths in the name of The Concern.

Although the book follows some half a dozen characters, the primary narrative is that of deadly transitionary Temudjin Oh. Temudjin finds he must choose sides between the equally persuasive Madame d’Ortolan and Mrs Mulverhill, the former the power-hungry governor of The Concern, the latter a renegade leader of a resistance movement aiming to overthrow d’Ortolan and her unethical ways. Perhaps in an effort to make up his mind, Temudjin eventually beds both governesses in a string of unintentionally comical scenes; the highlight of these being an episode where Temudjin and Mrs M engage in deep theoretical discussion about the nature of infinite realities, whilst simultaneously gratifying each other through erotic foreplay. Sci-Fi geeks the world over must be squealing with delight at such ingenuity.

Elsewhere there is Patient 8262, a fugitive hiding from The Concern in a mental institution, The Philosopher, a state-sponsored torturer, and Adrian “Ade” Cubbish, a London city drug/money trader. Despite originating from somewhere “Up North” Ade chooses to speak like a propah cockney geezah, delivering rather unwitty one-liners to the reader, and finishing off every other sentence with “know what I mean?” Over the course of the book this becomes so mind-numbingly irritating you almost wish you could grab Ade from his expensive designer shirt, pull his head out of the literary pages and slap him something silly.

Admittedly, there is a flow to the novel that does keep you reading, and this is not in the usual cheap tactic cliff-hanger fashion either. There is no denying Banks’ prose prowess. Ultimately though, Transition is unputdownable because it keeps the reader believing that at some point the really really clever bit is going to happen, the bit where each individual narrative thread is going to be woven seamlessly together, and lo and behold, the magnificently intricate and detailed sprawling Persian carpet is revealed, complete and full of meaning.

Yet the clever bit never does arrive. Instead, the reader is left with something that vaguely resembles a knitted mitten put together by an adolescent boy during a crafts class he solely attended in order to ogle his provocative teacher, Mrs M.

At the end, Temudjin’s fate is hardly worth the convoluted and abstruse journey it takes the reader on. Even more exasperating is the fact that both Patient 8262’s and the Philosopher’s narratives serve no real convincing purpose to the plot at all, while Adrian is little more than a mere literary exercise for Banks to practice cockney voicing.

The whole affair would have been much more enjoyable if it was more tongue-in-cheek; more grindhouse, less art-house. Maybe it is, at some points it is rather impossible to tell. However given the never-ending pages of pseudo-philosophical dialogue and real-world religious-political allusions, you get the feeling that Banks’ tongue is stuck, for the most part, firmly out-of-cheek, know what I mean?