chainchompz posted:

Just got my copy of The Culture The Drawings and haven't had a chance to even look into it. A bunch of Banks' own concept art and notes got compiled for it.

celadon posted:

I bought the 10-book collector set off amazon and I'm pretty sure the seller was a dropshipper who was unable to fulfill it, so they've been sending me a random dripfeed of various editions of the books for the last several weeks, which is pretty funny, got 7/10 books so far.

Also just reread Player of Games and really enjoyed it, just a fun read and a nice exploration of the premise "What if boardgames were the most important thing in the world?"

Of Surface Detail, Hydrogen Sonata, and Matter, what would be the best one?

celadon posted:

Of Surface Detail, Hydrogen Sonata, and Matter, what would be the best one?

sebmojo posted:

Matter is good for Banks doing Shakespeare, and also for the multiply inter nested ways the title describes what's going on in the book.

Barry Foster posted:

IMO Matter is actually Banks doing Don Quixote, but I agree

Matter is my fave of them, and it makes to go Matter, Surface Detail, and Hydrogen Sonata should unequivocally be the last one

JOHN SKELETON posted:

There's not going to be a consensus at all, but for me it's absolutely Matter. It's a beautiful story, and with I would say the best characters in the entire Culture series. The main characters are just so drat charming, whereas in other Banks books like Hydrogen Sonata the main characters are a bit like an action movie protagonist that's there as a vehicle for the story. I really like the vibe and themes of the book too. There's a tinge of sadness to all the grand things civilisation has created, but if you don't think about what it matters, then you can lose yourself in the pursuit of rising up the ladder.

This isn't spoilery except on a plot structure basis, but be prepared that the end of the book happens very suddenly. Because of that I only really started loving the book on my first reread.

celadon posted:

Woo that loving rocked

JOHN SKELETON posted:

I was googling Culture stuff and I came across State of the Art fully voice acted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRl9D_agLbU

I got a kick out of it, hopefully someone else does too.

Gravitas Shortfall posted:

His Divine Shadow posted:

One thing I reacted to in Matter was all the royals ended up dead and only the butler made it through.

Suran37 posted:

Picked the series up a little over a year ago and so far I've read up through Inversions. Player of Games is definitely the stand out, but Use of Weapons was also quite good. The rest are still good imo but they didn't quite stand up to those two.

Struggling to decide if I want to continue or switch to some fantasy now as Inversions was really scratching that itch... maybe I missed something elsewhere but is the two words in the epilogue of Inversions really the only link to the Culture?

"Iain M Banks, Inversions posted:

‘I think it might be time for a story,’ Perrund said, and pulled the boy back to a sitting position. ‘DeWar?’
DeWar sat and thought for a moment. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s not much of a story, but it is a story of sorts.’

‘Then tell it.’

‘It is suitable for the boy?’ Huesse asked.

‘I shall make it so.’ DeWar sat forward and shifted his sword and dagger. ‘Once upon a time there was a magical land where every man was a king, every woman a queen, each boy a prince and all girls princesses. In this land there were no hungry people and no crippled people.’

‘Were there any poor people?’ asked Lattens.

‘That depends what you mean. In a way no, because they could all have any amount of riches they wanted, but in a way yes, for there were people who chose to have nothing. Their hearts’ desire was to be free from owning anything, and they usually preferred to stay in the desert or in the mountains or the forests, living in caves or trees or just wandering around. Some lived in the great cities, where they too just roved about. But wherever they chose to wander, the decision was always theirs.’

‘Were they holy people?’ Lattens asked.

‘Well, in a way, maybe.’

‘Were they all handsome and beautiful, too?’ Huesse asked.

‘Again, that depends what you mean by beautiful,’ DeWar said apologetically. Perrund sighed with exasperation. ‘Some people see a sort of beauty in ugliness,’ DeWar said. ‘And if everybody is beautiful there is something singular in being ugly, or just plain. But, generally, yes, everybody was as beautiful as they wanted to be.’

‘So many ifs and buts,’ Perrund said. ‘This sounds a very equivocal land.’

‘In a way,’ DeWar smiled. Perrund hit him with a cushion. ‘Sometimes,’ DeWar continued, ‘as people in the land brought more of it under cultivation—’

‘What was the name of the land?’ Lattens interrupted.

‘Oh . . . Lavishia, of course. Anyway, sometimes the citizens of Lavishia would discover whole groups of people who lived a bit like the wanderers, that is, like the poor or holy people in their own land, but who did not have the choice of living like that. Such people lived like that because they had to. These were people who hadn’t had the advantages in life the people of Lavishia were used to. In fact, dealing with such people soon became the biggest problem the people of Lavishia had.’

‘What? They had no war, famine, pestilence, taxes?’ Perrund asked.

‘None. And no real likelihood of the last three.’

‘I feel my credulity being stretched,’ Perrund muttered.

‘So in Lavishia everybody was happy?’ Huesse asked.

‘As happy as they could be,’ DeWar said. ‘People still managed to make their own unhappinesses, as people always do.’

Perrund nodded. ‘Now it begins to sound plausible.’