No Gravitas Allowed -- The Iain [M.] Banks thread

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > No Gravitas Allowed -- The Iain [M.] Banks thread

Entropic: Feb 21, 2007; patriarchy sucks

Iain M. Banks 16 February 1954 � 9 June 2013 :smith:

Iain Banks was a prolific Scottish author of both mainstream and Science fiction. He wrote SF as Iain M. Banks and "regular" fiction as plain old Iain Banks.

Most of his SF output was based in the same universe, centred around a galaxy-spanning post-scarcity utopia called "The Culture". Banks himself has written a good overview/introduction to his Culture universe which can be found here: A Few Notes on The Culture The Culture books are a very loose series, they're written "in order", but you don't particularly need to have read any of the previous books to understand any of them. Not that there aren't a few callbacks for those who have read them all. His M-less books are all stand-alone.

Bibliography
As Iain Banks:

The Wasp Factory (1984)
Walking on Glass (1985)
The Bridge (1986)
Espedair Street (1987)
Canal Dreams (1989)
The Crow Road (1992)
Complicity (1993)
Whit (1995)
A Song of Stone (1997)
The Business (1999)
Dead Air (2002)
The Steep Approach to Garbadale (2007)
Stonemouth (2012)
The Quarry (2013)

As Iain M. Banks:

Consider Phlebas (1987)
The Player of Games (1988)
The State of the Art (1989) [Collection of short stores, some SF, some not, some Culture, some not]
Use of Weapons (1990)
Against a Dark Background (1993) [Non-Culture]
Feersum Endjinn (1994) [Non-Culture]
Excession (1996)
Inversions (1998)
Look to Windward (2000)
The Algebraist (2004) [Non-Culture]
Matter (2008)
Transition (2009) [Non-Culture] (published as Iain Banks in some markets, but it's SF)
Surface Detail (2011)
The Hydrogen Sonata (2012)

Nonfiction:

Raw Spirit (2003) - A book about, among other things, the pleasures of fine Whisky

Good starting books:

Opinion varies, but these ones seem to come up a lot. Debate is welcome!
The Wasp Factory - His first published novel. A quick read, a good introduction to his sort of dark humour, but might give the wrong impression: most of his other books aren't nearly so disturbing. (Complicity excepted)
Use of Weapons - Widely acknowledged as one of the best, if not the best, of the Culture books. (Banks himself names it as his favourite of his SF books. (The Bridge is his favourite M-less book.)) Has a bit of an odd structure (with two sets of chapters numbered in opposite directions, one going forward in time and the other going back) but once you get your head around it it's not that hard to follow. Fun characters, lots of great settings, and it builds steadily to a conclusion that is spectacularly worth it.
The Player of Games - The second of the Culture books, and a very straightforward tale. It has none of the disjointed jumping back and forth in time that shows up in so many of Banks' books, and it's a very good introduction to The Culture as a setting. Personally I found it to be a fun read, but a little too simplistic. It has far less moral ambiguity than most of the rest of the Culture series.

Entropic fucked around with this message at 16:10 on Aug 13, 2014

# ¿ Feb 5, 2009 22:32

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 19, 2024 16:53

Entropic: Feb 21, 2007; patriarchy sucks

Alvie posted:

I'm about three-quarters through Feersum Endjinn, which I found out about through the "videogames you wish existed" thread in GBS. So far, I'm really enjoying it. Especially Bascule the Teller's sections which are narrated by the illiterate bascule in a sort of phonetic pseudo-language with a slight Scottish accent. I would recommend this book to anybody.

I quite liked that one. It's almost frightening how quickly you get used to Bascule's mode of speech. And while it's not explicitly set in the Culture universe, after reading Matter I'm pretty sure that it could be. I don't think there's anything in it that would actually disqualify it from being in the Culture universe, apart from the fact that The Culture isn't mentioned at all. I haven't read Against A Dark Background or The Algebraist yet, but I gather there's a similar ambiguity going on in those.

Naartjie posted:

Much love for Banks. I have only read three of his sf novels, and while I really liked them, the only criticism that I can level is that the creativity of the setting to his books usually outstrips literary style. But it doesn't impede enjoyment of them, I guess for the more high-end literary stuff you should turn to his non-sf material.

I found that to be true with Excession in particular. That seemed like the one where his reach most exceeded his grasp. I really liked the ideas, but he didn't quite manage to convey the superhuman nature of the Minds that were most of the characters, never mind the Excesssion itself. Sometimes he really gets it right though, as with Use of Weapons or Look to Windward.

