Use of Weapons was published by Orbit in 1990. Banks originally wrote a version of this novel before The Wasp Factory — it was rejected repeatedly, and he rewrote it from scratch after the success of his earlier Culture novels. The rewrite produced arguably the most ambitious structure in modern science fiction.
The novel has two interleaved narrative threads. Chapters numbered in Arabic numerals move forward in time: Diziet Sma, a Special Circumstances agent, and her drone Skaffen-Amtiskaw recruit Cheradenine Zakalwe for another mission intervening in a pre-contact civilization’s civil war. Chapters numbered in Roman numerals move backward through Zakalwe’s past missions, from recent to distant. The two threads converge on a single event — a revelation about Zakalwe’s true identity and the atrocity that defines him.
The final revelation is one of the great twists in science fiction — genuinely horrifying, carefully foreshadowed, and impossible to predict on first reading. It transforms the reader’s understanding of every previous chapter. Banks uses the dual-timeline structure not as a gimmick but as the only way to tell this particular story: the forward-moving plot creates sympathy for Zakalwe; the backward-moving memories erode it.
Collecting Use of Weapons
First edition (Orbit, London, 1990): Boards with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine in jacket: $150–$400
- Very good in jacket: $60–$150
- Signed first: $300–$800