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He did a signing at Forbidden Planet in London last night. I couldn't make it but used to work for them so asked an old colleague if he could get a few books signed for me. I also asked if they could be personalised by the man himself writing in his favourite Culture ship names. Here are the results: In my copy of Matter: "GCU Abritary". In Feersum Endjinn: "Gravitas... Gravitas... Can you spell it for me?" In Inversions: "Gosh Darn where's that gravitas when I need It?" In Excession: "Stood far back when the gravitas was dished out." Pretty chuffed with that to be honest.  Although I forgot to ask for a personalised signature in Surface Detail. 
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Oct 8, 2010 12:52
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Surface Detail is out btw, I got it yesterday on Kindle. I'm not pleased about the price, but being able to get start reading it 5 minutes after I realized it was out was just too convenient. Edit: 15% in, and it's pretty cool. Read it!
uXs fucked around with this message at 12:16 on Oct 9, 2010 |
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Oct 9, 2010 11:16
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Fun fact: the actual physical book is the least expensive part of the process, and Amazon is screwing everybody with Kindle pricing.
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Oct 10, 2010 04:40
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pseudorandom name posted:Fun fact: the actual physical book is the least expensive part of the process, and Amazon is screwing everybody with Kindle pricing. It's not Amazon, it's the publishers who - with help of Apple - managed to get Amazon to switch to an agent model for most of them, meaning the publisher sets the price and Amazon just gets a share of it. It was done mostly because publishers thought that Amazon's 9.99 was way too cheap for e-books.
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Oct 10, 2010 17:47
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Amongozone sent mine a few days ago, its still in the box next to the door, I'm waiting until I am in the mood. ahh, sweet anticipation.
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Oct 10, 2010 19:02
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Is Kindle availability for UK only or something? Says October 28th for me.
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Oct 11, 2010 03:43
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It's possible. But not only for the UK, I'm in Belgium so it's probably all of Europe.
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Oct 11, 2010 10:02
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https://www.novacon.org.uk Iain and Brian Aldis will be there.
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Oct 11, 2010 18:11
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silly posted:Is Kindle availability for UK only or something? Says October 28th for me. Yeah. If you go to amazon.co.uk you can see the Kindle download, but it's UK only. The only way to get it in the states right now is in print, unfortunately. It's obviously a retarded system at this point, since there's no physical media to justify different street dates, but such is life.
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Oct 11, 2010 18:44
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Nerdy but cool: Creating a Marain font
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Oct 12, 2010 15:29
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Pompous Rhombus posted:Nerdy but cool: Creating a Marain font
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Oct 12, 2010 18:27
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Someone mentioned The Culture as having potentially disappeared after one galactic cycler earlier - something about a hegemonizing swarm, OCM, and sublimination. What does OCM stand for?
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Oct 13, 2010 02:07
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Outside Context ... M-something?
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Oct 13, 2010 02:25
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pseudorandom name posted:Outside Context ... M-something? oh yeah it was OCP, for outside context problem probably
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Oct 13, 2010 05:46
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It was released last week in Australia. I'm about half way through and enjoying it very much. More than the last couple of novels.
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Oct 13, 2010 06:57
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enigma74 posted:Someone mentioned The Culture as having potentially disappeared after one galactic cycler earlier - something about a hegemonizing swarm, OCM, and sublimination. What does OCM stand for? Yes, it was in the epilogue of Look to Windward I think? The one with the gigantic intelligent space whales in air bubbles that work as ecosystem for other species and are near immortal. We meet one at the novels main timeline and once again after the Culture has vanished. Although it's probably longer than most intelligent species stay on the stage - a Galactic Cycle is 230 million years after all.
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Oct 13, 2010 06:58
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enigma74 posted:Someone mentioned The Culture as having potentially disappeared after one galactic cycler earlier - something about a hegemonizing swarm, OCM, and sublimination. What does OCM stand for? Also they could have been defeated by a rival of relative strength too. Or a sublimed race they've angered. The latter could constitute an OCP. For instance a civilization could fail from seemingly, prolonged bad luck.
