Against a Dark Background
Chapters - Iain M. Banks
Prologue
Part: From a Glass Shore
Chapter 1: Overture
An overture: the political geography of Golter and the history of the Lazy Gun, a weapon of genuinely absurd lethality whose effects are determined by what it considers funny. Its location is unknown and its retrieval will require navigating the entire society.
Chapter 2: The Chain Gallery
Chapter 3: Echo Street
A flashback to Sharrow's childhood and her relationship with her cousin Geis, who is both one of her oldest allies and one of the novel's least trustworthy figures. The past that made her is shown to have been comprehensively broken.
Chapter 4: Log-Jam
The team navigates a log-jam: a traffic crisis on Golter's notoriously congested transit networks, used as cover for an exchange of information. The novel's action sequences are consistently built around the comedy of a universe that has over-complicated everything.
Chapter 5: Lifting Party
Chapter 6: Solo
Chapter 7: Operating Difficulties
Chapter 8: The Mortal Message
A message from the past, routed through one of Golter's religious institutions. The Gun's location is beginning to resolve from possibility into probability, but each lead requires something from someone who was not asked.
Part: The Signals of Decay, The Weaponry of Deceit
Chapter 9: Reunions
Chapter 10: Just a Concept
A sequence built around the novel's recurring theme: the gap between what things mean and what they are. An object, a place, a relationship - all of them less than and more than what they appear.
Chapter 11: Deep County
Deep County: a remote region of Golter where one thread of the Gun's history leads. The novel uses its geography to track its emotional temperature; Deep County is genuinely threatening in a way the city sequences are not.
Chapter 12: Snow Fall
Snow falls on a confrontation that the team was not prepared for. Another loss. The Gun is closer and the team is smaller, and the novel is asking whether finding it will mean anything by the time they do.
Chapter 13: At the Court of the Useless Kings
The court of the useless kings: a political institution that has survived its own relevance and now exists as theatre. Sharrow needs something from it and the price is participation in the performance.
Chapter 14: Vegetable Plot
A vegetable plot: a sequence of dark comedy in which the novel's absurdist tendencies are given full expression. Banks uses the comedy to make the violence that follows worse.
Chapter 15: Escape Clause
An escape clause: the team finds a way out of an impossible situation that costs less than expected, which means the novel is saving the cost for later. The Gun is almost within reach.
Chapter 16: The Ghost
Part: A Trophy of a Past Dispute
A trophy of a past dispute: a relic from one of Golter's many wars, repurposed as a clue. The novel is full of things that have outlasted their original purpose and been given new, stranger uses.