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The Moon Monster posted:I'm maybe a third of the way through The Algebraist and I'm having a hard time maintaining interest because half the book seems to be about what a party animal the main character used to be. I've never read any of his books before, are they all like this? I think The Algebraist is a really bad place to start, even though it's where I started - it's long, meandering, and self-indulgent, rather than long, meandering, and powerful, like some of his other work. But also, bear in mind that Banks is deeply interested in characterization, often via oblique and unusual angles, and whenever there's a lengthy backstory thread in a novel it's probably going to end paying off in a startling and often horrible tragedy. Push through, and please don't give up on Banks because that one's a tad mediocre. There are science fiction authors as good, but none better.
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Aug 5, 2013 01:20
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The Moon Monster posted:I'm maybe a third of the way through The Algebraist and I'm having a hard time maintaining interest because half the book seems to be about what a party animal the main character used to be. I've never read any of his books before, are they all like this? Not necessarily. Books like The Player of Games and Use of Weapons are tight, well structured, snappy books. All I can say with regard to The Algebraist is that the best bits are still to come, so you should stick with it. It's not very representative of the rest of his work, but it's got some great moments.
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Aug 5, 2013 01:37
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The Algebraist is structured so that the story unspools in a very slow, deliberate, and oblique fashion, possibly to mirror the existence of the weird Dweller dudes. It also suffers from not actually being a Culture novel, and all the awesome that attends such stories. But what I will say, is that the Big Bad Guy arc pays off in the most wonderful and satisfying way.
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Aug 5, 2013 11:28
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I just finished up Player of games and I really enjoyed it. I think I'm going to power though the Culture series now and I would like leave the best for last. So what the goon opinion on which is the best culture book?
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Aug 5, 2013 13:12
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General Battuta posted:I think The Algebraist is a really bad place to start, even though it's where I started - it's long, meandering, and self-indulgent, rather than long, meandering, and powerful, like some of his other work. But also, bear in mind that Banks is deeply interested in characterization, often via oblique and unusual angles, and whenever there's a lengthy backstory thread in a novel it's probably going to end paying off in a startling and often horrible tragedy. Yeah, the Algebraist is not really a good place to start. I read it when it came out and was rather disappointed, since I've read a lot of good stuff about Banks. Took me until this year until I started reading Banks again and now I've read most of his Culture work.
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Aug 5, 2013 13:22
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BoneMonkey posted:I just finished up Player of games and I really enjoyed it. I think I'm going to power though the Culture series now and I would like leave the best for last. Quite probably Look to Windward, although I really, really enjoy Surface Detail. They're all brilliant, though, and I honestly just recommend reading them in publishing date order.
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Aug 5, 2013 13:31
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Inversions, for sure, probably followed by The Hydrogen Sonata. I have a soft spot for Surface Detail, because it tackles such a huge concept in such an entertaining way, and because it's simultaneously a more damning criticism of the Culture and a better example of why the universe needs them than any other book. Unfortunately the trade-off is some very shallow and flimsily-written major characters. Kind of reminds me of The Algebraist, except in The Algebraist it seemed more self-aware. "Luceferous" 
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Aug 5, 2013 13:36
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Just read Walking on Glass over the weekend. I did not understand this book. Not one bit. The individual stories were fairly interesting, but they felt just like small fragments. The whole Castle Doors bit felt very Culture-y and was enjoyably absurd, but it never really goes anywhere. It's semi-linked to Grout's story (his delusion is what is actually happening to them, the couple in the hospital playing the same games) but I can't figure out why. Other than the general idea of paranoia and Cartesian Demon level of manipulation I don't see why the stories are put alongside each other, or what the point of the weird self-referential ending was. Graham's story also does what a lot of novels drive me mad doing, focusing on tiny minutiae and descriptions of disconnected things as if it's important, as if it gives you some special knowledge about the human condition, but it all feels so pointless.
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Aug 5, 2013 15:18
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Those tiny minutiae and descriptions of disconnected things probably are important. When a novel does this, it's talking to you in symbols and subtext. The surface plot of a novel - the stuff every reader gets - is logical and declarative, this happened and then this and then this, but the subtext is supposed to be associative, driven by the connections the reader makes in the back of her head. I haven't read Walking on Glass so I can't speak to the subtext in that book, but as loving irritating as it is to hear other people drone on about the Deep Meanings About Scottish National Experience in a text or whatnot, I hope all that minutiae will eventually feel rewarding and meaningful. I know that it's really enhanced my appreciation of Banks' work.
