The Hydrogen Sonata was published by Orbit in 2012, the last Culture novel Banks completed before his death from cancer in 2013. The Gzilt civilization has decided to Sublime — to collectively ascend out of physical reality into a higher-dimensional existence, as many elder civilizations have done before them. They have twenty-four days.
Vyr Cossont, a Gzilt musician with four arms (two surgically added), has dedicated her life to mastering the Hydrogen Sonata — a musical composition written by a Gzilt composer specifically to be unplayable, as a kind of philosophical statement about the limits of physical existence. She wants to perform it before the Subliming.
But someone is trying to suppress a secret about the Gzilt’s founding: their holy book — the only religious text in the galaxy that was proven by scientific investigation to contain accurate prophecies — may have been faked by a Culture-equivalent civilization millions of years ago as a sociological experiment. If this becomes known before the Subliming, the entire basis of Gzilt society collapses.
Banks published the novel knowing it was his last. He was diagnosed with terminal cancer in early 2013 and died in June. The novel’s meditation on transcendence, endings, and the things left undone carries a weight beyond its fictional premises.
Collecting The Hydrogen Sonata
First edition (Orbit, London, 2012): Boards with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine in jacket: $30–$60
- Signed first: $150–$300 (scarce due to Banks’s death shortly after publication)