# ¿ Feb 5, 2009 23:40

Entropic: Feb 21, 2007; patriarchy sucks

Payndz posted:

Even though it's the least complex of the Culture novels, and is also in some ways a bit scrappy compared to the later books, Consider Phlebas is my favourite of them simply for its unashamed glee in coming up with one mindblowing Big loving Artefact after another - and then blowing the poo poo out of them in genuinely thrilling action sequences. There may not be the intricacy of The Player Of Games or the sheer head-loving / of Use Of Weapons, but Banks' blatant delight at getting to devise all this awesome stuff is irresistable.

I don't know, maybe it's because I grew up reading Larry Niven, but Orbitals seemed like no big thing to me. I think he succeeded better at driving home The Immense Scale Of Things in Look To Windward, with Masaq Hub recounting how it had to destroy Orbitals in the war. The descriptions of the GSVs in that book are really impressive too. And just the amount of time the book spends exploring all these wildly different and equally vast environments on the same Orbital drives home how massive the thing is.

I liked Consider Phlebas but it has a very different feel from the rest of the Culture books, more '50s swashbuckling space adventure than modern SF. Which isn't a bad thing, it just felt like a very different tone, particularly reading it right after UOW.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2009 00:35

Entropic: Feb 21, 2007; patriarchy sucks

Here's a recent podcast from the Guardian where Iain does a Q&A about The Wasp Factory. Interesting stuff. Has some major spoilers partway through, though there's a bit of warning beforehand. Probably more interesting if you've read it already anyway.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/audio/2008/jul/16/guardian.bookclub.podcast

Sailor_Spoon posted:

Also, I kind of wish the Culture novels were a littler 'harder'. With the complete awesomeness of GSVs and Minds in general, I would enjoy a book just about them.

Well, Excession comes close to being just about the Minds.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2009 03:03

Entropic: Feb 21, 2007; patriarchy sucks

darkgray posted:

Unfortunately the latest, Matter, failed for me somehow. Not sure what it was, exactly.

I think Matter could have done with some more judicious editing. It had so many long rambling passages describing the landscape and took its drat sweet time slowly moving characters halfway round the galaxy before bringing them all back together to finally meet, with flashbacks scattered all through. It felt rather like Iain Banks trying to write a Dune book, particular at the beginning with all the regicidal political machinations. It definitely picked up at the end, but its long, rambling nature somewhat sabotaged itself, at least for me. By the time it got near the end, when they realize that what's been dug up in the buried city is -- gasp! Could it be? Oh God, no, no, not --- an.... Iln!!, I had mostly forgotten who the Iln were supposed to be, since the only mention of them had been hundreds of pages ago.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2009 16:34

Entropic: Feb 21, 2007; patriarchy sucks

I remember reading somewhere that you can view the Culture books from the late '90s as forming a sort of loose trilogy: Excession is the Culture seen from above, looking down, Inversions is the Culture seen from below, looking up, and Look to Windward is the Culture seen head on from the point of view of another relatively advanced civilization.

So far my favourites are Use of Weapons, Look to Windward and The Bridge. I haven't read Inversions or many of the M-less yet though.

Oh, and I always forget about The State of the Art, which is great too, especially the Culture stories in it. The title story is about Dizzy Sma from Use of Weapons visiting Earth in the 1970s, which is kind of silly, but great fun. I still can't make heads or tails of the story "Scratch" though.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2009 16:51

Entropic: Feb 21, 2007; patriarchy sucks

Danhenge posted:

Look to Windward is probably my favorite book, with the part where the Hub describes how he has experienced death in all its myriad forms and how that makes it particularly suited for watching over the people living on the hub. How it will do whatever is necessary for the rest of its existence in order to atone for what it has done.

Not to mention his great line, "I am a Culture Mind. We are close to gods, and on the far side." which somehow manages not to sound pompous or grandiose.

# ¿ Feb 8, 2009 19:39

Entropic: Feb 21, 2007; patriarchy sucks

ElectroMagneticJosh posted:

One thing I appreciate about the Culture is that it deals with the whole singularity concept but takes it as a matter of fact. This is a nice change from a lot of writers who deal with the same kinds of ideas but get overly focused on technical jargon. Banks manages to achieve high-concept sci-fi without becoming "hard" sci-fi. That may also put some potential readers off him, I realize, but he is well worth reading.

