Use of Weapons

Use of Weapons is a science fiction novel by Iain M. Banks, and the third to deal with the Culture, his fictional technological utopia. The story is essentially a biography of a man called Cheradenine Zakalwe who was born outside of the Culture and was recruited by the Culture's euphemistically named Special Circumstances to work as an agent interfering in primitive (compared to the Culture) civilizations. It is widely considered to be the best of the Culture novels, but also one of the least accessible due to its complex structure.

The book is made up of two narrative streams, interwoven with alternating chapters. The names of the chapters indicate which stream they belong to: one set are numbered forward (One, Two...) in words, the other in reverse (XIII, XII...) with Roman numerals. The story told by the former moves forward chronologically (as the numbers suggest) and tells a self-contained story while in the latter each chapter is successively earlier in Zakalwe's life and provides illuminating episodes. Further complicating this structure is a prologue and epilogue set at another time entirely, and many flashbacks within the chapters.

Banks wrote a much longer version of the book with an even more complicated structure (Banks: "It was impossible to comprehend without thinking in six dimensions") back in 1974, long before any of his books were published. The book's cryptic acknowledgement credits friend and fellow science fiction author Ken MacLeod with the suggestion "to argue the old warrior out of retirement" (which means the suggestion to rewrite the old book) and further credits him with suggesting "the fitness program" (the new structure). MacLeod makes use of this structure in his own novels, most notably in The Stone Canal.

The book is also interesting in that includes, for the first time in a Banks novel, the beginning of another story... possibly. After Zakalwe is found not to be so, Diziet Sma visits a hospital where she finds a soldier with both legs amputated, and offers him a job. This section is entitled "States of War" and is claimed to be a prologue. There are apparently no plans by Banks to write this story, but its inclusion is of some interest. It suggests a cyclical nature which many have found appealing.