Godlack

Another one from Iain M. Banks.

I was just looking at his website and can't believe that The Algebraist is his 21st novel and his 10th SF book. I didn't realise he had been going that long. His Wasp Factory is still one of the most remarkable first novels ever and one of the few books to absolutely gross me out. (The spoon incident. If you have read it you know what I am talking about) At the time I was grateful to learn that I had not been totally desensitized by increasingly explicit mainstream films, books and television.

Anyway, I was interested by this passage in The Algebraist:

Some had faith, religious belief, even in this prodigiously, rampantly physically self-sufficient age, even in the midst of this universal, abundant clarity of godlessness and godlack, but such people seemed, in his experience, no less prone to despair, and their faith a liability even in its renunciation, just one more thing to lose and mourn.

As far as I know "godlack" is a totally new word, and for some reason I was reminded of Gerard Manley Hopkins' invented words "inscape" and "instress", the way a new word is just dropped into the writing in such a way that it defines itself and appears just right. And, of course, its a great name for a band!

The book does raise some questions about what sort of religion, if any, could take hold in a galaxy where thousands of species interact, all bringing their own single-planet, species-specific religions which are often nullified by the very existance of all the other species - some of them billions of years older. Banks comes up with a very plausible (and Matrix-ish) concept called 'the Truth'.

Religion is only an incidental aspect of the book (so far anyway - I haven't finished it yet) but is typical of how challenging SF can be: to imagine how particular aspects of life would be different in another setting.

Probably because of the similarity of subject with Faithless my first thought was that Godlack could be a dance band, but it could also be the name of a band with goth tendancies who want a mildly contentious name. (Although I imagine that for some more committed religious types the name would be more than just mildly contentious)