I think he realizes that if you're going to write a story with technology that impossibly far ahead of our own, then the vaguer the inner workings of it are, the better. The opposite would be the Star Trek approach where everything is "explained" with meaningless technobabble that just raises more questions than it answers. Some authors try to explain things, but do it in a way that is at least plausibly consistent with known physics, but too often that ends up involving long walls-o'-text that leave your eyes glazed over. (The otherwise excellent Greg Egan is rather prone to this.)

Plus I really like the idea of technology so advanced that it's essentially invisible to the people relying on it. There's no big messy engine rooms or command centers, stuff just works. If we're being ultra-optimistic in our assumptions about civilizational advance anyway (which you kind of have to be to get to something like the Culture) then that seems like the obvious way for technology to go.

# ¿ Feb 9, 2009 21:32

Entropic: Feb 21, 2007; patriarchy sucks

Morlock posted:

Walking on Glass. I really love Walking on Glass, but mainly for the fantasy/far-future/almost-Borgesian elements - the present-day bits aren't particularly interesting, though the way all the threads tie together at the end makes me happy. The early non-Ms are the best ones, definitely - he dropped off sharply after Whit.

He's said in interviews that he started out thinking of himself as an SF author, and had written several SF books before he finally got published as a "mainstream" fiction author, so his early M-less books are full of him sublimating his SF urges while still trying to write "normal" fiction. Hence awesome weird stuff like The Bridge. After the first few Culture books got published, all his SF tendencies were channeled into the M books and the M-less ended up being much more mundane.

# ¿ Feb 9, 2009 23:46

Entropic: Feb 21, 2007; patriarchy sucks

Away Message posted:

Banks seems good at creating alien species that are, well, alien. Unless they're humanoids (the Culture universe is rather Star Trekish in that regard) he tends to describe them pretty well; he makes them interesting, fun to read about.

Except for the Affront. Still well written but, gently caress those guys.

And I'm about to start reading Excession, too.

I never thought his aliens were really all that alien. Even the weird looking ones like the Chelgrians or the Homomdans still have pretty human desires and motivations, even if they have their own somewhat different culture. There's nothing really unfathomable or difficult to understand about them. But then, that's not why I read banks. If you want really alien aliens, you can end up with some pretty bizarre stories, whereas Banks' aliens are human enough that he can still use them to explore very human ideas.

# ¿ Feb 11, 2009 06:57

Entropic: Feb 21, 2007; patriarchy sucks

narfanator posted:

SIR, I cannot properly convey the gratitude I hold to you for posting this link.
Two and half pages in and this is the most...
I diverge to convey; On numerous occasions the skillfully ordered presentation of concepts has resulted in mental states reminiscent of drugged ones
...this beauty is seeping into my mind. This is to Accelerando what Accelerando was to everything else.

I also don't think it would be having this effect if I hadn't spent as much effort as I have to make my own "genuinely alien" aliens. So, yeah, thanks a bunch, man. Going to share this around.

I found it via the blog of yet another SF writer, Peter Watts. (Who wrote the excellent Starfish and Blindsight, the latter of which is also a first contact story with some genuinely alien aliens.)

I keep meaning to write it up and post it in LF or something.

# ¿ Feb 11, 2009 09:29

Entropic: Feb 21, 2007; patriarchy sucks

Megazver posted:

Someone please take Use of Weapons apart into separate chapters, rearrange them into chronological order and stick them back together.

Chop chop, motherfuckers!

It's not that complicated. You just pull out the roman numeraled ones, reverse them, and put them at the beginning.

book order

Chronological order:

I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, XIII
Prologue
One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen, Fourteen
Epilogue
States of War
Slight Mechanical Destruction

...I think.
I don't have a copy handy so I'm not absolutely sure about where the prologue and epilogue go. I know the poem at the beginning is supposed to be written like a hundred years after everything else though.

Actually reading it in that order would give you all the huge spoilers at the beginning though.

Entropic fucked around with this message at 21:59 on Feb 14, 2009

# ¿ Feb 14, 2009 21:57

Entropic: Feb 21, 2007; patriarchy sucks

HoldYourFire posted:

otherwise it would have been pointless, and Alban was such a worthless pussy and Banks's author mouthpiece political bollocks

That big random gently caress YOU BUSH, US OUT OF IRAQ!!! rant near the end was just annoying, and didn't seem to fit with the tone of the book.

