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Well, its an independent project announced 4 years ago with no further news, as far as I can tell. So probably dead? All I can find is that they were in the script writing phase, so I would guess things stalled after that.
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Aug 30, 2013 20:14
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lenoon posted:"Piece" is a well written bit in that. I wish there was another anthology of short stories (though that sounds like something that might get published in the next few years, which is sad) I like Piece a lot, as well as the final short. The titular novella is also excellent and is possibly my favourite Culture thing.
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Aug 30, 2013 21:52
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John Charity Spring posted:The titular novella is also excellent and is possibly my favourite Culture thing. Plus the Arbitrary is probably my favourite Culture ship.
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Aug 31, 2013 00:56
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Lasting Damage posted:Well, its an independent project announced 4 years ago with no further news, as far as I can tell. So probably dead? All I can find is that they were in the script writing phase, so I would guess things stalled after that. Douglas Adams described the process of making movies as "cooking a steak by having a procession of people come into the room and breathing on it."
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Aug 31, 2013 01:28
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There is an a audio play of The State of the Art by the BBC, for those of you who missed it. I think it was posted in this thread a while ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRl9D_agLbU
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Aug 31, 2013 12:35
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Posting about posting but the new UK politics thread has a very good title.
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Aug 31, 2013 12:43
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So I slogged through Excession and really felt let down by it. A quick review:quote:It's rare that I have to give a one-star rating to a book I didn't actually hate, but Banks is a paradoxical writer. The writing is always good and the characters - even when they're sentient ships built on a massive scale - tend to be compelling. "Excession" suffers from a number of fatal flaws, however, and I can't say I would recommend this book even to a fan of Banks' sci fi stuff (unless you really want to get a snapshot into how the Mind ships work). The plot is disjointed, there are too many ship characters, and so half the time you don't really know what's going on. The conflicts that are created also don't evoke enough tension, so the book plods along without a sense of urgency. You always know that the Affront and going to be handled tidily by the Culture, for example. As for the Excession, honestly half the time what's going on doesn't make any sense. And the reveal about the two main characters, their love affair, sex changes, attempted murder, etc...it's all needlessly complicated and not compelling. And the end was a big limp noodle. Nothing really happens! After all that you get a quick epilogue that points out the Excession decides the Culture is not ready for the advanced societies it represents. So is it worth continuing on to Inversions? I know a number of posters here have said Excession is the worst of the Culture books, so...
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Aug 31, 2013 14:11
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Argali posted:So I slogged through Excession and really felt let down by it. A quick review: Inversions never outright mentions the Culture, it only obliquely references it a few times. Inversions can be summed up as a medieval fantasy story masquerading as science fiction. I personally didn't really like it, but it wasn't bad.
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Aug 31, 2013 16:45
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Argali posted:So I slogged through Excession and really felt let down by it. A quick review: If you find Excession confusing you may be retarded.
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Aug 31, 2013 18:02
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WeAreTheRomans posted:If you find Excession confusing you may be retarded. That seems like a mildly ridiculous thing to say given that only a few pages ago several fans of the book were talking about how hard it is to track the alliances and interests of the Interesting Times Gang.
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Aug 31, 2013 19:33
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I thought that was the result of a badly formatted ebook?
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Aug 31, 2013 20:05
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Those On My Left posted:That seems like a mildly ridiculous thing to say given that only a few pages ago several fans of the book were talking about how hard it is to track the alliances and interests of the Interesting Times Gang. I admit I couldn't work out if The Sleeper Service was part of the conspiracy, was a SC plant that had discovered the conspiracy, or that the whole Gang was in on the plot and only the Grey Area and that other MSV were caught in the act.
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Aug 31, 2013 20:26
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Taeke posted:There is an a audio play of The State of the Art by the BBC, for those of you who missed it. I think it was posted in this thread a while ago: Thanks for linking this! Not quite as great as the book but a good listen all the same.
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Sep 1, 2013 00:18
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John Charity Spring posted:Thanks for linking this! Not quite as great as the book but a good listen all the same. The voice of The Arbitrary just doesn't match up to what was in my head. That's a big factor, to me. EDIT - It sounds too computer-y. And achingly posh. In my head, the Minds are far more casual. Barry Foster fucked around with this message at 01:49 on Sep 1, 2013 |
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Sep 1, 2013 01:45
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Shelvocke posted:I admit I couldn't work out if The Sleeper Service was part of the conspiracy, was a SC plant that had discovered the conspiracy, or that the whole Gang was in on the plot and only the Grey Area and that other MSV were caught in the act. The Sleeper Service was part of the conspiracy, but didn't know what the plan was. It even admits as much to Dajeil, saying its not really sure what it will be required to do. It was more of a pawn of the others. As for the Interesting Times Gang, the whole group was most definitely not in on it. The eccentric Shoot Them Later, the LSV Serious Callers Only, and the GSV The Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival were all plainly in the dark about the whole thing. A number of the ITG appear to be complicit in the conspiracy, but the two principle players were the GCV Steely Glint and the MSV Not Invented Here. Both got busted. The Grey Area was only a pawn in the conspirator's plot. Its only role to play was to ferry Byr Genar-Hofoen from Tier habitat to the Sleeper, and to lend credence to the whole song and dance about stealing that woman's mindstate. Something that I didn't really grasp the first time I read Excession was that most of it is not being presented in a synchronous fashion until the end. There's some narrative fuckery going on so its not immediately obvious that some events are happening in the past relative to others. It doesn't help this is one of Bank's stories that is rambling until it suddenly accelerates toward an anticlimax. So its pretty complicated, but I have to admit that's kind of why I like it. It was fun to tease things apart, and if you pay attention you'll notice Banks put quite a bit of work into making sure all the events have their place chronologically. He even went through the effort of making an internally consistent dating system for those Mind conversations, to spell out how things are going down. I can understand why people don't like it though, it definitely has flaws.
