Literary Significance and Criticism
The book was generally very well received as a fast-paced space opera with a morally ambiguous hero and lots of grand scenery and devices.
Banks said in an interview:
'There's a big war going on in, and various individuals and groups manage to influence its outcome. But even being able to do that doesn't ultimately change things very much. At the book's end, I have a section pointing this out by telling what happened after the war, which was an attempt to pose the question, 'What was it all for?' I guess this approach has to do with my reacting to the cliché of SF's 'lone protagonist.' You know, this idea that a single individual can determine the direction of entire civilizations. It's very, very hard for a lone person to do that. And it sets you thinking what difference, if any, it would have made if Jesus Christ, or Karl Marx or Charles Darwin had never been. We just don't know.'
Read more about this topic: Consider Phlebas
Famous quotes containing the words literary, significance and/or criticism:
“We that write & print have all our books predestinated—& and for me, I shall write such things as the Great Publisher of Mankind ordained ages before he published “The World”Mthis planet, I mean—not the Literary Globe.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“The hysterical find too much significance in things. The depressed find too little.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Parents sometimes feel that if they don’t criticize their child, their child will never learn. Criticism doesn’t make people want to change; it makes them defensive.”
—Laurence Steinberg (20th century)