What to do when you can do anything.

• Author: Suderman, Peter
• Position: Briefly Noted - The Hydrogen Sonata - Brief article - Book review

For 25 years, Scottish science fiction writer Iain M. Banks has written novels set in the futuristic universe of the Culture, a lawless, post-Singularity civilization in which enlightened humans pursue hedonism while super-powerful artificial intelligences manage the store. The series' big question: What does a liberal civilization with unlimited options do with itself? Especially when it's confronted with a rival operating on different rules?

That question rears its head again in The Hydrogen Sonata (Orbit), Banks' newest Culture novel, when one of the Culture's historical allies prepares to ascend to...