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Sep 1, 2013 03:24
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Issues keeping track of who's who in Excession aside, was anyone else more interested in Genar-Hofoen's fake assignment than they were in the real reason for his involvement?
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Sep 1, 2013 05:09
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Well, it seemed to be A Thing in Excession that the cover stories and speculations were a lot more interesting than the events that actually took place, with the possible exception of the big nearly apocalyptic flareup between the Sleeper Service and the Excession.
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Sep 1, 2013 07:16
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Barry Foster posted:The voice of The Arbitrary just doesn't match up to what was in my head. That's a big factor, to me. I did think that myself, with regards to the Arbitrary, but when it comes to other Minds and drones... my internal reader cast them as posh without fail. In Consider Phlebas and The Player of Games, specifically. After that it's only certain minds (like the self-appointed chair of the committee in Excession) that I read as posh.
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Sep 1, 2013 12:38
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Toast Museum posted:Issues keeping track of who's who in Excession aside, was anyone else more interested in Genar-Hofoen's fake assignment than they were in the real reason for his involvement? Yes. It was annoying that this wasn't delved into a little deeper.
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Sep 1, 2013 12:45
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Lasting Damage posted:
I agree that this is exactly what Banks was doing - I think with the precedent of Use of Weapons behind him, he was style in a mode of loving around with narrative order just to do it. Only here it didn't work at all. In my opinion it's needlessly complicated and not fun to parse out, because what does it matter who is part of the conspiracy or not when ultimately the conspiracy didn't matter at all? Not only that, but as the book blunders to a close you begin to understand that the conspiracy doesn't matter, and frankly that makes the whole thing totally uninteresting. I had a pretty good idea of who was doing what, it just didn't matter, because the book ends with a whole series of anticlimaxes that are lazy.
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Sep 1, 2013 12:51
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Honestly, my favorite part of the book was the Killing Time's war philosophy before it went to attack the fleet from Pittance.Probably due to either omg-awesome-space-lasers or me outsourcing my manliness into a martial fictional character, like people do with Jason Statham.
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Sep 1, 2013 20:00
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Argali posted:The plot is disjointed, there are too many ship characters, and so half the time you don't really know what's going on. Maybe, for the first two points of yours I've listed, Banks was trying to create the same confusion in the reader as the Culture characters are meant to feel? The whole book follows the Culture experiencing an Outside Context Problem, after all. For the third, the Affront don't get handled tidily at all. The conspiracy within the secret club is to incite the Affront into initiating a war so the Culture can give them the slipper until they apologise and behave. This gets uncovered and the Affront get to carry on playing squash with Quails, and presumably all their other vile passtimes too. Try Use of Weapons or Player of Games next?
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Sep 1, 2013 23:12
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The second most disturbing thing in the Culture books - Use of Weapons and Excession spoilers in here - after the chair, might well be Genar-Hofoen becoming a happy member of the Affront. No matter how entertaining they are to read about, the things the Affront did to its entire female sex are abhorrent on an almost unimaginable level, and Genar-Hofoen must have gone off the deep end to want to be part of that. e: maybe he's gonna try to change things from within or something, I dunno 
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Sep 2, 2013 02:48
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In Feersum Endjinn, are the sounds the skinless head makes as it attacks Bascule and Asura ('gibibibibigididi' etc.) just nonsense, or do they mean something? I wondered if they were actual letters, i.e. GBBBGDD but even then I don't get what they're standing for.
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Sep 2, 2013 04:32
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I always read it as a childlike phonetic description of the sound it makes, like all of his writing basically is.
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Sep 2, 2013 13:41
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Going through my RSS feeds I came across this: Cover art for the Hydrogen Sonata by artist manchu
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Sep 3, 2013 17:03
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I am finally getting around to reading Use of Weapons, and it really is very good indeed. The interactions between Zakalwe, Sma, and Amtiskaw are great.
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Sep 4, 2013 00:25
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John Magnum posted:I am finally getting around to reading Use of Weapons, and it really is very good indeed. The interactions between Zakalwe, Sma, and Amtiskaw are great. "I've got you a present." Possible the funniest moment in any of the books.
