History Literature / LookToWindward

''Look To Windward'' is the seventh [[Literature/TheCulture Culture]] novel by [[Creator/IainBanks Iain M. Banks]]. It is based around Masaq', a vast Culture orbital home to billions of people, and a secret plot involving it.

* DeathSeeker: Quilan seeks to join his dead wife in oblivion, but doesn't want to simply kill himself -- he's still a soldier, and is looking for some way to make his sacrifice serve a purpose. [[spoiler:In this he's NotSoDifferent from Masaq' Hub, who's also hoping for something approaching a meaningful death -- although rather than going down fighting, Hub is seeking someone who can understand why it wants this, to [[SuicidePact share its final moments with]].]]

* HumanPopsicle: In the very DistantFinale, [[spoiler:Uagen Zlepe]] wakes up in a time where nobody even remembers what humans and the Culture were. [[spoiler:He was killed, but his body was preserved in the arid conditions of deep space. The behemothaur who rescues him is [[ExpositionOfImmortality the exact same one]] we met him aboard during his introduction. Zlepe's modified alien form resembling the creature's internal fauna seems to allow it to heal his wounds and, it's implied, is part of why it was drawn to recover the tiny floating corpse in the first place.]]

* ItIsDehumanizing: The {{nanomachine}} "Terror Weapon" is explicitly left unnamed by [[spoiler:the Culture]], to better reflect its status as an abomination to them. That doesn't stop them using it when circumstances demand, though, and the Weapon itself doesn't seem to care.

* BigDumbObject: The Airspheres are vast habitats of uncertain origin which circumnavigate the galaxy, consisting of a vast membrane surrounding a large, empty "sky", complete with its own artificial heat and light sources. Most of the action in the Oskendari Airsphere is limited to the interior of just two of its inhabitants, the LivingGasbag behemothaurs Yoleus and Sansemin, each large enough to host entire ecosystems of their own, and the Airsphere itself is little described.

* LivingGasbag: The dirigible behemothaurs, on a massive scale -- living inside the artificial airspheres, they are some of the largest creatures in the galaxy, comparable to the Xinthians from ''Literature/{{Matter}}'', big enough to sustain their own internal ecosystems. They're an intelligent species in their own right, though they don't seem to be the architects of the Airspheres in which they can be found.

* StarfishAliens: The [[OurCentaursAreDifferent centauroid]] Chelgrians and three-armed, tripedal Homomdans border on this physically, although their behaviour is recognisably human. The LivingGasbag behemothaurs and whatever-the-hell-else of the Oskendari airsphere absolutely qualify. While sapient, their size, shape, long lifespan, and sheer scale makes them one of the more alien species in the galaxy, and diplomacy with other races has been a slow, uncertain process.

* TalkingToThemself: Quilan and Huyler have to be careful when conversing with one another, and almost slip up a couple of times. Quilan develops a [[TheStoic reputation for being quiet and thoughtful in the Culture]] as a result.

* {{Gorn}}: [[spoiler: Special Circumstances deploy a terror weapon to take care of the two principal Chelgrians responsible for the plot. It's completely unstoppable, and kills both of them in truly horrific fashion. It even destroys their soulkeepers so they cannot possibly be regenerated. The only system it leaves functioning in the Chelgrian base is surveillance, so the pointed message is properly conveyed: Do Not Fuck With The Culture.]]

* ItIsDehumanizing: The {{nanomachine}} "Terror Weapon" was explicitly left unnamed by the Culture, to better reflect its status as an abomination to them. That doesn't stop them using it when circumstances demand, though, and the Weapon itself doesn't seem to care.

* StarfishAliens: The respectively five-legged and three-legged Chelgrians and Homomdan border on this, although their behaviour is recognisably human. The LivingGasbag behemothaurs and whatever-the-hell-else of the Oskendari airsphere absolutely qualify. While sapient, their size, shape, long lifespan, and sheer scale makes them one of the more alien species in the galaxy, and diplomacy with other races has been a slow, uncertain process.

* BigDumbObject: The Airspheres are vast habitats of uncertain origin which circumnavigate the galaxy, consisting of a vast membrane surrounding a large, empty "sky", with artificial heat and light sources. Most of the action in the Oskendari Airsphere is limited to the interior of just two of its inhabitants, the LivingGasbag behemothaurs Yoleus and Sansemin, each large enough to host entire ecosystems of their own, and the Airsphere itself is little described.

* OurCentaursAreDifferent: The vaguely feline Chelgrians have two hind legs, a humanoid upper body, and a single foreleg between the two. Most creatures on Chel are [[VertebrateWithExtraLimbs hexapedal]], and proto-Chelgrians are described as having once had two forelimbs which eventually merged into a single broad limb over the course of their evolution, with a kind of webbed "pad" in what might be referred to as the Chelgrian "lap".

