Consider Phlebas as an Allegory for ICOM

In Consider Phlebas, the Idiran–Culture War is vast, existential, and civilisation-defining—yet it rarely feels central. The narrative follows individuals skirting the edges of events, reacting to consequences rather than shaping outcomes.

ICOM functions similarly. The “war” might be middle age, professional burnout, geopolitical unease, or the encroaching certainty of mortality. But the trips are not about fixing the world; they are about moving through it—often sideways, often awkwardly, usually via a connection that really shouldn’t exist.

Horza is not a hero. He is stubborn, ideological, frequently wrong, and driven by a visceral need to define himself against something larger.

• Suspicious of comfort (“that sounds a bit touristy”).
• Ideologically committed to “the hard way”.
• Quietly offended by efficiency.
• Deeply invested in being right later.

Horza’s defining trait is not bravery but commitment to a narrative about himself. Likewise, ICOM participants are not merely travellers; they are custodians of a story in which hardship is evidence of authenticity.

The Culture is post-scarcity, rational, optimised, safe. Minds handle the boring bits. Pleasure is abundant. Suffering is optional.

In ICOM terms, the Culture represents direct flights, reliable hotels, sensible itineraries, and normal holidays enjoyed by normal people. This is, of course, unacceptable.

And yet—just as Horza cannot stop orbiting the Culture—ICOM cannot entirely let go of what it rejects. Comfort is always almost chosen, then deliberately avoided in favour of an overnight train with no food car and a man eating sunflower seeds directly from his coat pocket.

The novel’s MacGuffin—a Mind hidden on a planet of the dead—drives enormous effort, suffering, and death. Yet its ultimate significance is ambiguous, even anticlimactic.

Replace the Mind with: “the cheapest possible route”, “the weirdest border crossing”, or “that bar someone went to in 2009”. The effort expended far outweighs the payoff, by design.

What matters is not the object but the process of enduring the journey and later narrating it with increasing embellishment. Meaning is retrospective.

Banks fills the novel with vivid side characters who appear, suffer, die, and vanish. Their purpose is not survival but texture.

ICOM trips generate minor legends in the same way. Roles emerge temporarily (the organiser, the pessimist, the man who knows a shortcut). The group persists; individuals are… variable.

Consider Phlebas is brutal but funny. Death is frequent, often absurd, and rarely sentimental.

This tonal balance is deeply ICOM: grim circumstances are mined for humour; discomfort becomes anecdote; genuine peril is reframed as “character-building”. Both systems use irony as emotional armour.

Horza’s fate offers no moral triumph. The war continues. The universe remains indifferent.

Likewise, no ICOM trip solves anything. There is no final revelation, no graduation to comfort—only another destination, another bad idea, and another confident assertion that “this will be the last one”. (It will not be.)