Inversions
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Inversions (published in 1998) is a science fiction novel by Iain M. Banks which tells the story of two influential strangers within two competing societies on a world whose state of civilisation broadly resembles that of early modern Europe.
Banks has written a series of novels, set in a single universe and referred to as Culture novels, and the status of Inversions in this respect seems arguable. Unlike the other two most recent novels in the series, Excession and Look To Windward, the publishers do not label the work a Culture novel on the cover. It becomes quite obvious to readers of the other Culture novels, however, that the two protagonists hail from the Culture, a vast and extremely advanced society with a predilection for interfering in the development of less sophisticated societies.
Interestingly the initial hardback printing of the book contained the following brief preface:
"A Note on the Text
This Text, in two Parts, was discovered amongst the Papers of my late Grandfather. One Part concerns the Story of the Bodyguard to the then Protector of Tassasen, one UrLeyn, and is related, it is alleged, by a Person of his Court at the time, while the other, told by my Grandfather, tells the Story of the Woman Vosill, a Royal Physician during the Reign of King Quience, and who may, or may not, have been from the distant Archipelago of Drezen but who was, without Argument, from a different Culture. Like my much esteemed Grandfather, I have taken on the Task of making the Text I inherited more comprehensible and clear, and hope that I have succeeded in this Aim. Nevertheless, it is in a Spirit of the utmost Humility that I present it to the Society and to whomever might see fit to read it.
-O. Derlan-Haspid III, D.Phys, OM (1st class), ESt, RS (hons)."
This has been excised from subsequent paperback editions. However another clue to the origins of the characters remains in the form of a reference to "an indispostion due to special circumstances".
Like many other Banks books, Inversions has an interlaced structure; the grandson of the purported reporter of some of the events portrayed introduces the reader to the tales of his grandfather, thus giving us three or four distinct layers of supposed narration (the two original fictional "authors", the fictional "editor" and Banks himself). Through these layers the story fundamentally concerns itself with states: how they form, how they interact and how they change - and how individuals can change them. The two interlopers, intimate friends in the Culture before each came to intervene in the affairs of the book's world, develop different notions of the extent to which they can morally enforce change on an unwitting "weaker" society, and the two outlooks appear reflected in the way they choose to intervene in the societies they come to influence.
The book stands out in the context of the other Culture novels for the relatively confined space in which it plays out - the other novels tend to span many worlds, and often much longer timespans. Inversions represents the most intimate and microscopic portrayal in the Culture series of the ways in which Culture citizens can affect the paths of other societies.