* StarfishAliens: The respectively five-legged and three-legged Chelgrians and Homomdan border on this, although their behaviour is recognisably human. The behemothaurs and whatever-the-hell-else of the Oskendari airsphere absolutely qualify.
* TalkingToThemself: Quilan and Huyler have to be careful when conversing with one another, and almost slip up a couple of times. Quilan develops a [[TheStoic reputation for being quiet and thoughtful in the Culture as a result.]]

* AllUpToYou: A curious subversion. Uagen is a fairly ordinary person studying the megafauna of the airsphere as an alternative to having a direction in life. He is suddenly landed with the responsibility of racing back to Culture space to alert them to the plot to destroy Masaq' Orbital. Charged with purpose, he boards the first ship out... [[spoiler:and from then on plays no further part in the story. The epilogue shows that a Chelgrian agent was on to him right away, tore him apart and [[ThrownOutTheAirlock threw him out into space]]. And, of course, the Culture knew all about the plot already. His body makes a complete orbit of the galaxy and is picked up and revived by the very same behemothaur he was studying [[DistantEpilogue millions of years after the story ends]], which taps its extremely deep ancestral memory to find out what happened to him.]]

* DeathSeeker: Quilan seeks to join his dead wife in oblivion, but doesn't want to simply kill himself -- he's still a soldier, and seeks some way to make his sacrifice serve a purpose. [[spoiler:In this he's NotSoDifferent from Masaq' Hub, who also seeks a meaningful death -- although rather than going down fighting, Hub is seeking someone to [[SuicidePact share its death]].]]

* AudienceSurrogate: Kabe Ischloear, a journalist from outside the Culture, provides the perspective that is likely closest to what a modern day Earthling might be thinking: curious, surprised, and delighted in equal measure. He [[SupportingProtagonist seems as if he's going to be the main character]] for the first few chapters, but gradually fades into the background. The fact that he's a nine-foot-tall three-legged, three-armed Homomdan with glistening, somewhat chitinous black skin is only mentioned in passing -- other than a very young human child asking if he's a monster and a boorish concert-goer bringing up the similarly-tripedal [[Literature/ConsiderPhlebas Idirans]], nobody seems to pay his species any particular mind.

* ThePrimaDonna: Mahrai Ziller is a supremely talented Chelgrian composer. He also point blank refuses to meet any of his own kind, throws histrionics whenever Quilan's name is so much as mentioned, and almost goes so far as to not go to his own ultimate concert because Quilan will be in attendance.

* AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence: The Chelgrians are unusual as a species for having sublimed only in part, with the gone-before Chelgrian-Puen remaining in contact with the remaining Chelgrians like the ancestor-spirits the Chelgrians already believed in, and providing an ArtificialAfterlife.

* BrainUploading: The Chelgrians have created

A short time before the events of the book, the Culture secretely interfered with the societal development of the Chelgrians, a five-legged predatorial race, with the aim of dismantling their repressive caste system. Unlike in most cases of Cultural intervention, this [[GoneHorriblyWrong went catastrophically wrong]] and caused the Chelgrians to descend into a bloody civil war. Major Quilan IV lost his wife in the conflict, and consequently any will to live. He is provided with the "soul" (the electronically stored memories and personality) of an old general, dead about 80 years previously. To prevent jeopardizing the plan in case Quilan's mind is scanned by an AI, the living Chelgrian has his memory wiped, and while the soul knows the exact natur of the mission, the living one only regains his memories slowly, until the truth of what he accepted to do reveals to him entirely.

* AllUpToYou: A curious subversion. [[spoiler: Uagen is a fairly ordinary person studying the megafauna of the airsphere as an alternative to having a direction in life. He is suddenly landed with the responsiblity of racing back to Culture space to alert them to the plot to destroy Masaq' Orbital. Charged with purpose, he boards the first ship out... and plays no further part in the story.]] [[spoiler: The epilogue shows that a Chelgrian agent was on to him right away, tore him apart and [[ThrownOutTheAirlock threw him out into space]]. And, of course, the Culture knew all about the plot already. His body makes a complete orbit of the galaxy and is picked up and revived by the megafauna of the airsphere, who tap their extremely deep ancestral memory to find out what happened to him.]]

* AudienceSurrogate: Kabe Ischloear, a journalist from outside the Culture, provides the perspective that is likely closest to what a modern day Earthling might be thinking: curious, surprised, and delighted in equal measure. He [[SupportingProtagonist seems as if he's going to be the main character]] for the first few chapters, but gradually fades into the background. The fact that he's a nine-foot-tall three-legged, three-armed Homomdan with glistening, somewhat chitinous black skin is only mentioned in passing -- other than a very young human child asking if he's a monster and a boorish concert-goer bringing up the Idirans, nobody seems to pay his species any particular mind.

* ElectronicTelepathy: Quilan has a tiny box in his head which houses the soul of Hadesh Huyler, another retired soldier who can sense whatever he can and acts as a co-pilot. It also allows him to displace objects inside it to somewhere close by. Much of the plot relies upon the fact the Culture considers whatever's inside a person's head to be sacrosanct, so apparently can't see that Quilan's carrying around a [[DrillSergeantNasty mad drill sergeant split personality]] and several bombs in his.