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Hedrigall posted:Until she proves herself with a different fictional universe from her first, bland trilogy, don't believe anyone who says Ann Leckie. I like Leckie's books, but this is accurate. James SA Corey is good, but lacks the bonkers large scope and sense of fun.
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Jun 23, 2015 14:16
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The closest is probably Ken MacLeod who was close friends with Banks and gets tons of praise in the SF world, but nobody seems to have read his books.
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Jun 23, 2015 14:21
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Hannu Rajaniemi perhaps? I just finished his trilogy and it blew me away.
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Jun 23, 2015 16:07
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xian posted:Hannu Rajaniemi perhaps? I just finished his trilogy and it blew me away. This is correct.
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Jun 23, 2015 17:17
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:I like Leckie's books, but this is accurate. James SA Corey is good, but lacks the bonkers large scope and sense of fun. James SA Corey is fun enough genre space adventurin', but isn't nearly as literary or imaginative as Banks. xian posted:Hannu Rajaniemi perhaps? I just finished his trilogy and it blew me away. This is closer to the mark, though I think he's still a bit rough around the edges. Looking forward to seeing what he does next, though.
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Jun 23, 2015 17:27
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Hannu's book of short stories that dropped recently is very good.
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Jun 23, 2015 18:47
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Banks, like Terry Pratchett, is a complete original. We'll nae see his like again and it's completely hopeless looking for someone to play that role.
Trin Tragula fucked around with this message at 21:36 on Jun 23, 2015 |
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Jun 23, 2015 21:31
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I found Neal Asher's Polity books a decent enough read. Whilst I didn't find Asher's relatively right wing view of what a post-singularity society would look like as plausible as Banks' socialist version, it was an interesting contrast, and just like Banks his AIs are the most interesting characters.
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Jun 24, 2015 00:12
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Alastair Reynolds, maybe? Especially the Revelation Space books. They're slower-paced than the Culture books and don't involve as much AI, but they're decent hard sci-fi.
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Jun 26, 2015 13:16
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Hedrigall posted:The closest is probably Ken MacLeod who was close friends with Banks and gets tons of praise in the SF world, but nobody seems to have read his books. Thanks for this, I started reading The Star Fraction this week and it's really good.
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Jun 26, 2015 13:24
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The Clowning posted:Alastair Reynolds, maybe? Especially the Revelation Space books. They're slower-paced than the Culture books and don't involve as much AI, but they're decent hard sci-fi. The Culture was as soft as they come, though. Science through the floor. They were just really good soft sci-fi.
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Jun 26, 2015 13:24
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MikeJF posted:The Culture was as soft as they come, though. Science through the floor. They were just really good soft sci-fi. Also, Banks was a Literary And Good Writer, and Reynolds, for all his strengths, just isn't. He's got grand, often awesome ideas, but his prose and characters are often flat and cold as, well, an ultra-flat and super-cooled sci-fi made up material. Although that does suit the relentlessly grim Revelation Space universe.
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Jun 26, 2015 15:47
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neat
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Jun 27, 2015 17:14
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God bless you Elon Musk
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Jun 27, 2015 17:26
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Elon Musk is going to make Iain Banks' ship naming conventions a real thing.
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Jun 27, 2015 17:42
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 Finished the Hydrogen Sonata. Now I'm out of Culture books. Forever, I guess.  I haven't read Inversions yet, but that doesn't really count.
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Jun 28, 2015 07:27
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That's a lot of well camouflaged knife-missiles.
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Jun 28, 2015 15:14
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a kitten posted:neat It...did not go well: http://i.imgur.com/LBtdtNF.gifv Next one should be the Funny, It Worked Last Time...
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Jun 29, 2015 17:05
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the "Of Course I still Love You" Was the barge it was gonna land on so it's still floating along.
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Jun 29, 2015 17:12
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Answering the unanswered questions from the dawn of time!Hedrigall, a few years ago posted:I have one random question about my edition of The Player of Games. Throughout the book, some pages have a little thing at the bottom like this: It's a signature mark, a note to self by the printer so they know which signatures go together in which order to make the finished book. ---- For actual new thread content, here's Iain Banks drives an F1 car. I'd expect he has a pile of nonfiction fragments like this floating around - has anyone ever collected a list together? Should be another book, really.
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Jul 6, 2015 09:30
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I picked up Canal Dreams in a charity shop a while back and just got around to reading it. I did not see the story going in that direction.  That relaxed, contemplative introductory third of the book, just a hint of hidden trauma in the main character's past (it is an Iain Banks book after all), and then everything goes right off the rails. Not his best work in my opinion but not bad, it's worth it just for the transition between buildup and payoff, don't think I've read anything so intentionally jarring in a while. Also for Hisako's action movie style one woman revenge murder rampage. Holy gently caress.
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Jul 6, 2015 11:48
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IIRC his starting point was "Iain Banks does an airport novel".