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Aug 5, 2013 15:25
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General Battuta posted:Those tiny minutiae and descriptions of disconnected things probably are important. When a novel does this, it's talking to you in symbols and subtext. The surface plot of a novel - the stuff every reader gets - is logical and declarative, this happened and then this and then this, but the subtext is supposed to be associative, driven by the connections the reader makes in the back of her head. Oh definitely. I know I tend very much towards the Inception style "spell out a big intricate puzzle for me" method of reading. I remember getting irritated when The Handmaid's Tale kept stopping to discuss the furniture in intricate detail, until it clicked and I could see how all the symbolism fits together.
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Aug 5, 2013 15:40
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I'm surprised at the reactions to The Algebraist; I agree that it takes its time getting started but I found that the build-up paid off pretty well -- I enjoyed the fight between the Starvelings and the Dwellers; the resolution of Taince's quest for vengeance, and the final reveal about the Dweller List and Fassin's efforts to get that information out. Above all, it was just an incredibly rich setting, with weirdness upon weirdness around every corner, and gave me the sense of a fully-inhabited galaxy swarming with intelligences of every possible manner. I guess I'll have to go read it again (it's been acouple of years now), but on a first reading it kept my attention and then some all the way through, and when I got to the end I found myself wishing that it went on for quite a bit longer.
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Aug 5, 2013 17:25
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I quite liked the Algebraist, and Matter as well. Haven't read surface detail and the hydrogen sonata I actually put down and didn't finish.
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Aug 6, 2013 19:29
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Surface Detail is really good and kept me invested in the characters pretty well. I'm currently rereading Matter, which I read a couple of years ago, and it's really good even though the characters are a bit archetypical.
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Aug 6, 2013 19:39
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I liked The Algebraist also, mostly because the Dwellers are awesome.
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Aug 6, 2013 19:55
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BoneMonkey posted:I just finished up Player of games and I really enjoyed it. I think I'm going to power though the Culture series now and I would like leave the best for last. I like Look to Windward best, though it's quite a quiet, contemplative book. I think most goons generally tend towards Use of Weapons in this category, though. That said, neither are really a finishing book. There's no specific order to Culture books, but generally you should read Excession before Windward or Matter and Weapons before Surface Detail, and as a rule it just kind of feels best if you don't shift things too far from publication position. Hydrogen Sonata isn't the best of the Culture books, in my opinion, but in many ways it forms a fairly suitable closure. Matter is my favourite of the late books, but only on the second reading. This post is a mess. MikeJF fucked around with this message at 23:27 on Aug 6, 2013 |
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Aug 6, 2013 23:21
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I was very satisfied with Hydrogen Sonataas a finisher, and I probably would safe it for last. It has a distinct atmosphere that really suits reading the last book of the series and answers quite a bit of the questions posed by the earlier books but never fully answered while still leaving much of it open to your own interpretation. Like MikeJF said, it might not be the best of them, but I do feel it's most suitable to keep last.
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Aug 7, 2013 13:29
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Interested about the mixed reception toward Against a Dark Background, it's probably my favorite. While certainly gloomy and sad, it has a marvelous setting and some great scenes, and the concept of a civilization that has lost so much of its technological progress due to war is an interesting possible future for our own beleaguered planet.
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Aug 7, 2013 16:07
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Shelvocke posted:Interested about the mixed reception toward Against a Dark Background, it's probably my favorite. While certainly gloomy and sad, it has a marvelous setting and some great scenes, and the concept of a civilization that has lost so much of its technological progress due to war is an interesting possible future for our own beleaguered planet. I thought the pacing was really uneven, and the characters pretty threadbare and archetypal. It really felt like a first draft - especially the ending. I'm all for unconventional endings, but that was just flat and unsatisfying. Also, speaking personally, 'big heist' fiction invariably leaves me cold, for some reason. And while I'm not opposed to gloomy and sad fiction, I prefer my Banks to be generally humourous and optimistic, albeit with a touch of melancholy - whereas AaDB was almost entirely unleavened with levity (Lazy Gun notwithstanding).
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Aug 7, 2013 17:10
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Against a Dark Background is the only M book I've read (actually one of the only science fiction books I've read full stop). I picked it up in the school library when I was maybe 16 and really enjoyed it. I re-read it a few years back too when I discovered it at my Mum & Dad's house (guess I'd stolen it, sheesh). I seem to remember being surprised at how funny it was, but that's maybe because it didn't really fit with what I expected a scifi book to be and that I didn't really have anything to compare it to beyond the fairly humourless space marines from my Warhammer 40k phase. My enjoyment of AaDB has actually held me back from reading any of the Culture books in a completely ignorant way because of some stupid feeling that they won't live up to the rose-tinted, stand-alone world I read about as a teenager. I can barely even remember the plot, but the dead grandfather on the motorbike, some kinda glass-bottom swimming pool and, of course, the Lazy Guns have really stuck with me over the years as awesome images / ideas. Hearing that it's one of his weaker books has definitely motivated me to give Banks' scifi a proper go. Actually, on that note, as a massive fan of the non-M books, I was surprised to find that the discussion in the thread is mostly about his science fiction stuff. Maybe it's the nature of scifi fans to post more or, more likely, I had wrongly put them into some 'side project' box in my head. Again, ignorant.
