Another good Culture series novel from Iain M Banks

I somehow had no memory of getting all the way through this one even though I bought it in 2014:

The title is Matter, by Iain M. Banks, and the plot involves the inhabitants of a "shell world" (artist's rendering above) ... there's been a murder in the Royal Family and surviving Prince Furbin evades the killer with his trusty servant Holst ...

There are a lot of interesting ideas in this novel:

• the idea of the Universe being a simulation, and of war being better waged as a simulation
• the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics
• The interaction between cultural less developed civilizations and the "optimi" like the Culture and peers

This is almost as good as my favorite, Surface Detail ... where a lot of these ideas are given fuller treatement.


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