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Sep 4, 2013 23:36
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ZekeNY posted:Crow Road it is, then. As bummed out as I still am that he's dead, at least I've got this group of novels left to discover. I got into Iain M. Banks through Bungie and Halo back in the early 2000s. After reading Consider Phlebas I devoured the rest of Banks' scifi (everything up to Look to Windward) but never ventured into his non-scifi work. I still get nostalgic just skimming through any of those old books. I picked up The Algebraist when it came out in '04 but haven't kept track since then. I guess I have some reading to do.
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Sep 5, 2013 09:32
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The novella "The State of the Art" is my favourite thing by Banks I've read yet (granted I've only read The Player of Games and Use of Weapons and the other stuff in The State of the Art). I especially love Sma's descriptions of Berlin, and Li's speech about Earth capitalism, both of which I emailed to my boyfriend (which he'd better read  ... I've yet to get him to actually enjoy science fiction and I think Banks might be what breaks him). I adore how Banks can go from poignant to silly in the span of a few paragraphs. Li's speech about the evils of capitalism was so good, then he starts talking about destroying Earth with a mini-blackhole as he waves a lightsaber around, and everyone responds by carrying him to another deck of the ship and throwing him in the pool. This is just so drat good. What Culture book should I read next? Hedrigall fucked around with this message at 14:49 on Sep 6, 2013 |
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Sep 6, 2013 14:33
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Matter and Surface detail would be my recommendations. They're both a touch... under-edited, but well worth the read.
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Sep 6, 2013 14:41
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If you liked the contemplative tones of State of the Art, absolutely definitely totally Look to Windward.
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Sep 6, 2013 14:43
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Skeletron posted:I was skimming backwards through this thread and just made the biggest loving double take you've ever seen when I hit this post. I didn't even know he was sick. God drat it. That's awful. Oh man, am I ever sorry to be the bearer of that particular piece of bad news. I know that my posting it didn't change the fact of it in any way, but I still feel his loss all over again. But at least I'm reading the Crow Road, and it's kicking my mind's rear end in the best possible way. The books, and the occasional dram of The Macallan, will see me through.
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Sep 6, 2013 14:47
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Hedrigall posted:This is just so drat good. What Culture book should I read next? They're all great, and the order of reading doesn't really matter all that much. My one recommendation is that you leave Surface Detail and The Hydrogen Sonata until last. The latter because it makes a good closer to the series (  ) and the former because...well, I don't know, but it feels like a different (chronologically later, more advanced) Culture than in the other books.
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Sep 6, 2013 15:55
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It almost has to be, because (Surface Detail and tangential Use of Weapons spoilers) there's a digital copy of Zakalwe participating in the war so old that even Minds refer to him as a "fossil" and who doesn't even remember who he used to think he was.
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Sep 6, 2013 15:57
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If I'm not mistaken Banks had said - and the texts make it fairly clear as well - that all the Culture books are in chronological order. So while the exact frame of time between stories may - and does - vary, each book does in fact take place after the one preceding. Barring, I suppose, possibly some of the out-of-order parts of Use of Weapons.
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Sep 6, 2013 15:58
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RoboChrist 9000 posted:If I'm not mistaken Banks had said - and the texts make it fairly clear as well - that all the Culture books are in chronological order. So while the exact frame of time between stories may - and does - vary, each book does in fact take place after the one preceding. Wikipedia actually has dates for every book: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_series Surface Detail post-dates everything else, including The Hydrogen Sonata.
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Sep 6, 2013 16:00
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Wikipedia actually has dates for every book: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_series Wow, and by some distance too. And apparently both Excession and Matter predate Use of Weapons. That's surprising.
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Sep 6, 2013 16:06
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General Battuta posted:The second most disturbing thing in the Culture books - Use of Weapons and Excession spoilers in here - after the chair, might well be Genar-Hofoen becoming a happy member of the Affront. No matter how entertaining they are to read about, the things the Affront did to its entire female sex are abhorrent on an almost unimaginable level, and Genar-Hofoen must have gone off the deep end to want to be part of that. Pretty much nothing turns me against one of Banks' characters faster than that. When people start moralising about how life has no soul without suffering and injustice, from the comfort of their GSV or the ruling class of some horrible tyranny. Even Horza, who suffers plenty, is still a long shot from some civilian refugee on the receiving end of an Idiran occupation. Of course Banks handles it with self awareness, which is what makes it so good. Rather than giving a heartwarming conclusion that the status quo of
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Sep 7, 2013 01:32
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General Battuta posted:The second most disturbing thing in the Culture books - Use of Weapons and Excession spoilers in here - after the chair, might well be Genar-Hofoen becoming a happy member of the Affront. No matter how entertaining they are to read about, the things the Affront did to its entire female sex are abhorrent on an almost unimaginable level, and Genar-Hofoen must have gone off the deep end to want to be part of that. I think for some time, he longed to be something other than human. That emptiness was pretty central to Genar-Hofoen, especially after his unborn child is cut out of him . There was a primitive aspect to the Affront that he wanted to be a part of. I don't think he wanted to change them at all - in fact I think he wanted the Culture to leave them alone and let them be the unashamed barbarians they were. And it also made sense because Genar-Hofoen, for a long time, was all about loving as many women as possible, so becoming an Affront wasn't too much of a stretch.
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Sep 7, 2013 01:58
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