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Oct 13, 2010 12:13
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An aggressive rival of relative strength would fall under the category of a hegemony. This seems the least likely explanation given the Culture's status as essentially post-scarcity and their performance in the Idiran war. An OCP is of course by definition beyond the comprehension of those affected so it could be anything. However, I vaguely recall a Mind stating that sublimed races aren't capable of interacting with the rest of the galaxy, or at least would have no inclination to do so. Granted this could be a false assumption on the Culture's part but the Minds generally have a good handle on this stuff. I think the most likely explanation is that the Culture itself sublimed. Note: I haven't read Surface Detail yet, so I don't know if it cover this at all.
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Oct 13, 2010 13:22
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Taratang posted:An aggressive rival of relative strength would fall under the category of a hegemony. This seems the least likely explanation given the Culture's status as essentially post-scarcity and their performance in the Idiran war. Hegemonising meant in the form of absorbing the culture. You could argue that a victorious force would do this to whatever level, whether it be conquer and rule all the way to dissasembly and self-replication of matter. But you can have a force that simply wants to steralize them. And just because the Idiran's failed doesn't mean that there aren't other forces out there that are equivalent or stronger in scope. They had a war with the Homomdans for a time the Idiran's mentors. Not everyone agrees with 'Don't gently caress with the culture' as shown in Look to Windward. FelchTragedy fucked around with this message at 15:28 on Oct 13, 2010 |
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Oct 13, 2010 14:44
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Entropic posted:Thoroughly enjoyed The Algebraist though. I love the Dwellers. He's tried a few times to do aliens with weird psychology that humans find baffling or repellent, and I think the Dwellers succeed a lot better in that role than the Affront or the Oct.
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Oct 13, 2010 19:08
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Verloc posted:I think a large part of why the Dwellers work so well is because of the Luseferous story arc. There's a huge amount of effort spent building him up as this very human stereotype of moustache-twisting villainy, all the human characters/factions are frantically preparing for the dramatic final showdown in true SF trope fashion and then *WHAM* Luseferous runs smack into a wall of alien psychology and technology. The point of the character and his arc was to be ultimately pointless because he tries to deal with the Dwellers like he would humans or at least other Quick species, and winds up getting absolutely nowhere because of how completely different they are.
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Oct 14, 2010 18:13
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I couldn't help thinking of Luseferous as a Venture Bros villain.
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Oct 15, 2010 13:38
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This is all stuff about the new book, which you should read. It avoids the thing some of his stuff does where the beginning drags on and exposits and doesn't go anywhere. Such a good book. The Culture ships scattered around just waiting for some sort of galactic level disaster so they can go and rebuild somewhere else? That seemed oddly paranoid actually, but I really like the look it gives into the Culture. Yeah they're these civilizational visionaries, but they've got the Abominators hanging out just begging someone to pick a fight. The huge mansion all the Minds hang out in that no human has ever seen? I want a book set there. Victorian era murder mystery only it's all Minds as the suspects. The whole moral issue of the Hells themselves, and how completely hosed you'd have to be to support them. Really though my favorite part are the wannabe Culture Juniors. Just a very well thought out novel. Luseferous is the Monarch in space. Dwellers are the best race though. "Well sure we could let people use our gates...or we could just hang out and pretend to be pirates and argue about fashion all day. Let's do that. *edit* Oh hey a thought. We might get new readers in the thread maybe we should spoiler the discussion about the older books?
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Oct 15, 2010 18:54
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Just finished Surface Detail, didn't change my mind. It's awesome, read it. Ending spoiler: I did think the ending was a bit much. One of the central figures in the war is the protagonist of another book? Really? That's way too much of a coincidence in a galaxy as huge as this one. Edit: I'm less than pleased with the Kindle version I got though. There are a lot of errors in words and sentences that are split where they shouldn't be, some missing words and even a missing sentence. There's also a ton of places where there probably should be a paragraph break. I'd have to check a paper copy (and I will), but some of the jumps from one subplot to another are just way too abrupt to be intended like that. uXs fucked around with this message at 13:53 on Oct 17, 2010 |
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Oct 17, 2010 13:39
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I loved that ending Having Zakalwe fighting in the war of heaven and hell trying to find redemption or punish himself or both was brilliant. Yeah it's kinda contrived but it's the kind of contrived that can and I think in this case does work. I mean poo poo having the chairmaker fighting for the existence of hell/s because he truly thinks he deserves to be in hell...thats hosed. I love it.
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Oct 20, 2010 16:08
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The anticipation is the sweetest nectar, thus, I draw out every Banks book as long as possible. psychobabble aside, should any of the culture novels be made into a film; what book, and who would portray what/who?