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Jul 6, 2015 15:33
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 Hahahahaha oh man why did you have to die so young.
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Jul 10, 2015 02:14
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Well! I wasn't really expecting to, but I quite liked Inversions. Very, very different from the prior books in the series. I love the way it was presented, as a kind of list of pros and cons to active vs. reactive intervention. It'd be hard to really jive with this book without knowing much about the Culture and Contact, but it's really fun being able to put the pieces together.
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Aug 5, 2015 22:03
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guys I think Taco Bell is turning Minds into sauce
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Sep 19, 2015 00:30
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Happy Now Horror Later. Not Really That Spicy. Open Round The Clock. Digestion Issues. Unexplained Meat Loss.
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Sep 20, 2015 03:25
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loving ROU's are too easy. Last one: Smell You Sooner.
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Sep 20, 2015 03:36
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Christmas Present posted:guys I think Taco Bell is turning Minds into sauce The Very Fast Picket Trust Me, I Do This All The Time is totally running errands for Special Circumstances
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Sep 20, 2015 03:56
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Jet Jaguar posted:The Very Fast Picket Trust Me, I Do This All The Time is totally running errands for Special Circumstances You mean the Very Fast Packet.
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Sep 20, 2015 03:58
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Caution, Contents are Hot 100% Gluten Free
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Sep 20, 2015 04:27
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Tochiazuma posted:100% Gluten Free This one is just desperate for people to ask it about gluten so it can give a lighthearted doesn't-really-care explanation about the dietary foibles of this one planet it visited.
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Sep 20, 2015 11:06
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Kesper North posted:You mean the Very Fast Packet. Yeah, picket implies militarization and the Culture want to avoid reminding you that they can kick your rear end.
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Sep 20, 2015 13:48
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Murgos posted:Yeah, picket implies militarization and the Culture want to avoid reminding you that they can kick your rear end. Nah, they give their combat ship classes names like Gangster and Torturer.
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Sep 20, 2015 15:45
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Since this thread has become a bit more active I might as well ask now before I forget/procrastinate. I'm thinking of doing my BA English thesis on Banks and the Culture setting. Anyone got some recommendations or required secondary reading they could point me to? I'm not starting work on it until next semester but it's good to do some prep sooner rather than later.
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Sep 20, 2015 17:11
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Taeke posted:Since this thread has become a bit more active I might as well ask now before I forget/procrastinate. I'm thinking of doing my BA English thesis on Banks and the Culture setting. Anyone got some recommendations or required secondary reading they could point me to? I'm not starting work on it until next semester but it's good to do some prep sooner rather than later. A Few Notes on The Culture
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Sep 20, 2015 17:16
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Taeke posted:Since this thread has become a bit more active I might as well ask now before I forget/procrastinate. I'm thinking of doing my BA English thesis on Banks and the Culture setting. Anyone got some recommendations or required secondary reading they could point me to? I'm not starting work on it until next semester but it's good to do some prep sooner rather than later. You got an idea as to an actual thesis argument yet? That's what will really determine your secondary reading.
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Sep 20, 2015 18:36
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Anyone read Walking On Glass? I'm about to give it a whirl.
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Sep 20, 2015 18:49
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Yeah, it's good and part of his early non-M I wanna write Sci-Fi fiction. There's also what seems to me to be a recycling of an idea from Use of Weapons.
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Sep 20, 2015 19:18
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I thought it was an interesting near miss. Definitely worth trying to see what you think.
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Sep 20, 2015 19:33
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Thanks! I read that a year ago but didn't have it bookmarked. I do now.  Barry Foster posted:You got an idea as to an actual thesis argument yet? That's what will really determine your secondary reading. I'm still brainstorming about it but right now there's two directions I'm exploring. The first would be a moral/political/cultural look at certain aspects of the Culture. I'd really have to narrow it down and decide on a topic otherwise I'll wind up using bits and pieces from every novel without actually doing anything with it. Maybe look at the intervention side of things, which I could tie to either real world examples (current or historical) or other works of fiction. Another option would be the use of individuals, taking a closer look at (for example) Zakalwe as a character. Or I could look at the interaction between the Culture and other highly advanced civilizations. I'd basically pick one of the many recurring themes in his works and pick it apart. The other direction is taking a more literary/narratological approach and closely examine the many instances of misdirection in Use of Weapons, and how it's basically the ambiguity of a sentence like "The officer killed the man with a gun." as a novel. As I'm typing this I realise that (unless I or someone else comes up with a better idea) I've pretty much decided on this one. I've actually got an idea of what I'd be writing about and it's pretty much the perfect scope for a thesis, not too narrow to be restrictive and not too broad to be overwhelming. I'm not too stressed about it (yet.) It's only 16k words and if a friend of mine wrote her thesis on Stephen King's 11/22/63, I'm pretty sure I'll manage.
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Sep 21, 2015 00:23
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