Special Circumstances
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In the science fiction of Iain M. Banks, Special Circumstances (SC) is an organisation that exists within the anarchist civilisation known as the Culture (which forms the basis of several of his novels and shorter works).
Special Circumstances is part of a larger Culture organisation called Contact, which coordinates interactions with (and interventions in) other civilisations. SC exists to fulfil this role when circumstances exceed the moral capacity of Contact, or where the situation is highly complex, as in The Player of Games. Most of Banks' Culture novels concern themselves directly or indirectly with such circumstances.
Interventions by SC usually take the form of covert operations (military or otherwise) designed to strengthen or weaken factions within less advanced civilisations. These interventions are not usually carried out by Culture citizens (Jernau Gurgeh in The Player of Games being an exception), but are rather "contracted out" to third party agents or mercenaries (Use of Weapons). Typically, they aim to improve the situation of less advanced civilisations, though sometimes interventions may also nip future challenges to the Culture in the bud (The Player of Games). While the Culture believes that it can statistically prove that most interventions achieve this end, operations are not always successful. Some (Look to Windward) are disastrous.
In times of war (as seen in Consider Phlebas), the Contact section of the Culture, and in particular Special Circumstances, acts as military intelligence. Contact membership is seen as a high achievement for people of the Culture as even the best of the best are still too many for the limited available places, but SC membership, though even more difficult to obtain (and attributed only by invitation), is not seen as such a desirable position. SC people often deal with what Culture citizens hate the most: barbarity, violence and actions of questionable ethics.
The morally ambiguous role of Special Circumstances is best explained by Diziet Sma in Use of Weapons :
- "... in Special Circumstances we deal in the moral equivalent of black holes, where the normal laws - the rules of right and wrong that people imagine apply everywhere else in the universe - break down; beyond those metaphysical event-horizons, there exist ... special circumstances. [...] That's us. That's our territory; our domain."
[edit] See also
The SC idea that an advanced civilisation should covertly help those less advanced is similar to the ideas and actions of Progressors in the Noon Universe of Boris and Arkady Strugatsky, as well as the agents of Canopus in the Shikasta novels of Doris Lessing.
The activities of SC are entirely at odds with the Prime Directive in the Star Trek universe. Starfleet explicitly prohibits activity of the kind sanctioned by the Culture, though for similarly altruistic reasons (see Section 31 in the Star Trek context).
