The Gallery :: The Chairmaker (Use of Weapons)

Unfortunately, I was unduly influenced by creating Morat that I set out drawing The Chairmaker with several meanings in mind. So it's not utterly innocent, and yes, there is some real analysing to be done. But it's light work, so don't worry.

I'd just finished off Morat when I remembered that the Culture list I'm subscribed to believes that Use of Weapons is on the whole Banks' best Culture book. Now, seeing as I firmly believe that The Player of Games is the best book I've ever read, I decided to evaluate this claim myself and re-read Use of Weapons.

And, indeed, it was an excellent book. I began to sketch out a few ideas on a piece of paper.

SPOILER WARNING! Don't read the stuff below unless you've read Use of Weapons, or like spoilers.

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My first idea was that no matter how far Cheradenine Zakalwe travelled, no matter how long ago it was in his past, he would always be drawn to the memory of the Chairmaker, both mentally and physically. I thought - well, that sounds a bit like gravity, maybe someone getting sucked into a black hole or a comet orbiting around a star. The comet slingshots out, but eventually it'll come right back to where it started.

Then I thought - well, I can't really draw a black-hole unless in diagrammatic form (you know, like having a grid that's distorted into a hole; a 2D black hole). And I can't even do that, since it'd involve a lot of work and I wasn't entirely convinced it'd look that good anyway. And a picture of a comet orbit a star - well, that is easier than drawing a black-hole, but it's a bit boring.

It really needed something else to finish it off... which was when I realised that the thing that had pulled Cheradenine away had been the Culture - giving the whole artwork a nice two-part symmetry. It then followed that the Culture, being more powerful and influential, would be the star around which the rest of the galaxy, and indeed Cheradenine's homeworld, would revolve.

So at first, Cheradenine is on his homeworld. Through various circumstances, he leaves it and begins to be pulled away, travelling himself at first. When we reach the Diziet Sma :: Culture intersection (that's what INSC means; INterSeCtion), his path away from his homeworld is confirmed, and he begins heading towards the star of the Culture.

The various other intersections represent, in my mind, the more significant of the events in his life (events before the whole Staberinde/Chairmaker incidents, that is). He orbits Culture star for an indeterminate number of years, but when the Vorenhutz intersection takes place, and then Murssay, we see his slowly yet surely curve off back to his homeworld.

He reaches back there and ends up right where he started - if not physically, but that doesn't matter. Back to the beginning - the Chairmaker.

I suppose another of my intentions in drawing this was that at first glance, it'd just look like some orbital pathway thing (i.e. very cool). Then you'd look at it closer, and think about it.

I had been planning to draw a cut-away section of the star, revealing its inner and outer core layers. I remembered reading somewhere that the Special Circumstances section could be treated as a dense core around which was wrapped the Contact section of the Culture. Around Contact would be the rest of the incredibly diffuse Culture General - as if it were a red giant star. I thought it'd be quite a nice symbol to represent the Culture in its ideological state, as a star, with all the layers pointed out.

However, I obviously didn't do this. Partly because the artwork was getting crowded, partly because it'd be fairly (but not impossibly) difficult to pull off, and mostly because I thought that'd be making it a little too obvious.

What are all those differently slanted lines all about? I hear you ask. And I hear the more observant of you ask: And why do they keep on rotating by 22.5º with every intersection?

Well, you got me. I had intended for the lines to go back right to 45º, as they are at INSC 1, to reinforce the 'coming back home' thing. That didn't work, for various reasons, so I lead you to draw your own conclusions about why they rotate.

Also, unlike Morat I've only included three names here - the real key players, and I purposefully kept them small.

You'll notice that I resisted the urge to draw any kind of chair in The Chairmaker. Again, that'd be ridiculously unsubtle and there simply wasn't any place to fit it in.