The Hydrogen Sonata
Review
The Hydrogen Sonata, by , is the tenth and final Culture book. It explores the last days of the Glitz people as they prepare to Sublime.
The Hydrogen Sonata is a fitting end to the Culture series. It pairs perfectly with Consider Phlebas, as both explore the insignificance of a single being in the broader galaxy. Consider Phlebas approaches this theme from a negative perspective—Horza is battered, tortured, and leaves a wake of destruction before failing at his quest, which nonetheless has no impact on the war or the wider world. In contrast, The Hydrogen Sonata looks at the theme in a more positive light—Vyr Cossont embarks on adventures, succeeds at her self-appointed life-task, completes her mission, and it still means nothing.
The main theme of the book is that life is meaningless except for the meaning you give it and the legacy you leave. In this way, it is a fitting final book for .1 The plot reinforces this theme with many twists, branches, and dead-ends that all lead nowhere—the great revelation everyone struggled either to bring forth or to bury is discovered, repressed, and nothing comes of it.
Each character finds their own meaning in the story: Vyr takes on the life-task of playing the titular Hydrogen Sonata. The barbaric Colonel Cagad Agansu derives meaning from his position in the military hierarchy, regardless of what it demands of him. Reikl’s meaning comes from serving and dying honorably. The revelers on the Equatorial 353 find meaning in hedonism. The drone, Hassipura Plyn-Frie, shapes rocks and sand into kinetic sculptures. Ngaroe QiRia immerses himself in sound.
The Hydrogen Sonata includes callbacks to previous books in the series: a meteor storm devastates the early Glitz civilization just as in Inversions. Music and composers play a central role, as in Look to Windward. The Interesting Times Gang from Excession is mentioned, and the group of ships meddling with the Glitz is reminiscent of them. The virtual heavens and hells of Surface Detail echo the real heaven of Subliming. The debate over whether the ships can ethically intervene in the Glitz civilization mirrors themes from The Player of Games, Use of Weapons, The State of the Art, and many others mentioned earlier—one could almost say this is a constant theme in ’s works.
I expected reading The Hydrogen Sonata to be sad because it was the last book—and it was—but I didn’t expect its melancholy theme to also make me feel hopeful. Life is what you make of it. Bittersweet, indeed.
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It is the last book published under the author’s “” name. A final book, The Quarry, was published posthumously under the name “”. ↩