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Aug 7, 2013 18:14
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Just finished The Hydrogen Sonata. It didn't really amaze me by itself but I thought it did a pretty good job as a closing piece and it was still very entertaining. I can't believe he's really gone. Even though I just started reading the Culture series a few months ago I feel like I've lost a friend. 
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Aug 7, 2013 18:15
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Tenterhooks posted:My enjoyment of AaDB has actually held me back from reading any of the Culture books in a completely ignorant way because of some stupid feeling that they won't live up to the rose-tinted, stand-alone world I read about as a teenager. I can barely even remember the plot, but the dead grandfather on the motorbike, some kinda glass-bottom swimming pool and, of course, the Lazy Guns have really stuck with me over the years as awesome images / ideas. Hearing that it's one of his weaker books has definitely motivated me to give Banks' scifi a proper go. You're should definitely read the Culture books, because they've got all the kinda things you loved in AaDB in spades, but better. Part of the reason I don't much rate AaDB compared to the rest is that it's kind of like an Iain M. Banks book with the 'flu. Also, Iain said multiple times that a lot of people assumed his sci-fi was just a way for him to pay the bills - silly genre fiction for nerds - so he could write 'proper' fiction. He always maintained it was pretty categorically the other way round. Not to say he didn't rate his IB books, but his heart mainly lay with the sci-fi.
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Aug 7, 2013 18:37
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MikeJF posted:I like Look to Windward best, though it's quite a quiet, contemplative book. I think most goons generally tend towards Use of Weapons in this category, though. That said, neither are really a finishing book. There's no specific order to Culture books, but generally you should read Excession before Windward or Matter and Weapons before Surface Detail, and as a rule it just kind of feels best if you don't shift things too far from publication position. Look to windward is such a good book. Just finished it last week, but you get a better feel for the Culture compared to the other books. Consider Phlebas and Use of Weapons are more traditional scifi, where the Culture is more a part of the background. Also, the dialogue where they use ship names as insults is probably the funniest part I've read by Banks. Speaking of Look to Windward, I always felt that the Culture was innocent of provoking the civil war, but took the blame just to end the war and push them in the right direction . Apparently I should also read The Wasteland by TS Eliot.
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Aug 7, 2013 20:19
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Cardiac posted:Apparently I should also read The Wasteland by TS Eliot. Google it, it's not that long a read.
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Aug 7, 2013 23:08
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Shelvocke posted:Interested about the mixed reception toward Against a Dark Background, it's probably my favorite. While certainly gloomy and sad, it has a marvelous setting and some great scenes, and the concept of a civilization that has lost so much of its technological progress due to war is an interesting possible future for our own beleaguered planet. It reads like an awesome homebrew pen and paper RPG campaign, to be honest. He even handwaves in some reason why the
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Aug 8, 2013 02:05
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ZekeNY posted:I'm surprised at the reactions to The Algebraist; I agree that it takes its time getting started but I found that the build-up paid off pretty well -- I enjoyed the fight between the Starvelings and the Dwellers; the resolution of Taince's quest for vengeance, and the final reveal about the Dweller List and Fassin's efforts to get that information out. Above all, it was just an incredibly rich setting, with weirdness upon weirdness around every corner, and gave me the sense of a fully-inhabited galaxy swarming with intelligences of every possible manner. I guess I'll have to go read it again (it's been acouple of years now), but on a first reading it kept my attention and then some all the way through, and when I got to the end I found myself wishing that it went on for quite a bit longer. I totally agree; algebraist seemed ripe for the kind of treatment the culture received.
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Aug 8, 2013 10:50
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I suppose I liked the book conceptually more than anything. It's not too hard to imagine it as as Earth in 20,000 years time, where humans have be unable to set aside differences long enough to form the Culture, and instead are stuck in a loop of self-destruction, religious grievance and fear of AI.
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Aug 8, 2013 10:57
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Taeke posted:Google it, it's not that long a read. This. I'm not saying that it will suddenly make you see the Culture novels in a while new light, but it's relatively short and pretty beautiful.
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Aug 8, 2013 13:26
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 For anyone interested, Surface Detail is a kindle daily deal today and it's only 2 dollars. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/ref=pe_170810_31764420_pe_row1_b3/?ASIN=B0046A9NLC
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Aug 9, 2013 14:29
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Circle Nine posted:
I already have it, but god drat, the Daily Deal is such a smart idea. I've bought like 80 books in the last year alone from there. It's like the Steam Sales of e-books.