I did like that he seemed able to write about computer games without coming across as a clueless old fogey though, which is something most authors, even most SF authors, can't seem to manage (especially when they're playing at futurism (Notable exception: Charlie Stross.)).

Then again, I heard somewhere that he missed his deadline for Garbadale because he was addicted to Civilization IV. "Research", heh.

# ¿ Feb 23, 2009 00:54

Entropic: Feb 21, 2007; patriarchy sucks

Turpitude posted:

Do any of Banks' books have satisfying endings? So far I've read The Wasp Factory, Consider Phlebas, The Algebraist, and Excession, and none of them have had strong endings. The ride is awesome while it lasts but then he just kind of throws everything out the window and decides the story is finished. I can go into specifics on why I didn't like the endings of those books, but I get the impression others were similarly put off by the end of The Algebraist, for example.

And on another note, what are everyone's favourite Banks action scenes?

I thought Look to Windward wrapped itself up pretty satisfyingly. Especially for Masaq Hub and Quillen.

Turpitude posted:

Posting one more time to mention how much I love the names of the Culture ships.

The Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival
Ethics Gradient
Meatfucker
Steely Glint
Problem Child
Fate Amenable to Change

Other favourites:

The Psychopath-class ROU Frank Exchange Of Views
The GCU Poke It With A Stick
The GCU You Would If You Really Loved Me
The GOU _{_{_{I Said I've Got A Big Stick}}}
The GSV What Are The Civilian Applications?

And then of course there's the whole "gravitas" running joke...

edit: Wikipedia is good for something: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ships_(The_Culture)

Entropic fucked around with this message at 01:45 on Feb 28, 2009

# ¿ Feb 28, 2009 01:37

Entropic: Feb 21, 2007; patriarchy sucks

Pompous Rhombus posted:

It's been a while since I've read it, but I remember thinking The Algebraist had a decent ending. Banks has said it was written as the first book of a possible trilogy.

Excession's was kind of lame, but I thought The Wasp Factory was okay (again, it's been a while). Use of Weapons has one of the most endings of a book I've read, genre or otherwise. Like Entropic said, Look to Windward wraps itself up pretty well.

My main beef with Banks is that most books of his (that I've read so far) involve A DARK SECRET and it gets to be a little cliche, like watching an M. Night Shayamalan movie and waiting for the inevitable twist.

He does seem to have a thing for Terrible Dark Family Secrets (see: Garbadale, Walking on Glass, Use of Weapons, The Wasp Factory, probably others I haven't read yet...) but his "twist endings" generally manage to hold up fairly well without feeling like gimmicks. Most of his books give the reader a sense of "I wonder how all this is going to tie together?" rather than "When's the crazy random twist going to show up?". I appreciate how he can make a lot of disparate threads come together in a way that doesn't seem forced, particularly in his early books.

He's definitely got his tropes. Dude likes his mega-scale architecture and big medievalish castles with modern amenities.

Speaking of which, I just finished Walking On Glass and quite enjoyed it. It definitely feels like a young writer's book though, like he wasn't as sure of his writing style. It felt like he led the reader by the hand a bit too much, explicitly spelling out things that I'd already figured out, like the planet name "Dirt" being a bad translation of "Earth". I was surprised at how closely the three storylines actually fit together. He really was writing SF thinly disguised as regular fiction back then.

Entropic fucked around with this message at 20:58 on Feb 28, 2009

# ¿ Feb 28, 2009 20:55

Entropic: Feb 21, 2007; patriarchy sucks

I came up with:
GCU Plausible Deniability
GSV Militant Hedonist
GCU Tenuous Analogy
GCU Abort, Retry, Fail
GOU My Bad
GSV None Of Them Knew They Were Robots
ROU Never Tell Me The Odds

I keep wishing I'd been into Iain Banks when I was choosing a username.

As for great action sequences, that's one of the things Matter did right. The scene in the first chapter where Djan Seriy and her drone casually decimate an army is great.

# ¿ Mar 1, 2009 16:24

Entropic: Feb 21, 2007; patriarchy sucks

lilbean posted:

Know what bugged me about the end of Matter? Banks makes a big deal about the protagonist dying in a big ball of sacrificial glory, but there was a scene earlier in the book talking about the importance of Special Circumstances operatives backing themselves up. So she didn't die, and she didn't sacrifice gently caress all. And then in the next scene, the other two major players (forgive my poor memory) are acting all loving sad about her being gone.