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Oct 20, 2010 16:19
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staberind posted:The anticipation is the sweetest nectar, thus, I draw out every Banks book as long as possible. Two large obstacles stand in way of a Banks' book made into a semi-decent film. The first one is, his aliens are just too alien, not just dudes with stuff on their heads Star Trek style, not to say anything about the Minds. I'd hate to see a film in which Minds look like old dudes in robes conversing in some sort of paradisy VR environment, and I'd hate it even more if Homomda or Afrronters were "humanized" for a film. The other big problem would be that the coolest things about the Culture can't really be shown, they have to be told. You'd need terrible unfilmable infodumps to introduce even the simplest concepts such as glanding or neural laces. Leaving that aside, I'd love to see Player of Games on film. I believe that one would be the easiest to film since Azadis look fairly humanoid. However, making the CGI for the game of Azad would be very challenging. Bill Murray should do the voice for Mahrwin-Skel. Consider Phlebas is fairly filmable, but at a danger of the last third looking and feeling like AvP, which is absolutely a horrible thought. James Callis would make an awesome Horza, though. Wow, this sounds so goony.
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Oct 21, 2010 10:26
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mcustic posted:Two large obstacles stand in way of a Banks' book made into a semi-decent film. The first one is, his aliens are just too alien, not just dudes with stuff on their heads Star Trek style, not to say anything about the Minds. I'd hate to see a film in which Minds look like old dudes in robes conversing in some sort of paradisy VR environment, and I'd hate it even more if Homomda or Afrronters were "humanized" for a film.
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Oct 21, 2010 17:54
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Quantum Cat posted:I loved that ending Having Zakalwe fighting in the war of heaven and hell trying to find redemption or punish himself or both was brilliant. Yeah it's kinda contrived but it's the kind of contrived that can and I think in this case does work. I mean poo poo having the chairmaker fighting for the existence of hell/s because he truly thinks he deserves to be in hell...thats hosed. I love it. Ha, so that's who he was! The name was sort of familiar but I couldn't quite place him. Didn't think much of that: Bank's sci-fi novels are so full of weird names that I do sometimes forget who's who. Then I searched all the way back through the book and still couldn't find him mentioned again. Mystery solved! One thing that I think causes Banks some difficulty with the Culture novels is that the galaxy he portrays is normally just so drat safe. Sure, there's massively advanced alien species all over the place but they're generally reasonable types who all get along together and do their best to help out less developed civilizations. It's almost impossible for anything really bad to happen and as soon as it does, the Galactic emergency services are on the scene, putting sticking plasters on grazed knees etc. It's significant then that in his latest book, all the most gruesome stuff takes place in virtual environments: sure, it's bloody torture and death but it's not even taking place in the 'Real', as normal life is known in the book; the Culture and their equiv-level buddies would never allow it. There're no sharp edges in Bank's fictional galaxy, which seems to be forcing him to make the violence in his books ever more abstract. Great book by the way, a real return to form for Banks. Perhaps he should just stick to writing Culture novels and knock everything else on the head?
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Oct 21, 2010 19:11
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staberind posted:psychobabble aside, should any of the culture novels be made into a film; what book, and who would portray what/who? You know that there's apparently a movie of A Gift From the Culture in the works, right? We're coming up on a solid year with no new information so it's totally possible the thing is DOA, but I'm willing to hold onto hope.
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Oct 21, 2010 22:50
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Umiapik posted:One thing that I think causes Banks some difficulty with the Culture novels is that the galaxy he portrays is normally just so drat safe. Sure, there's massively advanced alien species all over the place but they're generally reasonable types who all get along together and do their best to help out less developed civilizations. It's almost impossible for anything really bad to happen and as soon as it does, the Galactic emergency services are on the scene, putting sticking plasters on grazed knees etc. I don't get that at all, the galaxy is safe if you are in the Culture or in a similar power group but probably most of the people in the galaxy live under the shadow of having SC stepping in and lifting them up or other nastier groups just doing as they please. It's just that at least with SC as you lie in the dirt feeling your life blood seep out of you you have the comfort of knowing that in the end it's (statistically) for the best. Or you would know if you knew what hit you.
