Consider Phlebas

I've had a number of recommendations for Iain M. Banks' Culture Series. The gist I got was that it was a 201 level course to the 101 course of Star Trek's Federation. 

There are books better positioned to be the first read for the series, but I chose the first book written, Consider Phlebas. It lived up to expectations. Spoiler Warning.

The story focuses on Horza, a human subspecies known as shifters. He can slowly change his biology; mimic someone's face, emit a weak acid from his pores, grow poison fangs. He's a spy in the war between the Idiran and The Culture (basically humanity).

But he's on the side of the Idiran, spiritualist, tripodal, biologically immortal aliens who were peaceful isolationists until an alien invasion changed their culture to be expansionist. Horza despises The Culture, with its hyper-intelligent AI Minds, its decadent, materialist culture, and what I can only describe as its ethereal omnipresence in the galaxy.

A nascent Mind escaped the Idiran attack on the ship which created it. It survived by using hyperspace to slip itself into the tunnels beneath a death planet, a hyperspace trick no one, Mind or Idiran, has ever done. The race is on to recover that Mind, but the death planet is overseen by pretty stock energy being who won't let the war spread there.

Luckily, Horza was an intern tour guide on the death planet in college, so he's got an in with the energy being. Sadly, The Culture returns the favor of the attack and leaves Horza spinning through space with nothing but a set of orders, the promise of a paycheck, and a vac suit.

The first half of the book isn't even about the mission after that. Horza pals around with mercs and we see Horza plot to overthrow the mercenary commander (by mimicking his face), explore a Foundation megastructure scheduled for demolition to deny it to the Idiran, and just establish the hell out of the universe. 

The Culture builds massive megastructures which could hold billions, but sometimes only hold millions because they want a ring world (technically an orbital) that's mostly freezing oceans so large they host lost civilizations on islands. Cities on massive ships plow those waters. 

Humans spend their lives drugging, body modding, and fucking. Only a few are actually what we call 'productive members of society.' I never got a satisfactory answer about why our mostly-human mercs exist, except that they want to do shit in direct contravention of The Culture's very few laws and need money to do that. But then, there's that island of shit-eating cannibals which exists in Culture space, so...maybe it's not that.

The Culture's technology is ubiquitous due to its quality, but unbranded. It's simply an element of the galaxy. The ancient Idiran are technically outclassed, but succeed on the merits of numbers. The Culture's government is vast, but has no leaders. It's not even technically called The Culture. It's just...a society which does stuff and has people vote.

Despite this, the book is harsh. The fights are vicious, quick, and pointless. There's a lot of easy speeches to make in sci-fi about war being pointless, but very few fights are so detailed, and yet so...petty as the ones here. 

Horza faces off against the Idiran--his employers--by the time the plot comes to a head. He doesn't change allegiances or forswear his Idiran duty; war is so big and so stupid that the Idiran sent two teams and they don't trust each other. 

In the end, The Foundation wins. The Mind is of marginal importance and the war continues for decades, eventually ending with a Foundation victory. 

An implicit point of Consider Phlebas is the futility of war and the contrast between what humans consider important and what happens in a universe driven--by physics and the demands of war--with complete dispassion for humanity.

The little details you might see in a mystery novel aren't woven into a satisfying ending. They're left loose and sometimes cut short, as are the lives of real people. Few other works have driven home to me so effectively, the harsh injustice implied by lives being considered "cheap."

None have.

If it's a celebration of a post-scarcity utopia, it's a celebration by using negative space, in the afterimage of a nuclear blast. 

Hell of a book.