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Aug 9, 2013 17:58
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So, I've been wondering, is there a reason Excession isn't available here in the US? Is it just the usual publisher disputes or something else?
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Aug 13, 2013 22:34
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Huh? Excession is out in the US -- Amazon has it in hardcover and softcover. Or did you mean on ebook?
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Aug 13, 2013 22:51
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I finished The Player of Games today. It was good, but the evil of the empire felt needlessly exaggerated and so rather crudely put. I think something a little closer to home might have been more effective.
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Aug 14, 2013 02:12
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Peel posted:I finished The Player of Games today. I used to think this too, and I think it's quite correct from a purely dramatic standpoint. But it reminds me of some of the criticism that the (quite flawed, don't get me wrong) film Elysium has drawn - that its villains were arbitrarily villainous, that their cruelty seemed to have no reason. But Elysium's villains are...really not very much different from a lot of things happening today. And so I think it is with the villains in Player of Games - they're supposed to be us, viewed from a great distance, full of the sort of unbelievably horrible things that you can't write in fiction because people shrug them off as too evil to be believed. Open up our history and you'll find some atrocities so exaggerated and crude they're barely believable. I don't think Banks went overboard in his depiction of Azad any more. He was trying to show us how we'd look to the Culture.
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Aug 14, 2013 04:31
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Yeah, I don't actually think the depiction of Azad society was over the top. Aside from the snuff porn channels for the upper class basically everything it described was just part and parcel of a society based on capitalist exploitation, with Gurgeh reacting with horror to things we tend to take in our stride (like homelessness). The gender relations stuff was also clearly there as a sort of exaggerated mirror of our own gender politics.
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Aug 14, 2013 08:58
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The snuff channels and the human instruments were what I had in mind. Everything else I could take in stride as historical, current or a mirror. That's a good point about trying to create a distance between us good liberals and Azad as the Culture (particularly a parochial member like Gurgeh) might experience between themselves and us, though. e: The use of apices to separate out any 'subordinate' male social roles and create a pure over-gender was interesting, I thought. And perhaps intended as an aid to the reader who would be presumed to be male at that point in SF. Peel fucked around with this message at 10:22 on Aug 14, 2013 |
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Aug 14, 2013 10:14
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One thing I always wondered about The Player of Games was whether Shohobohaum Za, the Culture ambassador was actually Zakalwe. Their names are superficially similar, and it's mentioned that Za doesn't have drug glands. By the end of the book, Za is leading a rebellion against the remnants of the Azadian bureaucracy, something only an experienced soldier and commander could do. It's also revealed that he was never actually in the Culture and that he was just an outside contractor. True, he doesn't act much like Zakalwe, but as we know, Zakalwe is very good at playing a role.
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Aug 14, 2013 22:17
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Daktar posted:One thing I always wondered about The Player of Games was whether Shohobohaum Za, the Culture ambassador was actually Zakalwe. Their names are superficially similar, and it's mentioned that Za doesn't have drug glands. By the end of the book, Za is leading a rebellion against the remnants of the Azadian bureaucracy, something only an experienced soldier and commander could do. It's also revealed that he was never actually in the Culture and that he was just an outside contractor. True, he doesn't act much like Zakalwe, but as we know, Zakalwe is very good at playing a role. Oh god drat, that is nuts. It totally makes sense too (at least to me).
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Aug 15, 2013 02:09
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Peel posted:I finished The Player of Games today. I read The Player of Games after reading a few of the other Culture books first, so I knew about The Culture and what its deal was already, so when I read TPOG it seemed really needlessly trying to hard to make The Culture be unambiguously the Good Guys. I much prefer the more morally complicated stories like Look to Windward or Use of Weapons.
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Aug 15, 2013 02:28
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Entropic posted:I read The Player of Games after reading a few of the other Culture books first, so I knew about The Culture and what its deal was already, so when I read TPOG it seemed really needlessly trying to hard to make The Culture be unambiguously the Good Guys. I much prefer the more morally complicated stories like Look to Windward or Use of Weapons. We've had this conversation in the thread before, but I don't see how POG presents the Culture as good guys. They completely manipulate and tear down Gurgeh, using him as an agent to essentially genocide the Azad. They may not be as bad as the Azad, but they're not good guys.
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Aug 15, 2013 03:13
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Seldom Posts posted:We've had this conversation in the thread before, but I don't see how POG presents the Culture as good guys. They completely manipulate and tear down Gurgeh, using him as an agent to essentially genocide the Azad. They may not be as bad as the Azad, but they're not good guys. I just think the book goes out of its way to show that the Azad are so comically bad that it justifies whatever Contact and SC do.
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Aug 15, 2013 03:17
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