Surface Detail was published by Orbit in 2010. The novel addresses a question unique to civilizations with the technology to simulate consciousness: if you can upload the dead into virtual environments, what happens when a theocratic civilization creates literal Hells — virtual torment that lasts forever — as punishment for sinners?
The “War in Heaven” is being fought across multiple civilizations: the pro-Hell faction believes that the threat of eternal punishment maintains social order; the anti-Hell faction (tacitly supported by the Culture) considers it an obscenity. The war is mostly virtual — fought in simulated battlefields — but is beginning to spill into reality.
The novel follows multiple characters: Lededje Y’breq, a woman murdered by her owner (she is an “intagliated” slave, her body covered in ownership tattoos) who is revived by the Culture and seeks revenge; Vatueil, a soldier fighting in the virtual war; and Prin and Chay, academics who deliberately entered a Hell to document its horrors.
Banks here addresses his most philosophically ambitious question: does a post-scarcity civilization have the right — or the obligation — to intervene in the internal affairs of other societies when those societies inflict suffering on their own people?
Collecting Surface Detail
First edition (Orbit, London, 2010): Boards with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine in jacket: $25–$50
- Signed first: $80–$150