Or did I misinterpret something? I still loved the book however.

Well, Djan Seriy had a backup, but her brothers sure as hell didn't, and basically her whole family and everyone she knew had been taken out by the end, so there wouldn't really be much for her SC duplicate to come back for.

# ¿ Mar 6, 2009 03:32

Entropic: Feb 21, 2007; patriarchy sucks

Crime on a Dime posted:

Side recommendation for Iain M. Banks readers: Greg Egan

Egan can be fantastically good, especially his short stories, but with half his novels I end up feeling like I don't know nearly enough theoretical physics to really appreciate what he's doing. Still, Diaspora and Permutation City were goddamn fantastic, and Quarantine blew my loving mind when I was 17. Didn't enjoy Schild's Ladder, Distress or Teranesia quite as much, but they were still really interesting.

I got Incandescence for xmas and it's still on my to-read list.

His short stories are almost uniformly brilliant though. He's got that great old '60s/'70s "What if..." writing philosophy updated with a good knowledge of modern day theoretical physics and biotech. Some of his stories make me think "this is what Larry Niven would have written if someone had sent a crate of New Scientists back in time to him in the '60s".

# ¿ Mar 8, 2009 15:03

Entropic: Feb 21, 2007; patriarchy sucks

Turpitude posted:

I just finished Look to Windward and while it was the usual stellar Banks fare, once again there was no real satisfaction for me in the ending. The entire book was building towards a climax that was simply nullified by the Culture who had had a secret agent working for them the whole time. This book also lacked the action scenes that I fell in love with in Phlebas and Algebraist. Still a great read, but Banks has yet to deliver me an ending I've been satisfied with.

My favourite parts of Look to Windward have to be the stuff in the airspheres with the dirigible behemothaurs. I love that kind of study of utterly bizarre alien lifeforms and it really left me wanting more.

"Dirigible Behemothaur" is also really fun to say out loud.

# ¿ Mar 10, 2009 21:11

Entropic: Feb 21, 2007; patriarchy sucks

Hello Pity posted:

It might be in a minority with this but as far as I'm concerned all of Banks' books are comedies. Not as overtly so as something like the Diskworld novels or the Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy, but still at heart comedic in nature. I don't think they tend to get marketed as such though, especially the science fiction books.

I always thought Look to Windward was a wee bit Wodehouseian, what with all the social comedy of the two main characters avoiding each other for the whole book.

# ¿ Mar 20, 2009 16:36

Entropic: Feb 21, 2007; patriarchy sucks

HoldYourFire posted:

It's been a while since I read PoG, but they aren't really capitalist, are they? More like feudalist/caste system/meritocratic. Also, I wonder if I could get your interpretation of the ending? I kind of think

that he essentially falls in love with the savage beauty of the Azadian society, realises he's won the ultimate game and got back to the sterile Culture with a woman who he'll never "possess" in the way the Azadians do so he commits suicide. Anything to add?

Where on earth did you get the idea that he commits suicide? And he didn't fall in love with Azad the society at all, just Azad the game.

# ¿ Mar 20, 2009 23:07

Entropic: Feb 21, 2007; patriarchy sucks

Away Message posted:

Could be argued this happened years and years after everything else in the book though.

That's certainly how I took it. He's had "centuries later" epilogues in half the other Culture books.

# ¿ Mar 21, 2009 02:53

Entropic: Feb 21, 2007; patriarchy sucks

Danhenge posted:

Would you place Look to Windward in this category? There are obviously some wacky points but overall I think the tone is a little more serious than some of his other books.

Almost all of Banks' books seem to have their non-serious and even comedic moments, but an overall serious point to them. I mean the conversation about ship-names in Look To Windward isn't exactly, well, infused with gravitas now is it? Or the bit about "pylon country"? But moments like those are silly in a way that serves the story, they show you how Culture people think, and why they think their way of doing things is so great.

# ¿ Mar 22, 2009 03:05

Entropic: Feb 21, 2007; patriarchy sucks

Sadsack posted:

Do not, under any circumstances, try and read Canal Dreams. Banks was attempting to write a Graham Greene? John La Carre style thriller with depth. But it just starts out boring and eventually dissolves into ridiculousness. So far this is the only 'M'-less book I�ve tried, and it disappointed me beyond words.

However I cannot recommend The Algebraist, Player of Games and Use Of Weapons enough.

