Matter (novel)
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| Author | Iain M. Banks |
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| Country | Scotland |
| Language | English |
| Series | The Culture |
| Genre | Science fiction novel |
| Publisher | Orbit |
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Publication date
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25 January 2008 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 593 (Hardcover) |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 176831809 |
| Preceded by | Look to Windward |
| Followed by | Surface Detail |
Matter is a science fiction novel from Iain M. Banks set in his Culture universe. It was published on 25 January 2008.
Matter was a finalist for the 2009 Prometheus Award.
From an interview with The Guardian newspaper at the Hay Literary Festival on 25 May 2007:
Banks tells me that he has spent the past three months writing another Culture novel. It will be called Matter and is to be published next February. "It's a real shelf-breaker," he says enthusiastically. "It's 204,000 words long and the last 4,000 consist of appendices and glossaries. It's so complicated that even in its complexity it's complex. I'm not sure the publishers will go for the appendices, but readers will need them. It's filled with neologisms and characters who disappear for 150 pages and come back, with lots of flashbacks and -forwards. And the story involves different civilizations at different stages of technological evolution. There's even one group who have disappeared up their own fundaments into non-matter-based societies".
The working title of Banks' earlier novel The Steep Approach to Garbadale was also Matter.
The book follows the experiences of three members of the royal household of the Sarl, a feudal, pre-industrial humanoid race living on the eighth level of the Shellworld of Sursamen. Constructed for an unknown purpose by a long-dead race called the Veil, Shellworlds are ancient artificial planets consisting of nested concentric spheres internally lit by tiny thermonuclear "stars". The spheres are inhabited by various primitive races along with progressively more advanced mentoring species, up to the level of what the Sarl call "Optimae." (The Optimae themselves, particularly the Culture, prefer the term "Involved.") Approximately 4,000 Shellworlds were built, but almost 2,000 were deliberately destroyed, for reasons unknown, by another presumed extinct race, the Iln. Like many Shellwords, the core of Sursamen is known to be inhabited by a mysterious creature called a Xinthian Tensile Aeranothaur, whom the Sarl worship as their "WorldGod."
Prince Ferbin, the self-centered heir to the Sarl throne, has to flee his home level on the Shellworld and the Shellworld itself after witnessing the murder of his father, King Hausk, by Mertis tyl Loesp, the King's second-in-command. Prince Oramen, Ferbin's studious younger brother, is unaware of the treachery and trusts tyl Loesp fully. After Ferbin's disappearance—and presumed death—tyl Loesp takes on the role of regent, ostensibly until Prince Regent Oramen comes of age and can be crowned king.
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