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Oct 21, 2010 23:29
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mcustic posted:Two large obstacles stand in way of a Banks' book made into a semi-decent film. The first one is, his aliens are just too alien, not just dudes with stuff on their heads Star Trek style, not to say anything about the Minds. I'd hate to see a film in which Minds look like old dudes in robes conversing in some sort of paradisy VR environment, and I'd hate it even more if Homomda or Afrronters were "humanized" for a film. Well, I'm certain anything would have to contain a metric shitton of greenscreening, voice acting and general stuff that makes people turn their nose up at sci-fi, just to get an Idea of the scale of things across, plus, although Banks does include a lot of action in the books, its mostly technoporn that happens very quickly and people are inexplicably dead, turned into a fine spray of bloody residue or meaty tatters, with a drone inexplicably apologising at the end, or gigantic engines of destruction using the weapons of the edge of comprehension to eradicate matter and form. I'm not certain how that would translate well on screen; "its action jim, but not as we know it". Edit : Hah. Zakalwe... staberind fucked around with this message at 03:41 on Oct 26, 2010 |
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Oct 22, 2010 18:54
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Just finished reading Surface Detail and for me that was a return to form for the culture novels. Cracking read, go get it.
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Oct 27, 2010 03:17
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Just 150 or so pages in and mad at myself for getting some things spoiled for me. Ah well. Christ, Veppers is an arsehole isn't he?staberind posted:The anticipation is the sweetest nectar, thus, I draw out every Banks book as long as possible. The one with the fewest utterly unfilmable bits in is probably Look to Windward. Actually, on second thought, there's that whole chapter of the Lasting Damage relating its personal history which would be tricky. And that's also the one with no human main characters, so I doubt it'd be done. Maybe as animation... Consider Phlebas might work as a film, provided you had a high enough FX budget for all the poo poo that blows up to blow up in properly spectacular fashion. I'm thinking of the sequence with the crashing city-ship in particular. It could probably be whittled down to feature film length if you lost some bits like the cannibal island sequence. mcustic posted:James Callis would make an awesome Horza, though. Entropic fucked around with this message at 21:34 on Oct 27, 2010 |
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Oct 27, 2010 21:30
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Cannibal Island, with your host, Terry Gene Bollea, This week; Sasan finds a birds egg, Cuck Floam loses count and has to begin counting the grains of sand again. 2 islanders die of malnutrition and 1 of sudden weight. Featured mouth cutlery : The Nutcrackers.
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Oct 29, 2010 04:38
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Barnes & Noble just hosed up and sold me _Surface Detail_ for $10. It's a sign that only good things can come from this book!
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Oct 29, 2010 22:14
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alkanphel posted:I agree that out of all his books so far, the Player of Games is probably the easiest to translate into a movie. Azad would be challenging but not impossible. Maybe they'll take some artistic liberties with the way the game is visualised. Nah, the player of games might be the best of his books that would make a passable movie but Consider Phlebas has more or less already been made into a movie more than once. It's a series of sci-fi set pieces, basically unconnected in terms of thematic significance, strung together as the adventures of a plucky crew in a lovely spaceship. It's basically star wars with cursing and loving.
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Oct 30, 2010 02:24
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andrew smash posted:Nah, the player of games might be the best of his books that would make a passable movie but Consider Phlebas has more or less already been made into a movie more than once. It's a series of sci-fi set pieces, basically unconnected in terms of thematic significance, strung together as the adventures of a plucky crew in a lovely spaceship. It's basically star wars with cursing and loving. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Oct 30, 2010 03:01
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Just finished reading Use of Weapons and ehh... not a fan So at the end he's the one that killed his 'sister' and made the chair? He was the one with the separate mother from the city right? The early flashbacks seem to be from the good brother. Whats happening! I suppose I'll go back and read some sections, lots of the boring parts I just skimmed over. Oh, also with the culture We need to get this guy out so instead of using super jesus technology lets send a random neanderthal down there to buy a street and waste billions of space bucks - finally convinces the guy to leave to see a park or something and instead of being sneaky about it he just blows everything up. And at the end.. Oh, we didn't think you would win so we made a deal with the other side and now they should win  
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Oct 30, 2010 15:30
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Danith posted:Just finished reading Use of Weapons and ehh... not a fan Shame you didnt like, thats one of my faves. I did have to read that one a few times before I fully wrapped my head round it, give it another crack maybe?
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Oct 30, 2010 17:24
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