Yeah, I got halfway through Canal Dreams before giving up. His first three, The Wasp Factory, Walking On Glass and The Bridge are all highly recommended though. They all read like an author writing regular fiction when he secretly wanted to be an SF writer. Which was pretty much the case.

Hoping to make a good dent in Inversions today, it's the only Culture book I haven't finished yet.

# ¿ Mar 22, 2009 17:42

Entropic: Feb 21, 2007; patriarchy sucks

FelchTragedy posted:

Also I don't know if I've imagined it or not

but wasn't the drone amtiskaw whom Gurgeh didn't get along with actually his old drone friend in disguise. This meant that the culture had been playing him quite possibly for a long time in order to get him to fulfil a destiny set out for him and a goal for them.
If not
Please berate me if I'm wrong, but it's been such a long time.

The drone that tried to blackmail him and the drone that was sent on the mission with him were pretty obviously the same drone, but I don't think it was also anyone else.

# ¿ Mar 23, 2009 23:16

Entropic: Feb 21, 2007; patriarchy sucks

Just finished "Inversions" the other day, so I've now officially read all the Culture books. I think it would probably more enjoyable going in to it not knowing that it's a Culture book. Once you figure out that Doctor Vosill is a Culture agent (which is so obvious so early on I probably needn't have spoilered it), it kind of ruins any genuine suspense you might have about the character's predicament. How much danger can someone really be in in a medieval society when they've got a godly interstellar civilization backing them and probably have a deadly Drone lurking somewhere nearby to guard them?

In a lot of ways it felt like a tentative dry-run for "Matter".

# ¿ Apr 8, 2009 05:06

Entropic: Feb 21, 2007; patriarchy sucks

It should be an M-less next, since Matter was last. Haven't heard any hints as to what it's going to be about.

# ¿ Apr 15, 2009 14:22

Entropic: Feb 21, 2007; patriarchy sucks

Joshtafari posted:

I just finished Matter, and I liked it quite a bit. This was my first time reading Banks, and although the book was somewhat slowly paced, I appreciated all the world-building that went into it. It made the book approachable for someone who hadn't read any of the other Culture books.

The spoiler text in the quote above brings up something that I have an issue with with most post-singularity science fiction - the lack of tension. Everyone is practically invulnerable and can be ressurected or re-instanced or whatever, so what do we care happens to the characters? When I read Peter Hamilton's "The Dreaming Void", I was definitely having singularity fatigue, and was really having a hard time caring about what was happening. Somehow, though, Banks made me care about what happened to the Prince and his family, which surprised me a little.

The only Banks book where I really had that problem was Inversions. Once you figure out that Doctor Vosill is a special circumstances agent (which is obvious from the beginning if you noticed that it a says "A Culture Novel" on the cover) you immediately lose any sense of possible danger for her. In some of the other books, most notably Use of Weapons, the characters may be for-all-intents-and-purposes physically immortal but they can still be emotionally destroyed. In Inversions though, you don't ever really get inside the heads of the Culture characters so there isn't even that possibility.

# ¿ May 26, 2009 17:54

Entropic: Feb 21, 2007; patriarchy sucks

Hah, I just found my copy of Canal Dreams with a bookmark halfway through that I gave up on like 10 months ago. Is there anyone here who really enjoyed that book? It's only like 200 pages and I couldn't finish it. And I can be a fairly fast reader when I'm interested, I read about 200 pages of a Christopher Brookmyre book just this morning. (Who, based on the 1.5 books of his I've read so far, is another awesome Scottish author.) So far I'm more more a fan of Banks' very early output as far as the M-less books are concerned. One of these days I'll get around to reading The Crow Road though.

I think the only M. book I have left to read is Against A Dark Background, but my local library doesn't have it and in any case I've been trying to read something other than American/British SF lately. (And yet, halfway through an Italo Calvino I pick up a Brookmyre book...)

Also: Is it just me, or could you do a decent McSweeney's list-quiz type thing of "Culture Ship or Mountain Goats song"?

# ¿ Jun 7, 2009 00:09

Entropic: Feb 21, 2007; patriarchy sucks

Pompous Rhombus posted:

Maybe I'm a bit dense, but where does the title of Consider Phlebas come from? I just finished the book and aside from noting it was also the apparently out-of-nowhere title of the brief chapter where Horza died towards the end I'm a little puzzled.

I've never seen an edition that didn't have the Wasteland epigraph at the beginning of the book. (see above)

ShutteredIn posted:

Many people totally skip past introductions and epigraphs

Those people are weird.

Entropic fucked around with this message at 23:39 on Jun 12, 2009

# ¿ Jun 12, 2009 23:36

Entropic: Feb 21, 2007; patriarchy sucks

syphon posted:

Are all 'M' books Culture novels? All of the ones I've read so far are, but maybe I'm just selectively buying Culture books.

Most of them. (See the OP) 'Against a Dark Background', 'Feersum Endjinn' and 'The Algebraist' are not.

# ¿ Jun 21, 2009 14:40

Entropic: Feb 21, 2007; patriarchy sucks

syphon posted:

Use of Weapons. Didn't I read somewhere (maybe even this thread) that it's even Banks' favorite book? After that, I kinda liked Look to Windward or Matter.

He said that The Bridge is his favourite, and Use of Weapons is his favourite of the Culture books. Mind you, I think that quote is like 10 years old now.

I highly recommend either Use of Weapons or Look to Windward.

# ¿ Jul 3, 2009 23:17

Entropic: Feb 21, 2007; patriarchy sucks

Cuntpunch posted:

I really like the idea, but it felt tossed in and not explored to it's fullest. The early-industrial and court drama just bored me, I suppose.

Banks seems at his best with his big ideas that carry a sense of mystery. In Matter I was really entranced by some of the things thrown out there - Why were the Shellworlds built? Why did the Iln want them destroyed? Why do Xinthians occasionally take up residence? These sort of questions really hooked my attention but went mostly untouched.

Excession, in contrast, ended up more or less explaining itself, albeit abstractly.

It's hard to do "inscrutable higher intelligence" well. If the author isn't careful, it just ends up looking like a crutch to prop up a few neat ideas they had but couldn't think of any way of justifying. Which is probably the case, often enough.

I think the Sublimed definitely work, but mostly because none of the stories really revolve around them. They really are absent from the galactic affairs of the Culture universe, and it's hard to mess that up. And the shell-makers and the Iln are more detailed, but there's strong suggestions of what they're up to that actually seem to make some sort of sense, it's not just bafflingly mysterious.

An example of the "inscrutable higher intelligence" thing I really liked was in Greg Egan's last book Incandescence. It takes place in The Amalgam, a society even more advanced than The Culture who've basically colonized the entire galaxy, except for the core. That's the territory of The Aloof, whose existence is only known by the fact that any attempt to colonize the core is gently but systematically repelled by forces unknown.

# ¿ Jul 4, 2009 23:36

Entropic: Feb 21, 2007; patriarchy sucks

It's really a good thing that the Minds are so benevolent towards humans in The Culture, 'cause if they ever decided to go all SkyNet they could wipe everyone out in the time it takes you to blink.

# ¿ Jul 7, 2009 17:23

Entropic: Feb 21, 2007; patriarchy sucks

GrandpaPants posted:

I was thinking about picking up The Bridge, but it seems to have mostly disappeared from Amazon.

Did this book somehow become rare?

I couldn't find it at any book stores, had to get a library copy. That and Walking On Glass. Anything pre-Consider Phlebas seems to be out of print.

# ¿ Jul 28, 2009 04:43

Entropic: Feb 21, 2007; patriarchy sucks

Magnificent Quiver posted:

Just finished Player of Games and man, Banks really had to go out of his way to make the empire seem terrible. You've got the Culture on one had, which ironically annihilates everything that has anything to do with actual culture in the species it adopts, and on the other hand you have the Empire of Azad which appeals greatly to human nature and has its own culture, spirit, and dreams and in order to make it seem abominable the author had to throw in one or two scenes where torture and rape is televised. Honestly I hope in the subsequent books Banks continues to provide foils for the Culture, because rooting against them seems to be more entertaining.

I read some of the later Culture books first, and I'm glad I did, because the Azad are totally a strawman for the Culture to point smugly at. The best of the Culture books have non-Culture protagonists. My favourite is Kabe in Look to Windward, the super-chill Homomdan who's sympathetic to The Culture, but detached enough that he see some of the things they don't see about themselves.

# ¿ Jul 28, 2009 07:29

Entropic: Feb 21, 2007; patriarchy sucks

Zimadori Zinger posted:

I'm about halfway through The Wasp Factory and goddrat, Frank tricking little Paul into hitting the bomb and making it blow up . One of the most harrowing and disturbing things I've ever read. (I've not read American Psycho.)